The Sikh Geek

Dave has very kindly written an article for the UK Section of the SBSC PALs site. The Group is still looking for members and it’s never been a better time to join especially during this difficult economic time. I am pleased to say that Ardent Isys is joining the HTG UK Group. This is in no small part due to the fact that Dave Sobel is moderating the Group.

During this year’s WPC in Houston there was much discussion about how the PALs should communicate publicly. To cut a long story short the PALs have created a Sharepoint site http://www.sbscpal.com which has been very kindly provided by Jose Morales (one of the European PALs based in Slovenia). It’s a WSS 3.0 site which Jose and his team at B4 Contact have built a CMS around called Sharepoint CMS. This allows the public facing site to be branded and have some great templates added. The content is easily managed via an intuitive web based interface. It has been created by the PALs and paid for by the PALs but with the full support of Microsoft. It is independent of Microsoft so they do not control the content, we do as a Community!

The site is split into the PAL regions of the World and on the frontpage you can click on the respective country flag to go into that public area. The UK region can be found here and is maintained by myself.

The reason for writing this post is to start to encourage people to contribute to this site via me if you are a UK SBSC Partner. The content is open to what you think would be valuable but here are some of my thoughts :-

• Blog roll links to SBSC UK Partners (if you have an active blog let me know!)
• Contact details of Current SBSC Groups
• Upcoming Events
• Partner Interviews (let me know if I could interview you about business/technical stuff?)
• Business/Technical Articles (would you be willing to write an article for the site?)
• Customer Case Studies (do you have an existing Microsoft Published Case study which could be highlighted or one of your own stories?)
• Links to other existing resources

Now, I know you UK SBSC Partners can be a shy retiring bunch sometimes so I’m not expecting a sudden stampede to contribute so I’ll be reaching out to certain people in the coming weeks to seek contributions by calling in favours, begging and bribery:-) We have commitments from Microsoft to provide contributions so this is a serious thing we are doing. We want to make this site unique and not just be duplicating content. This can be a great Showcase/PR vehicle for you as a UK Partner because it will be seen at the highest levels of Microsoft not just in the UK but also at Microsoft Corporate level. I’m pretty sure Andrea Russell in Redmond will make certain that people within Microsoft see what we are doing as a Community.

So, contact me at vijay@sikhgeek.com or Mob: 07773 123 562

Yesterday was the first conference call of the FY09 PALs and Andrea had arranged for Scott Whitright, Senior Product Manager, Windows Server Business Group to have a discussion on Infrastructure Optimisation. Now, I know nothing about IO which is one of those "scary" Microsoft Terms. I believe it is something used for larger customers or that was the impression I got from some of the other PALs who had experience of it. It is based around three models which are :-

• Application Platform Optimisation Model
• Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimisation Model
• Core Infrastructure Optimisation Model

Scott was interested in knowing if IO could be applied to SMB and in what form it might make sense. Do you have experience of this model? What do you think?

One of the things within Small Businesses who have had SBS 2003 installed, is ensuring that the customer is making the full use of the assets they have paid for. This is often not achieved because SBSC Partners are not skilled up on things like Sharepoint and SQL Server 2005, so do not feel comfortable in supporting customers on it. At the end of the day these are complex products all thrown into a single solution and being an expert in all these products individually is not humanly possible. This is only going to get more difficult with SBS 2008 and EBS 2008.

I know the point was made that SBS/EBS 2008 has made the deployment even simpler and maybe too simple! My belief is that deployment should be simple and quick because the whole point is to have the infrastructure in place so that customers can start benefiting. The concentration of effort should then be on helping the customer to make effective use of the technology, looking at the business processes, looking at the business data and seeing what value the business can extract from the technology. However, that is probably a different set of Partner skills and probably a different set of Small Businesses than we’re used to. I don’t know? So, maybe the focus should be on upskilling Partners?

That sort of nicely leads on to the discussion we had about the Online Peer Groups. Mark Crall and Brad Kowerchuk were able to give their insight into the HTG Groups and the value they see from them.

One thing I cannot fault Microsoft are the intentions to try and provide SBSC Partners a mixture of business and technical training and support.

I can’t believe I don’t have a photo with Andrea from WPC, that is a major oversight but she is probably one of the most important people in our lives as SBSC Partners. She is the Worldwide Programme Manager for SBSC and lives and breaths the "blue badge". I’ve now worked with Andrea for just over a year and realised that underneath that outwardly cool, calm and collected exterior lies a very determined person. I know that often the feedback is that Microsoft does not listen and act but you can be sure that Andrea is pushing hard for SBSC Partners. She’s been known to corner people in the corridors of the Redmond Campus to demand stuff for us. She might not always get it but I know she won’t give up easily. She was the one who got Michael Risse over to a lunch with the SBSC PALs in Houston so we could ask him some questions including why the recent Small Business Vista Adverts were highlighting free support direct from Microsoft and didn’t mention SBSC Partners or any Partners!

She’s overseen an amazing period with SBSC Partners globally reaching about 15,000 over many different countries in a relatively short time. As she told us in Houston, it is the largest coherent Partner Group in Microsoft, bigger than any of the competencies so a "force to be reckoned with"!

It’s all about the people, it’s people who drive Change.

This is the presentation that was delivered by Mark Crall, David Lees and myself at the SMB Forum day at WPC 08 Houston. Now it’s yours to own and delight in and learn from the wisdom of what I humbly like to call the "Dream Team", nay visionaries, people who were not appreciated during their own lifetime but which future generations will look upon with great distinction

You can download from Skydrive and feel free to disagree with what’s in it or add anything in the comments which you think is important. It’d actually be quite nice to have an ongoing discussion because no one has THE answer on this!

It was my pleasure to spend quite a bit of time with David Lees, the South African SBSC PAL and also to present with him on the SMB Forum Day on Proactive Community Membership.

First and foremost David is a business man, so what he does is in context of running a very successful practice. After the last WPC in Denver, David got back home and decided to change his business completely. He’d been running a Network Infrastructure/CRM business but decided that the time was right to focus. So, he sold his shares in his business and started a new business called Sector4 from scratch just working on CRM and set about growing this via Partner Networking.

What he’s achieved in 12 months is pretty amazing and now has 3/4 people in his business with 11 CRM Opportunities, 7 of which were Partner sourced and 7 more which are ongoing.

David and I talked quite a bit at WPC as we were staying at the same hotel and we both agreed that the focus for ourselves and building Community would be on Business Growth. We both felt optimistic about the future and pretty excited. For David, with the CRM Competency, it is a great area to be in at the moment as it is one of Microsoft’s fastest growing products and by all accounts CRM 4.0 is a pretty good product.

David is not a technical person, he’s a business analyst and he looked for the opportunity and seized it. He didn’t complain about Microsoft’s Strategy and the Partner Model, he just went out to be successful and do profitable business.

This is one person I’m definitely going to be keeping in touch with as he has a load of great advice about business and as they say stick around successful people.

Liz is one of the Canadian SBSC PALs and someone I hugely respect. Not only does she run an award winning Gold Certified business, Conamex, but she is actively involved with the IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners) and is a leading light in the Women in IT/Leadership area. This is actually a rare photo with Liz as she’s normally rushing off to a meeting somewhere or organising some session. One smart cookie who also used to take part in Martial Arts competitions, so she’ll "kick your ass" if you mess with her!

The word "passionate" is an often over used word but in Liz’s case it does not even begin to describe her drive and energy. It’s one of the reasons why I get rather worked up by people who think the PALs are paid to just spout the Microsoft mantra. You couldn’t buy Liz for any amount, a woman with a huge amount of integrity.

Emily recently took on the role of Channel Development Manager / Community Lead for SBSC. She has been working at Microsoft for 4 years and the last two as a marketing manager for the Windows Mobile Team. She’s not new to the SBS Groups as she has been taking feedback from them recently and as a result has been working to put together a mobile offering through one of the Mobile operators and their distributors.

I’m sure she’ll be coming to a Group near you and wanting to listen to the issues that you feel are important to your Business and your SBSC Engagement.

Gareth Brown of Sytec and myself as the two UK SBSC PALs are committed to working with Emily to support SBSC Partners.

In line with the changes to the overall Partner Programme, SBSC is going to evolve. Some of this vision was shared by Andrea Russell at the PALs meeting last week in Houston. As this is in draft form I can’t really say too much about it other than it seeks to take into account the different things we do as Partners with a number of "specialisations" or "routes" to become an SBSC Partner. We currently have 2, which are the network infrastructure and system builder side. From what I’ve seen it will better fit what we are doing and overall I like it. One of the PALs role will be to provide input into this. This is also coupled with the fact that 2 new server products will be released later on this year namely SBS 2008 and EBS 2008. There are new exams on the way, which people like Mark Crall and others are working on. I don’t know the timeframes for this but as soon as I do I’ll post it up here. There will be a "grace period" to get re-certified but that period has not yet been fixed but it would be interesting to hear what people think that period should be?

There are many people behind the scenes of the Small Business Team at Microsoft Corporate and to pick out one seems a little unfair but hey, it’s my blog!

Deanna has been working with the team for a couple of years (I think?) but doesn’t work directly for Microsoft and through what Microsoft terms a "vendor", a bit like a contractor. She’d previously worked for Microsoft for a good number of years.

Deanna has had the responsibility of organising the SMB Forum/Symposiums over the last few years and what a great job she’s done. I worked with her in getting the Community Presentation together that was delivered by Mark Crall, David Lees and myself. She’s been a "go to" person to talk to and very open and honest. She held the fort for the SBSC PALs Programme when Andrea Russell was away on maternity leave. So, all in all a really nice person and good fun.

Thanks Deanna