I saw Steve Clayton’s post about the new Datacentres Microsoft is building for this brave new world of online services. The Dublin one providing services to EMEA will be available sometime next year whilst in the meantime, we as Partners, are being told to get on board/change our business models. Great, I’m ready to do it. Let’s get on and provide services to customers for hosted Sharepoint. But wait, I have to wait possibly 12 months to offer anything via Microsoft? So, what’s the Partner model or is the reality that there isn’t any and what we’re really into is compete against your Partners. No early access programme for us, nothing for us at all but the usual Marketing blurb! Sorry, but I’m not prepared to wait that long. To Microsoft, why not build your services secretly and deny all Press reports that you’re actually doing that and come out with a fully provisioned service or at least to get Partners worlwide on the Early Access Programmes.

It’s waiting for Godot time again!