• Lights! Camera! Exchange Technical Readiness!

    Posted over 3 years ago
    by Ian Hameroff}

    My good friends from the Exchange technical product management team (and close neighbors around the hollowed hallways of Building 31) have just launched a fantastic new “Exchange Technical Video Series” up on TechNet’s Exchange Server TechCenter.

    imageThese videos afford you an awesome opportunity—especially our solutions partners—to get the straight scoop on the technical details on all things Exchange Server 2010…right from the workload TPMs who are (without a doubt) leading subject matter experts.

    What impresses me the most about these videos is the approach the Exchange TPMs have taken. Specifically, the sessions don’t just touch on the overall value proposition of the discussed capability, like Exchange Archiving and Discovery or Mobility. They also walk-through a number of scenarios that help land “how” you can best position these features with your customers.

    Take for example Ankur’s archiving video.  In this installment, he talks to animaged demos how to setup the archive for a user, as well as how to implement critical functionality like the a “rolling legal hold”. And, since these are intended for a technical audience (READ: 300 level content!), they are “demo rich” and run about 20 minutes or so long.

    As I have shared in the recent post around our evolution of the Unified Communications competency, the new Messaging competency (officially launching in October 2010) is going to add an increased focus on the advanced capabilities of Exchange, i.e., security, archiving and voicemail. This Technical Video Series is a recommended starting point for getting ready for the new assessments and technical evaluations planned to test you on these functionality starting in May 2012. Also, being able to land the value of things like the advanced security functionality or how built-in voicemail can replace aging and antiquated legacy telephony hardware, means you have the chance to score some additional value-add services engagements which often require additional specialization leading to even more revenue generating opportunities…beyond just messaging.

    Without further ado, here are the links to the current batch of videos, presented by our own Ann Vu and now playing on TechNet:

    We expect there will be further videos coming in the future, so stay tuned to the TechCenter (and this blog) for more details as they rollout to the web.

    And, don’t forget to let us know what you think about the content!

    Enjoy!

    Ian
    Group Product Manager
    Exchange Partner Marketing

  • With 34 Days Left Until WPC, It’s Time to Mark Your Calendar with Our Exchange Sessions!

    Posted over 3 years ago
    by Ian Hameroff}

    With less than five weeks left until the main event in Los Angeles (ZOINKS!), I wanted to make sure you have these general keynotes and Exchange sessions marked on your busy WPC calendars.

    So, open up your Outlook or calendar through your favorite Exchange ActiveSync device, and here we go!

    imageI already blogged about our general sessions a couple weeks back, but still would like to remind you all about the keynotes and general Exchange sessions we’ll be hosting the Tuesday afternoon of WPC.

    And, as a reminder, if you attend BP04, BP14i and BP22i you’ve got a chance to win an Xbox Kinect console and flat screen TV! 

    Then you could be jumping like this guy from the Kinect homepage.

    That said, you’ll likely already be this pumped just from insights you’ve gain on how to identify new Exchange customers, further grow your revenue with advanced capabilities of Exchange, and how to more effectively compete against Google and Zimbra. The Xbox Kinect will just make you look that much cooler…at least that’s what I tell my wife while she watches me make a fool of myself playing Kinect Sports Soccer.

    You can use the Session Scheduler to create your own customer WPC11 itinerary, as well as read the full abstracts for the sessions above, and these other ones below (all times Pacific):

    Tuesday, July 12th

    But, wait!  There’s more! 

    Here’s a list of other sessions we recommend you add to your calendar to get the full scoop on going to market with Exchange 2010 and Exchange Online in fiscal year 2012:

    image

    In a future post, I’ll share more details on our activities in the Solution Innovation Center (a/k/a Expo) at booth #136 and Customer Immersion Experience.

    Oh, and don’t forget to Tweet or Facebook what you’re really excited to learn more about at WPC and enter yourself into the mix for a chance to win a hugely sought after wristband to this year’s “THE PARTY”.  More details here: Want an “In” to “THE PARTY” at WPC11?

    Ian
    Group Product Manager
    Exchange Partner Marketing

  • Envelope Please. And, the Winners Are….

    Posted over 3 years ago
    by Ian Hameroff}

    The “Partner of the Year” awards are perhaps one of my most favorite parts of the run up to each year’s WPC.

    “Why’s that, Ian?” you may ask.

    It’s pretty simple, yet so rewarding (no pun intended).

    Each year, I get the chance to review a batch of award submissions and get a glimpse into the amazing things you all do as our Exchange (and Lync) partners. I tell you, it is never easy to determine a winner, and that’s why we always tap a group of key stakeholders across the business to help with the judging. This year’s nominations were no exception.

    I was so psyched by the reoccurring themes across entries, which highlighted not only really cool deployments, but also demonstrated your increased focused on things like replacing aging, legacy voicemail gear with the built-in Exchange unified messaging functionally. And, mobility and email archiving and discovery have joined the ranks of common scenarios being implemented for your customers.

    While we are not able to give an award to every one of the “more than 3,000 nominations were submitted by Microsoft partners from over 100 countries”, I do want to take this time to thank each of you for sharing your successes with us from the past year!

    Okay, on to the reason we're all here today (or whenever you ended up reading this post)!

    Today we announced the winners and finalists of our 2011 Partner Awards. You can check out the official press release, but I wanted to shine an extra spotlight on our Unified Communications awards winners and finalists who’ve landed some incredible Exchange and Lync solutions over the past year.

    As you’ll likely recall, we had two different awards related to Unified Communications this year:

    Without further ado…

    Drumroll…

    Unified Communications Market Acceleration Partner of the Year Winner is infoWAN Datenkommunikation GmbH

    imageinfoWAN’s continued partnership and investment has helped to further accelerate penetration of Microsoft Exchange in market and deliver significant benefits to our joint customers.

    Their expertise in planning, deployment and management of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Online has helped customers lower IT costs, boost user productivity and better manage risk. infoWAN continues to drive migrations from IBM Lotus Notes to the Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Online, delivering powerful productivity capabilities on their customers’ terms. Their Exchange investment and expertise is further illustrated through infoWAN’s deployments of archiving, security and voicemail.

    Over the course of their 15 years in the Exchange practice, infoWAN has helped enable over one million Exchange seats. And in the past year, infoWAN has seen incredible growth in their business as a result of their Exchange practice and acknowledge further opportunities ahead, particularly around migrations to Exchange Server 2010.

    Congratulations to Lars and the team at InfoWAN for their award!

    I’d also like to recognize our other two finalists, CDW and Dimension Data, who also demonstrated fantastic market acceleration around Exchange!

    Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year Winner is Polycom

    imagePolycom’s innovative and interoperable solutions span voice, video, telepresence, services, content management, and application integration across the full suite of the Microsoft Productivity platform, including Microsoft Lync.

    The Polycom voice and video conferencing solutions seamlessly integrate familiar communications tools as well as innovative personal communication features within business applications and processes. With Polycom’s suite of audio and video products that natively integrates with Microsoft Unified Communications solutions, and its continued innovation and collaboration with Microsoft enable them to deliver solutions at reduced costs with a better user experience to win mutual customer opportunities over competitors like Cisco.

    Furthermore, Polycom’s Accordent solution, hosted on the Microsoft Windows Azure platform, enables organizations to rapidly and cost effectively deploy a single, secure, searchable video content management solution for all their video assets. The solution is integrated with Lync and SharePoint. Extending the UC platform and working with emerging cloud services, Polycom is improving how people interact with co-workers, customers and partners through a more effective personalized and expansive collaboration experience across global markets.

    Again, we’d like to recognize the other finalists for the “Innovation” award, Jasco and Proton Media.

    Congratulations to all the winners and finalists for the 2011 Partner of the Year awards! Your incredible work and investment serve as fantastic role models for our partner ecosystem, and we very much look forward to learning more about your offerings in L.A. in a few short weeks!

    PS - You’ve got just two more days to tell us what you’re most excited to learn as #ExchangePartner and #LyncPartner at WPC (and be specific) on Facebook and Twitter for a chance to win a pass to “THE PARTY” of WPC. Check out my previous post for more details. We’ve seen some great commentary here, and we’ll select the top tweets and Facebook posts over the next two weeks before the main event.

    Ian
    Group Product Manager
    Exchange Partner Marketing

  • Top 3 Things to Check Out at the WPC11’s Solution Innovation Center

    Posted over 3 years ago
    by Ian Hameroff}

    Happy Monday (not to be confused with the Happy Mondays of the Madchester music movement in the 1980s and 1990s, as featured in a great movie called “24 Hour Party People”…perhaps now is a good time to mention I logged a bunch of hours at our recent Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) this last few weeks)!

    Okay, back to the business at hand: WPC11 is just 4 weeks away!

    And, with less than a month to go, here are a few details on our Exchange and Lync activities in the Solution Innovation Center (a/k/a Expo).

    Your journey through the Expo begins with a swing by booth #136, where you’ll get to see demos of our productivity technologies including Office 365, Office 2010, SharePoint, and, of course, Exchange and Lync at our Business Productivity Booth. We’ll have some of our top sellers from the frontlines of our Microsoft field organization manning our Exchange and Lync kiosks and ready to walk you through some killer demos and answer all of your questions. My team and I will be stopping by to make sure we get a chance to meet as many of you as we can as you make your way through the expansive Solution Innovation Center.

    But, wait!

    There’s (always) more!

    Once again, we’ll have our Partner Solution Theater in the Business Productivity Booth. This year, we’ve lined up a nice sampling of your fellow Exchange and Lync partners to walk through how they are building their businesses on the Microsoft productivity stack. Be sure to check out these sessions as you peruse the kiosks:

    Monday, July 11

    • 12:00 – 12:20PM, Quest Software
      Solidify Unified Communication Deployments Across the IO Model and Learn about Quest’s Other Solutions
    • 12:30 – 12:50PM, BT
      Lync as a Managed Service – A Review of Lync Solutions from BT
    • 1:00 – 1:20PM, Binary Tree
      Maximize your Exchange Migration Opportunities with E2E
    • 3:30 – 3:50PM, Enabling Technologies
      Three New Ways to kick your LYNC up a Notch!
    • 7:00 – 7:20PM, HP
      Exchange Partner Opportunities with the HP E5000

    Tuesday, July 12

    • 12:00 – 12:20PM, Illuminari Tech
      Productivity Appliance - Lync UCS3000 "Solution-In-A-Box”
      12:30 – 12:50PM, Concord Technologies
      Adding Fax to Exchange 2010 or Office 365
    • 5:00 – 5:20PM, NET
      Integrated UI simplifies management and configuration when deploying Lync SBA

    Wednesday, July 13

    • 12:00 – 12:20PM, Polycom
      Transforming UC with Polycom and Microsoft: Real World ROI for You and Your Customers
    • 12:30 – 12:50PM, infoWAN Datenkommunikation GmbH
      Building a 10,000 Seat Secure and Scalable Exchange 2010 Environment

    I think you’ll find these sessions extremely informative as you think through your go-to-market plans for the upcoming Microsoft fiscal year. I really dig the 20 minute “snack sized” approach to these presentations, as they are a great complement to all of the great content you’ll soak up in the keynotes, breakouts and interactive sessions.

    And, be sure to check out the Lync device wall, where you’ll witness the great breadth of headsets, speaker phones, IP phones, and other devices that are interoperable with Microsoft Lync. This is one impressive sight, which you may have gotten a glimpse of during the Lync 2010 launch or at one of our recent events.

    We see you guys are taking to Facebook and Twitter and sharing what you’re most excited to learn at WPC as an #ExchangePartner and #LyncPartner! Keep ‘em coming; we love this stuff! If you haven’t already posted your ‘most excited to learn tidbit’, do so by the 24th to be eligible to win a pass to “THE PARTY” of WPC. Check out my previous post for more details.

    Ian
    Group Product Manager
    Exchange Partner Marketing

  • I’m Now Available on Your Windows Phone 7!

    Posted over 3 years ago
    by Ian Hameroff}

    clip_image001Okay, not literally on your phone. Nor, am I launching an “Ian Hameroff App”. 

    Instead, thanks to our good friends in WPG (a/k/a the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group), Eric Ligman has added this blog and our Twitter feed to his killer Microsoft Partner Information app!

    This means you can stay abreast of all the happenings in the Exchange partner ecosystem (or my thoughts on the most recent Sounders FC match results) with one flick of your finger across your favorite Windows Phone 7 device. You’ll also note that Eric has added a Lync link (had to do it, sorry) offer a similar view into all things related to our game changing communications and collaboration solution (which happens to go very nicely with Exchange).

    I encourage you to download this app and use it to stay current on what we’ve got cooked up for you at WPC11 in a few short weeks.

    All you need to do is:

    1. Grab your Windows Phone
    2. Open the Marketplace
    3. Click search and type in “Microsoft Partner Info”.

    Oh, and if you happen to be an Android user, you can find the app for your device in their marketplace to boot.

    Enjoy!

    Ian
    Group Product Manager
    Exchange Partner Marketing