iQubed Blog

You see I’ve been saving this one and Karl prompted this quite nicely as Karl has an uncanny habit of doing. I’m sure he’s doing some mind reading tricks or something.

Dave, Dave, Dave what can I say about him? Except that you can see from the pic the type of person he is, fun loving and slightly jealous that I’m more handsome than him but a whole lot less successful than him though!

Dave was popping up on countless media outlets at WPC giving us the gift of his insight, whether we wanted it or not. So many that I can’t even be bothered to link to them all, you’ll just to have Google it or something.

… seriously Dave is a great bloke and I’ve heard he likes English beer

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!

When I saw Dave recently at WPC he said he was writing this blog post and what an excellent one it is. It’s one of those ones where you should print it out and stick it your office wall or something or your bedroom wall if your partner/wife lets you

It’s clear in my mind that SaaS and/or S+S is happening and we can’t be like king Canute and try stop the tide coming in by standing on the beach and waving our hands to stop the tide coming in.

The problem for Microsoft is that they have very few people who can articulate to Partners their S+S strategy and to be honest I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Okay, I’m off to start a campaign to bring Dave back to the happy family that is SBSC

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.

What am I saying? As if you don’t know Beatrice Mulzer … who doesn’t know her! Author of the 70-282 Exam Preparation Guide and the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Primer and she’s also a worldwide trainer on SBS, so what she doesn’t know about SBS isn’t worth knowing.

The great thing about about WPC is you get to meet a lot of great people but you get to see who the really nice people are, those who are humble and not caught up in their own status. Beatrice is one of those people, with a great sense of humour and a genuinely interesting person to talk to on a number of different levels.

She writes a very "Pink" blog which I can’t believe I wasn’t following! What was I thinking of? … but I sure am now

Yesterday was a day spent at Ullesthorpe Hall in Leicestershire courtesy of Combined Knowledge and Steve Smith MVP and co-owner of this leading Sharepoint Training Company. This is the second event that Steve and I have managed to put together for SBSC Partners on Sharepoint with Steve providing the content/materials and me plugging it to SBSC Partners around the UK. We had a packed boardroom of 15 people and had to close off registrations to comfortably accommodate people. It was good to meet up with Nick Lloyd of Sirona Solutions  and his Partner Alex who had travelled from Stockport to be there.

We spent quite a bit of time discussing how to sell WSS 3.0 to our customers and a set of quick wins. It was nice that Steve framed his presentation in a business context and how to get the stakeholders within our customers onboard.

Whilst WSS 2.0 is a standard part of SBS 2003 what you really want to do is get the free WSS 3.0 and do either a side-by-side install of it or put it on a separate box if you can. Microsoft made a load of good changes to WSS 3.0 such as the item level security, pluggable authentication providers, built it on ASP.NET 2.0 hence been able to use standard web parts and many others. Also, WSS 3.0 is the foundation for Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), so anything learnt on WSS 3.0 is directly transferable up to its big brother. Also, WSS 3.0 will be a standard part of SBS 2008.

The key advice was to start using it in our own businesses so we get a good understanding of what can be done and of course you should check out the excellent training offered by Combined Knowledge as most of the trainers are Sharepoint MVPs and authors of key books on Sharepoint. Also check out the UK Sharepoint User Group which holds events all round the UK on a regular basis.

I’ve been following Vlad’s posts on Microsoft’s Online Services approach and as others have said what has changed in the last week? If you’re an SBSC Partner ask yourself are you successful today? What makes you successful? What Partner Programme and relationship did you have before SBSC? What were you doing 1,2,3 years ago as a business and what do you expect to do in 1,2, 3 years and beyond?

To me Microsoft is following in the online services market rather than leading it, something it has often been criticised for. If I was Google I would be pissing my pants with laughter as Small Business Partners turn on Microsoft. Job done by Google and it didn’t even have to set up an expensive Partner Programme of its own.

By all accounts, OwnWebNow, have never been more successful with Partners flocking to them and good on them. OWN is providing online Microsoft Services and Partners are choosing to go with them rather than Microsoft direct, so that’s choice Microsoft is offering, is it not?

Vlad has talked of the demise of the Small Business Consultant doing onsite installs, providing support and doing Managed Services and has been building his business around Online affordable services with a strong Partner Model. Microsoft last week just validated that business model. Vlad saw the change and acted upon it and that is what we have to do.

There will be greater influencers than Microsoft Online Services to our customers as we enter potentially difficult economic times. I know that the fundamental issues with Small Business Customers is seeing IT as an investment FULLSTOP!

Good luck to Vlad and his business, I hope it continues to grow and the thing I take out of Vlad’s experience is the inspiration to adapt my business and not the doom and gloom side of it.

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.

Aaron Brooker from Hardlines has assembled a great range of videos from WPC on Varvid

The videos include :-

• The HP C3000 and Greg Starks at WPC
• Eric Watson from the EBS Team at WPC
• Augusto Valdez of Windows Mobile at WPC
• Stuart Crawford on Software + Services at WPC
• Dean Paron Interview at WPC (Group Program Manager for SBS)
• Oliver Sommer Interview at WPC (SBS MVP, German SBSC PAL)
• Erick Simpson Interview at WPC
• Steven VanRoekel Interview at WPC (Director of Windows Server Solutions)

plus many many more …

Listen to "Mr Virtualisation" and his thoughts on Online Services.