I’ve been working at Microsoft now for a few days over the last two weeks. My first day was last Wednesday and it was right into a team meeting around the WESS family launch here in Australia. Now having been an outsider for so long, I’ve heard MS tell us that they value the community input greatly. What impressed me greatly was that even in my very first internal meeting there was so much talk about “What would Dean do”, “What would Stuart do” in reference to how we interface with our customers, and how Microsoft would expect us to want things done. To me personally, I was very much impressed with this approach as it really takes to heart how we work and what we as resellers need. Later I was shown over some of the various SharePoint sites that are used and one of these is used for the launch of WESS here in Australia. The community tab was the very first tab right after the home tab, and on it they have photos of the various SBS MVP’s so that they are keeping us at front of mind in terms of community representation. Robbie Upcroft is the man responsible for it. I wanted to show it below to give you all an idea of just how seriously he takes community involvement in the products and their launch here in Australia.
What’s more is that with the TechEd SMB Preday next week, I’ve seen the roster for the MS staff they are having at the event, and I can honestly say that we will be getting support from many areas of the business at this day, licensing, product, partner marketing and even high level people like Inese Kingsmill (AU Director of SMB) will be manning the booth to answer questions, and take direct feedback from us on things that will help us do better business. There will be a ratio of around 10:1 of us vs them… or should I say Resellers:Microsoft. You’ll even see long time SBS stalwart, Mark O’Shea there – so be sure to run up to him and ask him loads of SBS and licensing questions… I know he just loooovveesss them 😉
On a side note, I’d really appreciate it if you all would go up to Robbie Upcroft and say thanks for his commitment to the community. It’s something that we’ve known has been lacking here in AU for a while now and Robbie is bringing it back with a vengeance. Show Robbie your support by being there on the day at SMBPreDay for TechEd AU.
On that point I’ll end this post today. Got to go work with some clients onsite! See you all next Tuesday.
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