The Amazing Adventures of Geek Girl : ecm

Partner Learning Paths

tara — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:40:09 GMT

There's an awful lot of information available from Microsoft! Too much, I'm sure some partners would say! The sheer volume of resources, training courses, exams and specialisations can be overwhelming for new Microsoft partners, or even for existing partners looking to include a new technology area in their offering.

One of my colleagues, Jessica Meats, has looked through the available training and resources available for each technology area, and created Partner Learning Paths. These may help you filter the most useful materials to help your employees (both technical and sales) quickly skill up in new products.

Learning paths are available for many Microsoft technologies, including:

SharePoint
Business Intelligence
Enterprise Project Management
Unified Communications
Exchange
Office
Office Live
Windows Server
Vista

There are also learning paths available for gaining knowledge in other areas of Microsoft, such as

Core Infrastructure Optimisation (IO)
Licensing
Partner Hosting Solutions
Public Sector

Get SharePoint Specialised! - Exam 70-630: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring

tara — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:18:32 GMT

I've recently gained the rather grand accreditation of Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) by passing the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration exam, and I encourage all technical employees of Microsoft partners who work with SharePoint (in any capacity) to do the same!

If you already regularly use of most of SharePoint's features (sites, dashboards, portals, document libraries and all of the other fantastic things SharePoint provides!), then you're off to a good start. Expand your knowledge to learn about installing and deploying SharePoint server, both from scratch and by upgrading from SharePoint Server 2003 and Content Management Server. You'll also need to know about managing users and groups and configuring security and authentication. Keep an eye on my blog, as I'll be posting information I found useful for the exam over the next few weeks.

There are numerous resources available to help you study, including classroom training, e-learning courses, books and practice exams. Full details are available on the Microsoft learning page for this exam.

Microsoft Competencies serve as a recognised level of expertise in a particular technical or business area. Achieving certifications and specialisations is vital for Microsoft partners, as they can help you:

Differentiate your skills and expertise to customers.
Extend your market reach.
Align your business with relevant Microsoft marketing initiatives.
Form closer relationships with other partners.

The world of Microsoft Specialisations and Certifications is a confusing one! The Competency associated with SharePoint is the Information Worker Competency. Within this competency, there are seven specialisations. Three of these specialisations are SharePoint related:

To enrol for the Information Worker Competency, a partner must have achieved at least one of the seven specialisations. A Roadmap to gaining the Information Worker Competency is available on the Partner Portal.

The requirements to achieve each of these specialisations involve two staff members passing at least one related exam each, as well as your organisation submitting three customer references.

Exact details of the requirements for each specialisation is available from the links below:

Passing the SharePoint Configuration exam is a great place to start on your road to becoming certified, as this particular exam can count towards gaining any of the above three specialisations. It also serves as a great starting point, if you're a new SharePoint partner, to think about which area of SharePoint you may wish to specialise in.

Gaining the Information Worker competency can be a lot of work for an organisation. You may be wondering what the real, measurable benefits are. Well, according to a 2006 IDC study, partners with the Information Worker Solutions competency out-perform other non-competent knowledge worker partners on 12 of 14 key performance indicators. Specifically, this research found that compared to the Knowledge Worker Benchmark, IW competent partners have:

Significantly shorter sales cycles and implementation times, benefiting from Microsoft's ability to connect them with high-yield prospects and Microsoft technical resources.
Service capacity utilisation rates that exceed the benchmark by 10 percentage points. They keep their technical resources billable more of the time and therefore are able to do more with fewer resources.
More productive relationships with their customers. Their number of deals per customer is over 1.5 times that of the benchmark.
Revenue growth averaging 18 per cent, significantly higher than (more than double) the growth of the benchmark companies.

Specialisations and Competencies are available for other technologies as well as SharePoint. For more details about achieving different competencies and specialisations, read through the excellent 'Guide to Earning a Competency 2008' document, available through the Partner Portal.

Happy learning!

Sharepoint Online

tara — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:36:12 GMT

Just when you thought Sharepoint could not possibly be any more fantastic, Microsoft announce the release of Sharepoint Online!

This is a hosted service, which means customers no longer need to worry about deployment, configuration and management of Sharepoint server farms, but can still make use of the excellent collaboration and information sharing possibilities that Sharepoint provides.

There are two service offerings for Sharepoint Online (and for all other Microsoft Online Services): Standard and Dedicated.

Standard, where many companies will securely use the same architecture, has a minimum requirement of only 5 seats, so Sharepoint Online is available for even the smallest of businesses.

Dedicated, where each company has access to an individual, dedicated architecture, is also available, giving Enterprise level organisations access to more server features.

Troy Hopwood gave an excellent PDC session on Sharepoint Online. Check it out here. It's well worth viewing the whole session, but if you're not too techy, or don't have 75 mins to spare, make sure you watch the first 15 mins for a great overview of Sharepoint Online plus a quick high level demo. Troy also fields some interesting questions from 59 mins onwards. And don't forget to download the PowerPoint presentation that accompanies the session as a reference for the differences between standard and dedicated, as well as a feature comparison of MOSS and Sharepoint Online.

Last but not least, sign up for the beta of Sharepoint Online from www.microsoft.com/online.

The Magical World of Sharepoint - A Brief Overview

tara — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:08:40 GMT

Starting at Microsoft has introduced me to an amazing technology - Sharepoint. Although I'm slightly late on the uptake (Sharepoint has been around in various forms since since 2001 and has been hugely successful for Microsoft), I'm sure there are still many partners who are unaware if the benefits Sharepoint can bring to their business, and just as many who have deployed Sharepoint, but aren't using it to it's full capability.

So what can Sharepoint do? Or maybe a better question is, what can't it do? In official marketing terms, Sharepoint is a collaboration,portal, document management, enterprise search, business intelligence and business process tool. (phew!)

Watch this space for future posts on each of these areas...

Sharepoint comes in three main 'flavours': Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (WSS), Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) Standard CAL and MOSS Enterprise CAL.

There are also additional server products, for example Office Forms Server and Microsoft Search Server 2008, which can also be incorporated to further increase the functionality of Sharepoint.

Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) is the backbone to Sharepoint. It's an enabling technology, that is included (for no additional cost!) with Windows Server 2003 and 2008. WSS provides the ability for workers to easily and effectively collaborate using team sites, giving them access to the information they need to make informed, smart decisions.

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) utilises WSS technology, but extends the functionality to include additional features, such as out-of-the-box workflows and enterprise-level search (Standard CAL) and Business Data Catalogue and Excel Services (Enterprise CAL).

There will be many more Sharepoint-based posts on this blog in the months to come, especially focused around Enterprise Content Management, so stay tuned to learn more.

If you can't possibly wait that long, then why not check out some of these links:

Sharepoint Product Page

Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007

There's also plenty of great Sharepoint training tools out there. One particularly useful one I've come across is:

Sharepoint Server 2007 Training Courses