The Sikh Geek

I thought I’d post up some initial points from the first SBSC PALs conference call today. Firstly, I emailed Susanne’s blog post to Andrea Russell (Microsoft Worldwide SBSC Programme Manager) and the other PALs before the meeting. Andrea mentioned this in the call today and welcomed that people were getting these things to her and encouraged people to do this. I saw Andy had posted after reading Susanne’s thoughts.

There was some postive news that our feedback is getting through.

Michael Risse, VP of the Small and Midmarket Business Group has issued an open letter to SBSC Partners about the issues with Solution Finder.

Demo Showcase 2007 will be available to all SBSC Partners, shipping this December. I clarified that it will be the Virtual Server Images and not just the canned simulations and Andrea said it will be the full versions.

The Managed Newsgroups are now 24 hour in the UK and other selected countries from last week.

Special Edition Toolkit will ship in December provided you are a SBSC Partner before 30 November. You will get Vista anytime upgrade to Ultimate from Business, eval of Forefront for Sharepoint/Exchange, Demo Showcase 2007, Brand Tools, Viral Videos, Licensing Guidance, printable Small Business Guide.

Customer Campaigns around the following areas (hopefully call to action will be go to a SBSC Partner but depends upon how Microsoft UK implements them)

• Security and Reliability
• Business Productivity
• Customer Acquisition & Retention
• Business Solutions

Also, Microsoft are asking where we would like support from Microsoft to build business in new areas such as CRM, Sharepoint, SCE, Security and/or vertical market segments.

I will post up some of the slides from the Presentation and write some more when I’ve had time to digest the information.