Powers Unfiltered

I’m in Denver today for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, which starts tomorrow.  The big event this year, or course, will come on Wednesday, when we find out who will be the 2007 ISV Innovation Partner of the Year!  Did I mention that Digipede is a finalist?  Digipede is a finalist.  So are worthy contenders Fractal Edge [...]

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I spent portions of the last three days at the Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIP) summit in Redmond.  Thanks and congratulations to the whole VSIP team for a worthwhile and fun event!
VSIP is another of the Microsoft partner programs that can deliver great value if you’re patient and willing to work a bit.  As a continuing public service, [...]

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Thank you, Margo Day!
Margo is moving on, from VP of US Partners to Western Region VP of Sales.  She’ll be missed by the US Partner community, but as a Western Region partner, we’ll continue to work with her. 
Last night, she (and the Microsoft US Partner team) threw an awesome party.  I hope this tradition of good parties continues [...]

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Don Canning describes “how a startup becomes an industry success,” providing his own take on our recent demonstration of the Digipede Network running on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS) at the Securities Industry Association (SIA) Technology Management Conference. 
When Don says:
Microsoft as a team is working closely with Digipede Technologies to enable seamless programmatic integration [...]

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If you’re a Microsoft partner, (specifically, in the Visual Studio Industry Partners, or VSIP program), and you have any sort of free offer, you owe it to yourself to check out something called an MSDN Flash.  (It is, of course, not easy to find this opportunity on the dreaded partner.microsoft.com site.  Searching on “MSDN Flash” finds a single [...]

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I just posted some advice about the benefits of partnering with Microsoft.  Those benefits are real.  Now, for an equally real rant.
It’s not until you’re fully engaged with Microsoft, and you are in fact working like hell to make the most of that relationship, that you realize just how fully maddening their Partner Web site really is.  The [...]

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Don Dodge and Cliff Reeves of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team (EBT) continue to crank out good advice about partnering with Microsoft, especially for ISV startups – but I think it’s time for some of us ISV startup partners to weigh in, too. 
“Partnering with Microsoft” is an easy thing to say, and, superficially, an easy thing to do.  [...]

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