Those who joined us at the Microsoft Gold Partner Forum today at the Scotsman Hotel heard from Chris Parkes and Steve Clayton who shared their thoughts on how partners can plan ahead to capitalise on emerging technologies over the coming 12 months. Thanks to both for their long service to Microsoft Scotland!

L1010173Sometimes there seems to be so many knobs, gears and levers in the Microsoft portfolio that its difficult to understand how technology can address real business scenarios. So it was refreshing to hear Parky explain the Demo Showcase, a scenario based demo enviroment which pulls all the products and features together into something which addresses real business problems.

However, those hardened road warriors in the Microsoft partner community who visit customers armed only with laptop, a sharp wit and a passion for technology may wish to review the spec of their computing hardware. The demo Showcase is a multi-virtual machine image environment which requires high-end hardware equipped with 4GB of RAM.

So we have teamed up with Hewlett Packard to make it simpler and cheaper for partners to purchase a suitable laptop, the mobile XW9440 workstation. Huge thanks to Charles Douglas of HP for his support on this!

This model equipped with 4GB RAM would normally retail for over £2100, but Gold and Certified partners can order this for £1512 from Kenny Irvine of Scotsys on +44 1698 846059.

. (Scotsys are the HP preferred partner and Microsoft Gold Partner who have volunteered to handle this special order). If your company has HP Preferred partner status and can source this from HP direct, David Adams of HP on +44 141 342 6308.