Launch Central for U.S. Partners : Whats New in the US portal

Office 2010 Betas and U.S. Partner Resources

dianeja — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:57:04 GMT

On November 18, the availability of Office 2010 betas was announced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC09), and soon after that, we updated the U.S. partner portal home page to provide you with links to the betas as well as to other partner resources for Office 2010.

The betas give you the opportunity to experience the Microsoft Office 2010 suites, Microsoft Project 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010, and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for yourself, and to give us feedback about how you think we can refine the products before they are released to manufacturing. Your input helped us make Windows 7 a great product, and we hope you’ll continue to help us deliver the best possible experience to our customers (which includes you) with our Office 2010 products.

After you’ve downloaded the betas, take a moment to become a fan of the Microsoft Office 2010 Partner Challenge on Facebook. The Challenge is a fun way for you to test your knowledge of Microsoft Office 2010, take on other Microsoft partners, and get a chance to win some great giveaways. Along the way, we’ll also keep you informed about the partner resources, such as training, sales and marketing materials, and more as we move towards the launch in 2010.

Resources

2010 Partner Beta Center: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40124112

Partner Opportunities and Information: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40113273 (hint: like the content here or have a suggestion about what else we should include? Click the feedback link at the bottom of the page; it’s anonymous and helps us make the partner experience better!)

Office 2010 Sales Training on the Learning Plan Tool: http://www.microsoftlearningplans.com/PackageDetails.aspx?packageId=464

Enjoy the betas!

Is Launch Central Everything You Thought It Would Be?

dianeja — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:44:00 GMT

At a recent team offsite, I was thrilled to see the words "Launch Central" in a slide presented to us by a partner of the resources he considered to be critical for his company's success. A colleague and I came up with the Launch Central idea almost three years ago in preparation for the launch extravaganza of Vista, Office, and Exchange. We wanted to create a memorable phrase that we could use on the partner portal and in our newsletters; I added the blog a few months ago as yet another touchpoint. Today, it's become second nature for people to ask how to add information about their launch so that partners are aware of the resources.

Lately, though, I feel like we aren't quite toeing the line in utilizing Launch Central as well as we can. Sure, we have information about Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Windows Essential Server Solutions, both families of products launching later this year. We have retained the information about our Unified Communications Launch and our recent "Heroes Happen Here" launch of Windows Server 2008, SLQ Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. We have content in our Monday morning partner newsletters and in this blog. But it still feels like we may not be meeting your needs for staying informed, aware, and active when it comes to our product launches.

I'd like to ask your advice. If Launch Central were yours to maintain, and you just wanted to keep the information flowing through the partner portal via the home page (https://partner.microsoft.com/us), Launch Central page, newsletters, and blog, what would your game plan be? What's missing that you'd like to see? Are there other vehicles or efforts you'd leverage? You are welcome to post your comments on this blog, or you can send me e-mail through the blog. If you want to be truly anonymous, you can use our Rate This Page functionality on the Launch Central page (https://partner.microsoft.com/US/salesmarketingsection/smcampaigns/launchcentral) and tell us your thoughts there.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Diane Golshan, Sr. Marketing Manager, US Partner Group

Keeping Up with Everything Launch

dianeja — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:51:00 GMT

It's a daunting task. As Microsoft has broadened its business and our portfolio of products has proliferated, keeping up with launches, updates, service packs, and everything else has become more complex. Trust me, even from the inside, it can be a struggle, so I sympathize with our partners and also marvel sometimes at their ability to keep things straight.

That being said, I do want to point you to two resources we offer on the partner portal that can help you navigate the myriad messages, resources, and nuggets of information that will help you make the most of every launch.

Launch Central (https://partner.microsoft.com/us/launch or https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40033583). We created this US-specific page for the launch of Vista/Office/Exchange a couple of years ago, and partners told us it was a really helpful tool for getting a quick view of what was going on. Launch Central acts as a "mini-portal" and we encourage product marketers to contribute and refine launch-related content and calls to action that drive how partners learn about, market, and sell solutions recently launched or soon to be launched.

Launch Resources (https://partner.microsoft.com/US/productssolutions/launchresources). This is a slightly different pivot of launch-related resources, focusing more on the products themselves by offering information about trials, betas, toolkits, and other goodies that help you get your hands on the products and understand what's on the horizon.

Why two different pages? Well, I think these pages provide two distinct views of our launch efforts--Launch Central for the selling/marketing view and Launch Resources for the product-specific view. A lot of times at Microsoft, we take the "kitchen-sink" approach because we feel like we have so many great things to tell and offer to our partners. Two pages seems like a small price to pay to offer a little bit more clarity. If you have a different opinion, or thoughts about how we can improve these pages and their respective content, I would love to hear them...