UK SBSC : SBSC PAL

Vijay Riyait: My Achievements as UK SBSC Partner Area Lead

UK SBSC — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:09:00 GMT

We wanted to share a post from the FY09 UK PAL, Vijay Riyait, who recently published an article about his Achievements as UK SBSC Partner Area Lead. As you know, Vijay held the role of UK PAL for two years. His role has just come to an end – and here’s a short list of the many great things Vijay achieved in his role specifically over the last year:

I was recently asked by Microsoft to highlight my achievements as a PAL, which I was happy to do. These are to be used by Microsoft to be shown to senior executives at Microsoft and I guess highlight the importance and value of having this programme. The things that I highlighted are below :

Supporting the SBS/EBS launch events in the UK with Microsoft

SBS 2008 Migration Workshop with David Overton (only one in the UK)

Online participation/communication for SBSC Partners through blog and online technical communities

Member of the newly formed Microsoft UK PAC

Technical Director of Ardent iSys showing good growth in providing software solutions based on MS Technologies e.g. ASP.NET MVC

Published Case Study for Windows Mobile

Provided free OfficeLive Training to community/charity organisations with great feedback in conjunction with Leicestershire Cares

I have done much more than this in the background in terms of feedback to Microsoft and trying to help SBSC Partners with problems and queries. Probably some of the lesser known things that I achieved were the release of the Demo Showcase VMs and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (Enterprise Ed) in the SBSC Toolkit.

Microsoft has created a PAL Alumni Page on the Microsoft Portal and we continue to have access to the PAL Groove site. The new Global PALs I am sure will bring new ideas and perspective to things and continue to help build our Community further.

» My Achievements as UK SBSC Partner Area Lead.

Thank you once again to Vijay for the huge contribution he has made the Small Business Specialist Community!

Introducing you new SBSC Partner Area Leads for 2009/2010

UK SBSC — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:48:54 GMT

It is with great pleasure that I can announce the two *new* SBSC Partner Area Leads (PALs) for the UK - Andy Trish of NCI Technologies and Steve Wright of BMS Digital Solutions Ltd. The usual PAL term is 12 months and with this in mind, Andy and Steve's roles will commence in July 2009 (at WPC) and will conclude in June 2010. I am sure neither of these two individuals are complete strangers to the majority of you as they have been active participants in the SBSC, but without further ado, please let me officially introduce them to you...

Andy Trish

Andy is the founding director of NCI Technologies, a Microsoft Gold Partner and SBSC Partner based in Cornwall, UK. Starting the company with a credit card, NCI has grown rapidly in just 5 years to 22 staff basing itself around supporting and maintaining SMEs’ on Small Business Server. He is passionate not only about improving the skills of the SBSC Community as a whole but also developing the product range to ensure SME’s can make the most out of it.

Awarded SBS MVP for 2009 Andy is continually discussing technical and business development issues with the SBS product teams and is keen to hear of any problems or suggestions members of the community may have.

Steve Wright

Many of you may know Steve from the Midlands SBS User Group, which he took over the leadership for last year. In Steve's own words, here's a little bit about himself:

"For the past 16 years I have run an IT Managed Services consultancy in the East Midlands. We specialise in Microsoft Small Business Server & the technologies required that enable us to offer professional, repeatable solutions to the SME market. We are a Microsoft Small Business Specialist as well as a Certified Partner and a member of the Midlands SBS User Group. I hold an HNC in Electro-mechanical Engineering, am a Microsoft MCP and the author of Instant HTML - A Programmer’s Reference published by Wrox Press. When I’m not messing around with computers you can find me on my narrowboat travelling the English canals."

Microsoft is really looking forward to working with Andy and Steve to service the small business specialist community in our new financial year. For more information on the PAL role, see the PAL Nomination Process blog post.

With the appointment of our new PALs, this is also an opportune moment to thank our current PALs,Vijay Riyait and Gareth Brown, for all the hard work and efforts they have put into their roles as a PAL's for the UK over the past 2 years. It is fair to say that both Vijay and Gareth approached the role of PAL in slightly different ways and provided feedback to Microsoft on an ongoing basis regarding all matters SBSC. Microsoft has valued their input tremendously and we hope that the wider community has felt the benefits of their engagement too.

Finally, now is also a good opportunity to thank all of the partners who put themselves forward for the new SBSC PAL roles for the UK. The caliber of nominees was extremely high and this made the decision very hard indeed. I hope you will all find Andy and Steve worthy PALs and I am confident that they will bring great value to the community, as well as be good representatives of the UK SBSC partner channel when engaging with the SBSC programme leads at Corporate in their quarterly conference calls. Following their visit to WPC in July, we will to sit down with Andy and Steve to understand what they want to do for the UK SBSC channel in their role as PAL and we will then aim to share their plans with the wider community as appropriate... so stay tuned!

Calling SBSC Partners using Twitter

UK SBSC — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:14:57 GMT

A message from Vijay Singh Riyait, UK SBSC Partner Area Lead (PAL):

If you’re an SBSC Partner (anywhere in the world) then I’ve got a couple of requests. The first is that I would really like to connect with you on twitter at http://twitter.com/vriyait. The second one is if you’re twittering consider using the hashtag #sbsc in your tweet if it is related to an SBSC related topic. The advantage of this is that you can search tweets at http://search.twitter.com by entering #sbsc. Try it, it should come up with one of my tweets about the 5W/50 webcasts.

» Calling SBSC Partners using Twitter

Official Web Site for SBSC Partner Area Leads

UK SBSC — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:28:54 GMT

The UK PALs site is a resource for SBSC Partners where you can see what the UK PALs are doing, links to Community resources, case studies of successful SBSC Partners in the UK and upcoming events. Why not check it out - Vijay's doing a great job of keeping it going so please support him and use the site.

Also, Vijay has just posted an interview he conducted with myself (Emily Lambert - Microsoft UK SBSC Lead). Vijay asked some pretty tough questions and I have been honest with my answers!

Vijay's perspective » Q3 SBSC PAL Conf Call

UK SBSC — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:26:54 GMT

Vijay, one of the UK's SBSC PALs, joined the quarterly call with Microsoft Corporate this week and here's his update:

Yesterday was the Q3 SBSC PAL Conf Call with Microsoft Corp and as I’ve been given the go ahead from Andrea Russell you can check out the Agenda and Presentation Slides on Slideshare.

The key points from my side were :

An early view of the Next Generation of the Partner Programme and what that means to SBSC. This is still subject to change and some tweaking but the slides lay out the current thinking. This is unlikely to be implemented before Oct 2010 and then only in phases as it can’t be done overnight. It’s an overhaul of the entire Microsoft Partner Programme whether you are SBSC, Certified, Gold and with whatever competency you currently have. There is a general raising of the bar and SMB will be slightly lower than the rest. So, SBSC changes to a SMB focus and within that there will be various levels with different requirements and associated benefits. It’s a recognition that not all SBSC Partners want to engage on the same level.

The next SBSC Toolkit will contain System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and Andrea is still negotiating whether this will be Workgroup or Enterprise Ed. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it is the latter. I asked for SCVMM as part of the feedback requests we get as PALs for what should be in the SBSC Toolkit. The same goes for the Demo Showcase VMs which were in the last Toolkit. I had pestered Andrea for the Demo Showcase VMs for ages until one day she managed to corner the Product Group in the Redmond Corridors and then there was no escape for them (…or so the story goes :-)).

» Q3 SBSC PAL Conf Call

SBSC PAL Sharepoint Site - Help Vijay with UK Content!

UK SBSC — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:15:50 GMT

Vijay Riyait, one of our SBSC Partner Area Leads (PALs) has written a post on his blog about the new SBSC PAL website. This has just been set up and Vijay is asking you to contribute some content. As a Small Business Specialist partner and member of this community please do offer your support and contribute what you can:

During this year’s WPC in Houston there was much discussion about how the PALs should communicate publicly. To cut a long story short the PALs have created a Sharepoint site http://www.sbscpal.com which has been very kindly provided by Jose Morales (one of the European PALs based in Slovenia). It’s a WSS 3.0 site which Jose and his team at B4 Contact have built a CMS around called Sharepoint CMS. This allows the public facing site to be branded and have some great templates added. The content is easily managed via an intuitive web based interface. It has been created by the PALs and paid for by the PALs but with the full support of Microsoft. It is independent of Microsoft so they do not control the content, we do as a Community!

The site is split into the PAL regions of the World and on the frontpage you can click on the respective country flag to go into that public area. The UK region can be found here and is maintained by myself.

The reason for writing this post is to start to encourage people to contribute to this site via me if you are a UK SBSC Partner. The content is open to what you think would be valuable but here are some of my thoughts :-

Blog roll links to SBSC UK Partners (if you have an active blog let me know!)

Contact details of Current SBSC Groups

Upcoming Events

Partner Interviews (let me know if I could interview you about business/technical stuff?)

Business/Technical Articles (would you be willing to write an article for the site?)

Customer Case Studies (do you have an existing Microsoft Published Case study which could be highlighted or one of your own stories?)

Links to other existing resources

Now, I know you UK SBSC Partners can be a shy retiring bunch sometimes so I’m not expecting a sudden stampede to contribute so I’ll be reaching out to certain people in the coming weeks to seek contributions by calling in favours, begging and bribery:-) We have commitments from Microsoft to provide contributions so this is a serious thing we are doing. We want to make this site unique and not just be duplicating content. This can be a great Showcase/PR vehicle for you as a UK Partner because it will be seen at the highest levels of Microsoft not just in the UK but also at Microsoft Corporate level. I’m pretty sure Andrea Russell in Redmond will make certain that people within Microsoft see what we are doing as a Community.

So, contact me at vijay@sikhgeek.com or Mob: 07773 123 562

I'd like to take this opportunity to personally thank Vijay for his hard work and dedication in helping us build, develop and grow the UK small business specialist community!

Microsoft Software + Services Event: Are you ready to evolve?

UK SBSC — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:49:37 GMT

Yesterday Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, was in the UK and presented alongside others at Microsoft's Software + Services event in London. By all accounts I hear it was a really good event and well received by Microsoft partners.

I wanted to direct you all to our Vijay Riyait's (our SBSC PAL) blog post who shares his account of the event. Also, Andy Trish has posted a comment to Vijay's blog sharing his views on whether he considers Software + Services as right for the SBSC partners. I've pulled out a few sections from Vijay's article that I think you might find interesting but recommend you go here to read the full post and others comments.

"...For me the most valuable contribution was by David Mitchell (funnily, we follow each other on twitter!) Senior VP of IT Research at Ovum. David gave a great perspective as to how to position yourself in the emerging S+S era. It was perhaps not a surprise he said that the keys to growth and success were :

Industry Specialisation (an area he said Microsoft needed to help Partners more on)

Using finance to increase the average deal size and get paid quicker

Having a mix of services in your business i.e. not putting all your eggs in one basket

Making the investment now into Online services to be ready for the future (otherwise it will be too late)

Having a repeatable solution which could be delivered with scale and low cost

Outsourcing those parts of your business to those who could deliver it more cheaply

Building Intellectual Property into your business

... He was asked if Microsoft had got it right with it’s S+S Strategy and he said that he believed they had the right building blocks but its success could not be measured yet as the services were not fully released and generating revenue, which would be ultimate test. He felt that nobody had got it right yet and couldn’t give more than about 2/3 out of 10 to anyone!...

... The highlight of the event was Steve Ballmer and boy does he have energy and passion! ... Steve Ballmer was keen to say that he understood that some Partners were not happy with Microsoft moving into this area but he said the business had to evolve to survive but that the Partner Ecosystem was still key to this.

...So, if you’re interested in Microsoft’s Online Services you can sign-up for BPOS (Business Productivity Office Suite) at the Partner Portal but the services won’t come online in the UK until Spring 2009."

» Microsoft Software + Services Event#comment-83340#comment-83340#comment-83340#comment-83340

Manchester SBSC User Group

UK SBSC — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:13:21 GMT

A couple of Thursday's ago I headed up to Manchester to join the SBSC Manchester User Group. It was a really interesting evening with full agenda.

The evening kicked off with one of the members, Leslie Cupitt of Business Solutions Ltd, delivered a comprehensive session on Vista 64 bit in an SBS environment and his experiences. This was a really interesting session and Leslie has kindly provided me with his Word document he created and is happy to share it with other SBSC partners. I am looking into how we can do this in a formal way (through the Partner Portal) but if anyone is keen to get visibility sooner then drop me an email (emilyl@microsoft.com) and I will send it over to you.

Following Leslie's presentations, Vijay Riyait updated the group on his experiences at WPC and updates from a PAL perspective on the SBSC programme. Go here to see his blog post regarding the evening's meeting. For those who are yet to meet Vijay, he is a very active UK PAL who is working hard to help build a sense of community amongst the UK's SBSC partners. Check out Vijay's blog: The Sikh Geek for his updates on the PAL programme and comments around the SBSC and small business.

Also at the Manchester SBSC meeting was Gareth Hall - Microsoft UK's Windows Server Product (including SBS and EBS). Gareth and I went along to discuss and gather feedback on the the SBSC programme and to listen to our SBSC partner's requirements for the SBS 2008 launch. We, along with a virtual team at Microsoft, are currently working on these plans and hope to share more information within the coming weeks. Stay tuned to this RSS feed for more information!

For those in the Manchester area, next month's meeting will include a session on Office Accounting 2008 or and SPID overview. For more details and to find out how you can participate visit the North West Partner Community Site.

Best regards,

Emily Lambert - Channel Development Manager, Microsoft.

Microsoft SMB Community Blog : Who are the FY09 Microsoft SBSC PALs?

UK SBSC — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:44:12 GMT

Thought this article would be of interest to those who don't subscribe to the World Wide Microsoft Small Business Channel Community Blog. Recently, Eric Ligman discussed "Who are the FY09 Microsoft SBSC PALs?" and linked back to his previous posts on the role of PALs...

Shortly after Worldwide Partner Conference last year, I posted about the new SBSC PAL initiative and who the FY08 Worldwide SBSC PALs were. You can see these at:

Who’s my PAL? And why haven't I heard about this?

Microsoft PAL Initiative overview and Worldwide PAL list

We are now in our Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09), which means there is an updated Worldwide SBSC PAL list for this year. Some of the people are the same and some of the people are different. Here is the full list so that you know who your SBSC PAL is for your part of the world including their Area and contact information they have given us permission to share:

Australia - Hilton Travis - Quark IT, PO Box 995, Sunnybank Qld 4109, Tel: 07 3105 9101

New Zealand - Ben Walton - Tiger Networks, Level 1, 96 New North Road, Eden Terrace, Auckland 1003, New Zealand, Tel: +64 9 358 5480

Canada - Elisabeth Vanderveldt - Conamex, 9780 Hamel, Montreal, Quebec H2C 2W7, Tel: (514) 381-1900

Canada - Brad Kowerchuk - Bralin Technology Solutions, 104, 2062 100th Street, Box 422, North Batteford, SK S9A 2Y4 Canada, Tel: (306) 445-4881

Denmark - Klaus Juhl - PC SYS, Midtager 29, 2605 Brøndby, Tel: +4543432929

France - Elisabeth Gervais - Likinia, 1 rue des Primevères, 14210 Noyers-Bocage, Tel: +33 (0)2 31 25 41 41

Germany - Oliver Sommer - Trinity Computer, Rötkersiek 44; 32760, Detmold; Germany, Tel: +49 (0)5231-458986-0

Germany - Oliver Kiel - PingUs Solutions OHG, Marienstraße 1a; 16552 Mühlenbecker Land – OT, Ortsteil Schildow; Germany, Tel: +49 (0)33056 / 4202-0

India - Suresh Ramani - Techgyan, Office #4A, Shankeshwar Darshan, A.G. Pawar X Road 2, Byculla, Mumbai 400 027, India, Tel: +91-22-23717207

Italy - Fabio Cazzaniga - Braindata s.a.s., Via Sirtori, 26/G– Casatenovo (LC), Casatenovo, Italy, Tel: +39.039.9202602

Slovenia/CEE - Jose Antonio Morales - B4Contact d.o.o., Naselje Jožeta Kerenčiča 38, 9000 Murska Sobota, Slovenia, Tel: +386 2 530 8222

South Africa - David Lees - Sector4 Contact Management Solutions, 3rd floor The Palms 145 Sir Lowry Rd POB 12403 Mill St 8010, Cape town, South Africa 7925, Tel: +27 21 465 0560

UK - Vijay Riyait - iQubed, 3 Lawrence Close, Leicester, Leicestershire, UK, LE4 2SB, Tel: +44 (0)845 004 8466

UK - Gareth Brown - Sytec Systems & Technology Ltd, 26 Parkers Close, Downtown Business Centre, Salisbury, UK, SP5 3RB, Tel: +44 (0) 8700 111 366

US - Kim Walker - Franklin Computer, 4770 Indianola Avenue, Ste 110, Columbus, OH 43214, Tel: (614) 431-3327

US - Jere Terrill - My Computer Mechanic, 1077 Whispering Oak Drive, Castle Rock, Colorado 80104, Tel: 303.663.9082

US - Neil Pearlstein - PC Professional Inc., 1615 Webster Street, Oakland, California, 94612, Tel: 510-874-5859

US - Mark Crall - Charlotte Tech Care Team, 10700 Sikes Place, Suite 280, Charlotte, NC 28277, Tel: (704) 248-8328 x33

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman
Microsoft Senior Manager, Community Engagement
US Partner Strategy, Marketing and Programs

Microsoft SMB Community Blog : Who are the FY09 Microsoft SBSC PALs?