I was at the EVO Event at Microsoft today at Thames Valley Park which was pretty well attended, the theatre was quite full. I’ve been thinking of what to write or whether to write anything at all about it! The reason is the event was okay but didn’t seem to generate a buzz or enthusiasm. It’s difficult to put my finger on it and I’m just not sure what I feel.
I liked the demos by the PTS guys, Steve Marsh and Matt McSpirit and their “comedy” double act and self parody (if that’s the right word?) video of Office 2007 as a “Cereal Breakfast” commercial! Can we get that on YouTube? The demos pretty much went to plan and some new things I saw were the speech control of Vista and the Performance/Reliability Monitoring (a very geeky but useful support tool) and Meeting Spaces (what a cool ad hoc collaboration feature!). There’s no denying the power and coolness of all this technology.
The second half of the session was on the Partner Opportunity and Licensing. This is where it all starts to get a bit sticky! The presenters did a good job and to be fair, I have yet to see a bad Microsoft UK presenter (how can they all be so damn confident at speaking). The questions of licensing and product versions started to fly thick and fast and poor Louise was struggling to answer quite a lot of them and was having to resort to saying I haven’t been informed of that. At one point she even called out in to the theatre for any other Microsoft Person to assist her with the licensing issues but there was no reply!! This is not her fault. My head started to spin with all the different versions both Vista and Office 2007 and what was in them, what wasn’t, what they mapped to in the old product range…and then we got to licensing and the system builder’s questions were like a hail of fire! By this point I was reading the new Microsoft Sales Gear Up UK Sales Guide in minute detail because I’d just lost the will to live by then and everyone was beginning to look like cooked chicken sitting in their seats as hunger was setting in!
Louise did give an honourable mention to Susanne’s Blog and her post on Vista/Office 2007 and that she’d been reading it!
I think I’ve just realised the problem, whilst writing this post, it’s the number of versions of products combined with the details of Microsoft Licensing and it all adds up to a very confusing thing for partners, so how can you explain this to your clients.
You know the GPL is quite popular at the moment, wouldn’t it simplify things? (only joking, well half joking!).
P.S. That spicy chicken for lunch was good!
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November 17th, 2006 at 2:09 am
Vijay, I was at that event too - didn’t see you there! I did manage to bump into someone from SBS-WoE and the convesation we had exactly mirrors what you said - “licensing is not getting any simpler”. One thing I thought was quite telling was the peal of laughter when they showed us the picture of the empty DVD box that you get with your OEM upgrade for Windows Vista.
Microsoft also still doesn;t understand that Small Businesses don’t want less features than enterprises, they just need better prices. Take for example Office 2007 Small Business, which comes with BCM but not Access. What? Small businesses don’t need a database?
November 17th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Tim, I did see you so I must apologise for not coming over and chatting with you. Yes, the empty box for the recovery media was a good laugh! I just think they missed an opportunity to talk more about the potential opportunity (which I agree is huge!), what they saw as the various scenarios and how we could all work together to exploit that! The stuff about product versions and the licensing, you can put up on a weblink and people can just read it and then ask questions. I wanted more discussion about strategy. They dangled a few carrots like the study they did about the “New World of Work” and The Gartner Study. When someone asked more about the Gartner Study the presenter just said that we could go and buy the study if we wanted the detail!!