The Sikh Geek

During the SMB Forum there will be a Q&A session with Michael Risse, Microsoft’s Vice President of Small and Midsize Business and Andrea Russell has organised a private lunch for the SBSC PALs with him.

So, what issues would you like to be raised?

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Michael Risse

Vice President, Worldwide Small and Midmarket Business Group

Microsoft Corp.

As head of the Worldwide Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) Group, Michael Risse leads a global team responsible for defining and implementing Microsoft Corp.’s business management and marketing strategy to meet the unique needs of 42 million small and midsize businesses around the world. Risse leads a cross-company strategy in partnership with every Microsoft product group to deliver innovative business solutions and services designed for small and midsize customers across all geographies. Risse also oversees the creation of global demand-generation programs and tools for the Microsoft sales and marketing field, working in tandem with Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Group to support 360,000 channel partners and drive the SMB business forward. This global cross-company strategy includes overseeing SMB customer marketing, licensing, online resources, customer relationship management, support and tele-business efforts.

Before assuming his current role in February 2007, Risse served as the general manager for the Midmarket customer segment in the United States, overseeing sales, service and support for Microsoft’s Midmarket customers. Under his leadership, the team achieved one of the highest satisfaction ratings ever among Microsoft customers and partners.

A 16-year Microsoft veteran, Risse spent 11 years in the business groups, starting in 1991 as a product manager in development tools on Microsoft^® Visual Basic^® 1.0, and culminating in 2002 as general manager of Server Products and Strategy with responsibility for award-winning server products including SQL Server™ and Exchange Server. He has held a series of product management roles, with a focus on incubation products, including Visual Studio^®, the Microsoft Office system and BizTalk^® Server, and has won notable awards in advertising. Risse also served as chief of staff to Jeff Raikes, now president of the Business Division at Microsoft.

Risse, a native of Columbia, Md., graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1987 with a degree in business. He lives in Washington with his wife and three children.

The Curve is Leicester’s state of the art theatre which has been designed by the world famous architect Rafael Vinoly. After the nlabnetworks conference meal, we were given an impromtu outside tour of the theatre. Even though I live and work in Leicester, I hadn’t realised what an impressive thing this was! It’s completely glass fronted and even looks onto the actual stage and backstage areas from the outside walk ways. The entire building is suspended by steel wires, creating an amazing open structure. Outside there will be an open area where people can sit (cafe style) and/or watch outside performers. This is pretty exciting and to be honest I hadn’t really understood until know what was happening in that area. The foyer area will be open to have meetings and there is space to hold conferences within the building. I know in the past people have questioned the costs of the project but this a real coup for the City. Makes me feel proud of the place where I was born and brought up. Leicester is changing …

The BBC Money Programme on Bill Gates entitled "The Secret of Bill Gates’ Sucess" was shown tonight. Good to see Geeks can make it, so there’s hope for us all yet!

The below clip is something I saw at the Partner Pre-lunch event in London back in January where Bill Gates did the keynote.

It was such a busy day yesterday, in a good way, and after the meeting with Scott Dodds I came over to the NLabNetworks Social Networking Conference and caught the back end of Andrea Saveri’s talk on the "Amplified Individual". I’d had a chat with her the night before at the informal meal at Shimla Pinks. Andrea works at the Institute for the Future at Palo Alto in California and not only is she highly switched on but also very down to earth. I’m going to be using her "Amplified Individual" tagline unashamedly for community engagement whether that is in person or via social networking. Going to have to get that into the SMB Forum session somehow?

A big shout out to Steve Clayton for coming and presenting, with loads of positive feedback on his presentation and his practical advice.

Jess has done a great job blogging the conference and my involvement on the Panel session at the end, also check out the NLabNetworks site.

The sessions were recorded and will be available online sometime.

Yesterday morning involved a meeting with Scott Dodds (Microsoft General Manager of SMB)  at WBA’s Football Ground. There were a number of SBSC Partners there from across the Region and local area. Microsoft has been doing work within the West Midlands and in particularly the Black Country, led by Dominic Gill (Microsoft’s Regional Manager for the Area). It’s funny now when I meet people they’ve heard of me, so far the reaction is pretty good, maybe I should quit while the going is good! Karl Noakes was very happy to remind me that we were at the home of Premiership football as he knew Leicester had dropped into League One

It was a good discussion around what challenges we face with Microsoft around selling SMB Products/Services. Karl made an interesting point that Windows Server 2003 outsold SBS 2003 by 9-1 in the SMB space. Scott said that Microsoft had tried to do too much and maybe they should focus on a certain number of products within SMB.

The point I made and have been making increasingly is that Microsoft should work with its most proactive Partners and not try the broad brush approach that it has tried to do. Microsoft always talks of scaling out its programmes/marketing/support but I don’t see why it needs to? Does this approach work? Does it deliver value? Microsoft has to be seen in the Regions and engaging with its Partners in customer facing events. There is no shortcut to building customer satisfaction and trust. It’s certainly not solved by endless direct marketing campaigns.

The good news is that Microsoft will be trying to do stuff within the West Midlands on a more Regional level and we’ve already seen that with SBSC Partners getting involved in the Business Link IT Supplier Initiative.

Dave of Evolvetech has a pretty good ABC of Virtualisation

What Material does the SMB Consultant want on Virtualisation

Let’s define Virtualisation

Virtualisation: Portability

Virtualisation: Flexibility

Efficiency, the last piece of the puzzle

The four basic types of virtualisation

Having used Twitter for a while, it has been a mixed bag of experiences of making some real connections and getting some great ideas and insights. However, the funniest thing is following those who are apparently the "A" listers or "B" listers or whatever they call themselves. They are those who have achieved minor celebrity status among Geekdom and so therefore walk and think at a different level to us mere mortals, or so you would think? There was a great episode this weekend of what can be described as "hand bags" at fifty paces from two such protagonists. It was like watching kids fight in a school playground, only the kids would’ve had more dignity. I don’t know, maybe it was fuelled by too much testosterone and a modern day version of whipping out your manhood and seeing which is bigger. And these are the people that we’re supposed to look up to that PR people flock to impress!

Then there are those who try and give mind mending, deep meaningful analysis of the world. These are people who eat the best food, read the best books, listen to the finest and widest selection of music, who know all the people in the big bad Social Networking stratosphere.

Me, I watch the Soaps like Coronation Street, Eastenders, Big Brother, Football, hardly ever listen to music or read books (now), take any exercise (now) and spend far too much time stuck to my laptop into the wee small hours of the morning and trying to stop my kids from fighting and killing each other.

I’m beginning to believe that certain people on Twitter aren’t real people because they are the best dads to their sons, wonderful husbands and probably the best lovers as well.

The two "real" people for me on Twitter are Vlad because he hurls expletives at me and thought provoking stuff at the same time, challenges me and engages in a conversation. The other person is Lawrence Liu, Senior Product Manager and Community Lead for Sharepoint Products and Technologies, because he’s got balls, takes no crap and is willing to engage in a conversation and doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Following on from the previous successful Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 Event down at Microsoft London, here is a day long event in Leicestershire courtesy of Combined Knowledge aimed at SBSC Partners and helping them make the most of WSS 3.0 on SBS 2003/2008. Contact Combined Knowledge directly if you want to sign-up but places are limited. Steve Smith of Combined Knowledge and I, will be doing more to bring Sharepoint out to SBSC Partners, so stay tuned …!!

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Following on from Mark’s post on this.

We, as in SBSC Partners do like to do the "mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all" and to have the vendors say that we are! But you know behind our backs they are busy dumping their hardware at quarter ends to retailers who will sell it cheaper than we can buy it from the original distributor and cursing us for the relative pittance we spend with them.

Obviously, we should only deal with an organisation that is 100% Channel focused (sarcasm intended)! But wait, what about Microsoft, your main Partner, that which you generate most of your revenue off either directly or by supporting their solutions is going Direct! Time to cancel that Partner agreement then! Yeah right, methinks not …

I know, we’ll go for a Channel friendly hardware vendor like HP because they don’t do direct do they? Ooops, what’s this, buying online from HP for Small & Medium Businesses! Okay, so at least they don’t do services, phew luckily it’s for Enterprise businesses and that’ll never come to SMB because your best mate Account Manager at HP says it won’t! Well, at least they only support Microsoft and wouldn’t want to push Linux - oh well, at least someone somewhere in the whole of HP has taken the SBS Exam (because that’s really hard!!).

Come on folks, we’ve got to learn to play the game and look for opportunities in these things because there are plenty of Partners/Customers buying Dell stuff!

I’m learning much from my fellow US colleagues and I’m "pimpin" the "Maximising Your Membership of SBSC" session at SMB Forum at WPC by David Lees (South Africa SBSC PAL), Mark Crall (US SBSC PAL) and me! I’ve no idea what the session code is but tick the box thingy or whatever you need to do to sign-up (actually I think you choose on the day). In putting together the content I can tell you there’s some great experiences to share and discuss. Hopefully, we can get some great conversations going. Come to say what you feel because you know what? Microsoft is big and bad enough to look after itself!

We’ll also be discussing if Mark Crall is possibly the nicest person ever because I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like the guy, that surely isn’t possible? If you don’t actually like him please let me know

… and if you think Mark is cool, then wait until you meet David Lees