Comments on: tech problems don’t exist

By: wochzd dxplrc

wochzd dxplrc — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:28:34 +0000

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By: Ed Byrne

Ed Byrne — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:57:13 +0000

One thing MS need to do then if they are incapable of making money without their partners — is to stop biting the hand that feeds then. Ref ‘Live.com’ strategy : considering the movement to hosted servers (and selling using the SPLA licensing scheme), hosting partners are going to be MORE important.
I can see it already starting to hurt MS as many hosting partners are talking to end-users (MS customers) about open source based products (ie. Zimbra vs. Exchange) because MS now say they are going to do hosted Exchange themselves.

By: John Caswell

John Caswell — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:26:43 +0000

I have to say i’m impressed.
Bravo!
It’s been a while since i’ve noticed such wildfire around something so simple and elegant as these bullets from reality.
The notion of the drawn insight is something I am naturally attracted to — the cartoon that can reach a place no worthy article can reach — its one of the few things i’ve come across that mirrors my own work. But its way more fun…
I have to say Microsoft could do far worse than turn Hugh’s work into their global communication strategy and get at real people, doing real things with real joy and truth… and just maybe start to communicate with us Mac folk!!…
John

By: jon honeyball

jon honeyball — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:25:08 +0000

Communication… something that MS has not done well, and is doing a remarkably bad job of at the moment. Bottoms need kicking — and I know the new MS UK MD is making changes.
One big problem is that MS doesn’t actually work as a global company. It works as a NW USA based small shop with outposts. I pray for the day when MS wakes up and stops treating MS UK as a regional sales shop and profit center.

By: Tim Kitchin

Tim Kitchin — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:08:56 +0000

Not that I have clue what you’re going to do for Microsoft…but I sort of applaud MS for pushing out the ‘ecosystem’ word in favour of the old fashioned ‘partner’.
On the other hand partner is a really clumsy word to describe the array of interdependencies and power imbalances which really exist out there.
A lot of richness gets lost when you clump 750,000 companies into one category like ‘partners’.
If you can provoke some more structured conversations around mutual value-exchange, that would be a big step forward for them.
Cash is not the only fruit.

By: Anonymous Microsoftee

Anonymous Microsoftee — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 05:05:31 +0000

Your comment, Hugh:
i.e. From a marketing perspective, it’s not what MS says to their partners that’s important. It’s what their partners are saying to their customers about MS that’s important.
I think is right on: We have been talking about “Through Partner” vs. “To Partner” to distinguish our messages that they care a bout from a customer-facing vs. business-management perspective.
In the end, people sell what they know and love. If our partners love to work with our software because they know it and we make it easy for them to gain access to it (all of our business products are given free to partners to evaluate, test and use internally), that’s the best ammo we can give them to then convey to their customers. (through partner). Couple that with a bunch of great demos and some key competitive comparisons and that would probably be enough to start but we go waaay beyond that but I don’t want to turn this into a pitch.
On the to-partner side, we’re trying to crack the profitability algorithm to help take a way risk by walking through some key profitability calculations on what it would cost to take on a new technology, a new customer, a new market. (that’s the to-partner).
So we need to balance our allotment to “to” and “through”.
In the end, if I were a partner, I’d look at this Microsoft partnership like the cheapest independent franchise in the world. It’s a fairly turnkey approach to taking best practices, well-known software and charging my own price for the solutions I build.
Then, if I can get the right customer “value” stories refined to enough customers, I can hit the jackpot.
We’re not making this stuff up, it happens all the time. Guy starts in garage, gets the right combo of customers, skills and familiarity of product. Tells a good story to enough customers. Then tells us how they’re hiring their 10 or 20th person in 2nd year after moving out of their garage.
Those are the stories that get me to work every day.

By: Anonymous Microsoftee

Anonymous Microsoftee — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:47:38 +0000

Hi Robert: Does Microsoft get small? I’d say “get it” vs. “act-on-it” are two different things. We try to hunt for the big chunks of technology and refine that, then let our partners make it work in a variety of geo, regionao, vertical and niche ways. That’s the model we’ve been operating on since day 1. Do we think about small business? Absolutely! Do we think about small partners? positively. It’s more about how we think of small things vs. whether we think of small things.
Do we read sites like Twitter? I think more Microsoft people are in placed like Twitter than you think. As you know, with few exceptions (in jobs such as yours where you could write as “@microsoft.com”) most people are not writing on behalf of Microsoft (@microsoft.com). Rather, everyone’s encouraged to write as individuals and tell the world how they think as me@domain.com and disclose any Microsoft affiliation as appropriate. So, when you register for Twitter, you see me as kris@fuehr.com but the info I collect and share is all brought under my hat and into my decisions at work each day in Redmond.
So, I think you don’t know it but we’re here. I’d say a disproportionate number are in XBox forums (ha) but we’re small in the same way that any individual who works for any company is small.
If I were running the company I’d say the same thing: “Blog as an individual”. As you know, blogging is time consuming. You can be in the Blog Vortex for what could be hours. Meanwhile, there’s work to be done: coders need to code, writers need to write and the administrators need to administer.
As for the speculation about Microsoft being a bunch of product groups under one roof vs. one coordinated company. IMHO, I’d say it’s the former.
I’d say we suffer the downside and reap the upside of that. But I’ve often said, we’re a giant strip mall with independently operating stores and a central management. (and we happen to share a bank account). Partners are independent franchise who benefit from our consolidated (interoperable) stuff.
In my humble perspective as an individual who works for Microsoft, that is.

By: Vijay Singh Riyait

Vijay Singh Riyait — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:06:51 +0000

I wanted to give my perspective on what Microsoft is doing in the Small Business space with its Microsoft Small Business Specialist Programme. This has been a serious effort by Microsoft to support small business Partners who were never on the radar of Microsoft. It has given us a voice, tools, training and Microsoft has listened to us to better deliver to our small business customers. I came to the Microsoft Partner ecosystem from being a totally Open Source focused business but quickly realised this was not serving my customers as well as it could. It’s not about “selling out” and doing business and making money is not a pseudo-religious crusade! We choose the solutions which best serve our customers and Microsoft does have a lead in a number of areas for small businesses. The SBSC Programme is something that other vendors are falling over themselves to get linked in with, so that sounds reasonably innovative and forward thinking to me!
In terms of development tools, you can sign-up for the Empower ISV Programme and get a MSDN subscription for about £300, or get the Express versions of the tools which still allow a significant amount of development to be done.

By: Steven Hodson

Steven Hodson — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:10:10 +0000

Robert: and how many of them are being funded by VC millions? in which case it’s easy to write off a few grand in development tools. It isn’t so easy though for a independant developer who has to explain to his (or her) better have over breakfast before heading out to the garage why they need to spend thousands on tools. Especially with bills coming due.
And Microsoft isn’t the only guilty party in this corporate dev mentality. Just look at the cost of any of the excellent 3rd party components for .NET You get a couple of those subscriptions under your belt and you are again into the thousnads of dollars.
All this in contrast to the toolsets available to Linux/PHP/RoR/LAMP devs and it is easy to see why Microsoft is losing and will continue to lose in the small and independant marketplace.
But then maybe they just don’t want our business after all why would they when they have the corporate dev houses more than willing to crack open the wallets.

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 10:41:21 +0000

I think Robert is “twitterpaited”.
Why is that? What does that demonstrate?
I predict today’s twitter is tomorrow’s something else. But I digress.
Which “partner” are you referring to? Microsoft registers/certified/gold partners? Or ISV partners? Because there are different types of partners in the partner eco-system.
Robert, as he always does, talking about the ISV partners that build applications. There’s another partner out there that just deploys the finished products.
Not everything is “Developer, Developer, Developer” you know. Sometimes it’s “VAR/VAP, VAR/VAP, VAR/VAP”.

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 06:26:03 +0000

Robert, I'm looking at the forest - that's the first bunch I mentioned that Dennis commented on. I'm going to the events here, talking to the up and comers as much as I can. when you next come to London let me hook you up with some of the folks on the list I provided. I'm not suggesting we're doing well here by any means but give us some credit for knowing the issues are there and trying to fix it. I know you're not suggesting we just walk away in the face of a challenge right? With respect to Twitter, I'll admit that right now I'm not on it. Hugh and I talked about this last week. I mentioned that I've chosen not to thus far as it sounds like it's going to eat a lot of my time and I given this isn't my day job and I feel out on a limb already I'm guarding my time carefully. That may change over the next week as I found a cool new app (via this thread) for Twitter on Vista.

By: Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:00:16 +0000

Steve: I can find examples of Microsoft-based developers even in Silicon Valley (and have written about them too). Even Google’s #1 Canadian customer (Plentyoffish.com) uses .NET and is very happy. So does MySpace (although Ballmer did some arm twisting to get them to switch from Linux to .NET).
But, don’t look at the trees. Look at the forest. And even in Europe most of the time when I interview an entrepreneur I hear “we are a LAMP shop” or “Rails” or “Amazon S3.“
Microsoft also doesn’t get small things. Usually. How many Microsofties are on Twitter? Yet I can name tons of CEOs, journalists, even a presidential candidate, tons of Google employees on Twitter (even though Google owns a competitor named Dodgeball).
Why is that? What does that demonstrate?

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 17:48:28 +0000

Steven - this is a REALLY great point. I sat with a team from Redmond last month and pretty much begged them to do "LAMP in a box" with the Microsoft toolset to make it easy for small (even big!) dev houses to quickly get access to the Microsoft toolset of Visual Studio, IIS, SQL and Windows Server. You can get these via numerous routes at the moment but that's the problem - we don't make it easy. I also asked them to create an image of a server with all of this stuff on so you don't have to build it if you don't want to. or a sanbox in the sky for people to code against. You're absolutely spot on and I'll take your feedback as further evidence of what we need to provide. Thanks...now off to check out TwitBox!

By: Steven Hodson

Steven Hodson — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:31:11 +0000

Baldy Ballmer might be crying out “Developer”, “Developer”, “Developer” but the small independant developers are running in all different directions.
Take a look at any of the many successfully independant garage startups and see how many are running on or have been developed with MS tools. It’s all Linux, Ajax and Ruby on Rails with Apache on the server.
As long as Microsoft gears the pricing of its development tools to the corporations or startups with VC money to burn they will find their userbase being chipped away at.
There’s a lot more small independant developers out there but when they are forced between paying $1,195 US for the Visual Studio Professional Standard MSDN subscription and putting food on the table and using Linux / PHP etc guess which wins.
and thats not even taking into consideration the SQL Server and web server costs.
If they want to attract the independant Web 2.0 companies and encourage use of MS software then perhaps thinking like a cash strapped startup might help .. maybe even coming up with a LAMP alternative.
Not all innovations come from big partner channels anymore but Microsoft seems to have forgotten that.

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 03:50:56 +0000

Dennis — all the companies I cited (excpet Thirteen 23 who are US) are examples of UK companies that are small startup types working with Microsoft. The ones that maybe would be shut out in the valley but not here in the UK. There are people in my own team listening and helping these companies and others on a daily basis. Maybe iniatives StartupZone or IPVentures doesn’t work for those folks our west?
Companies who are being successful in their relationship with Microsoft here in the UK? I could offer up a lot of them and to answer Robert’s point on developers, developers, developers it’s not just that group. VAR, SI’s, web developers, Companies like Lynx, Servo, Doherty, Syntax, Conchango, Risual, Touchstone, Westcoast and many more. Our difference to for me is that great community. I have to confess I don’t know as much about Google’s partner community but I don’t see many people but Google making money in that ecosystem. You may tell me I’m wrong though.
On Mydeo; I was with Cary Marsh their CEO last week and whilst there may have been missteps she was pretty clear that their relationship with Microsoft has been beneficial to them. She gave some strident feedback to our MD but unless I mis-read her, Mydeo is pretty positive abotu their Microsoft relationship.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we’re perfect and all is well in the Gates garden but I get tired of the constant barbs and “Microsoft Is Dead” stuff. There are people who who care a lot about the partnerships Microsoft has and try to make up for the deficiecies we have in many other places by being honest, open and transparent.
That’s all we’re trying to do here — open up more of the conversation so thanks for joining in.