I was highly annoyed today when I saw on the Microsoft Partner Portal marketing propaganda on SBS 2008 and EBS (Essential Business Server). The reason for this irritation is that we are not end customers who have to be sold to in that way. If you are going to do anything then announce a Worldwide Public Beta, announce Partner Readiness Training as was delivered at the recent SMB Summit in the US but basically give more product/technical info to Partners. Don’t give us the spiel about how SBS 2008 has benefited my business, we know all that - we’ve been selling SBS 2003 for god knows how long. This approach is so US centric as well and there has been next to zero communication from Microsoft UK about SBS 2008 and we’ve had to rely on snippets of information from people like Dave Overton who is no longer in the Small Business Team but with ISV. I have to say there has been no leadership on this in the UK.
I’m not asking for myself as I’m on the private beta for Cougar but that’s under NDA. We know SBS is a great product, just give us the beta to play with and we’ll do the rest and then you can throw as much Marketing as you want at us.
What do you think?
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April 24th, 2008 at 3:42 am
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April 24th, 2008 at 4:07 am
[...] » SBS 2008 We Don’t Want No Stinking Marketing!: http://www.iqubed.biz/blog/2008/04/23/sbs-2008-we-dont-want-no-stinking-marketing/ [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I think several things.
1. The content delivered at the SMB Summit is dead on. Note that this was pushed by partners — this wasn’t a Microsoft event, but a community one. Leading to..
2. The power of community is where marketing should come from. I haven’t used Microsoft marketing in ages.
3. SMB sales lead times are going to longer on SBS 2008 upgrades, and thus Microsoft is getting ahead of it by starting messaging now.
4. I think the beta is coming. Microsoft was discussing it’s ‘forthcoming’ nature at SMB Summit, and a call to action was to participate in the upcoming public beta.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
…and a great event it looked - the way things should be, Community driven with Microsoft supporting! Precisely because sales cycles can be so long is more of a reason to let Partners have more information and/or open up the beta. We’ve gotta plan this into our businesses but we can’t do that based on Marketing info alone. I know the Public Beta is probably just round the corner but better communication from Microsoft would be appreciated. I’m not sure where all this “Public” info is and it’s not that I don’t look? It’s great that you’ve got the people to drive these type of events and something we can learn from you guys.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
There’s partners and there’s partners.
For example I’m educating a group of partners in my area that have higher sales volumes that I do, but don’t spend the time I do in learning and research. Nothing wrong with that.
The marketing covers a broad spectrum. You’re clearly in the upper echelon where the technical information and project planning is more important than marketing. Yourself and other (b)leading edge users (me included) will probably migrate early and use this as a reference for further upgrades.
Any business with tight margins and short movement in their budgets won’t even bother starting the discovery process for migration until MS release pricing, which only happens at release. I’ll leave my gripe about leaving pricing until RTM for another day… This means they’re quite a way off migrating anyway.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
That’s a fair point Chris. I’m not against the Marketing per se but I just believe that this has to be balanced out by the Technical Readiness. Believe me that as soon as SBS 2008 is released it will be why aren’t you selling/migrating your customers from Microsoft. It will be a focus on numbers, it always is! Cougar is a totally different product hence no in place upgrade but it’s a great product. I have no doubt that as more Partners see it that will want to deploy to as many customers as possible. I’m not really concerned about Microsoft, I’m speaking for those Partners that I work closely with and who put a lot of effort into their relationship with MS and deserve to be treated as “grown ups”! Give us the info, we can handle it!
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:19 am
[...] they do highlight the new opportunities that both SBS & EBS will offer partners. I also take Vijay’s point around "less marketing, more meat" & promise that you will begin to see a LOT [...]
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:01 pm
[...] they’re going to make me eat my words now! After my previous post on getting more real info on SBS 2008 and backed up by Susan (they’re much more likely to [...]