Reflections from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

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Fresh on the heels of the announcement of our alliance with Microsoft as a preferred analytics solution for SharePoint 2010, I spent last week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Los Angeles.  This was my first WPC and while I knew it would be big, I was really taken aback by the magnitude of this event, and by the number of organizations who live and breath solely in the Microsoft ecosystem. Here are some of the key thoughts I took away from the event that I’d like to share with you:

Microsoft has a real growth opportunity with SharePoint for Internet Sites. At the show there were many partners and customers I met who were truly excited about leveraging SharePoint 2010 as an enterprise-standard, and who have already implemented significant customer-facing website projects on SharePoint 2010. Our partners were particularly enthusiastic about our alliance with SharePoint, as we bring business analytics, segmentation, and optimization to these projects — all essential elements to successfully sell the SharePoint platform to the digital marketer.

Microsoft is firmly committed to the cloud. With the release of Office 365, Microsoft has fully entered the cloud service fray for business productivity. While initially targeted more toward the small-to-mid market, this will change as the platform gains adoption and maturity.

Microsoft embraces partners. As Steve Ballmer said during his keynote, “we do 95% of our business through partners, and frankly I can’t find the other 5%”. Given that their cloud initiatives have fundamentally shifted not only their own business model, but the business models of many of their partners, their continued commitment and dedication to nurturing their partner network is great to see. It is equally as interesting to see the new products and business approach so actively embraced by so many partners And boy are they passionate! Particularly with SharePoint, I met many partners who don’t just like SharePoint – they LOVE it, eat it, breathe it, and live it.

Microsoft has some amazing solutions on the way Despite the fact that it’s sometimes hard to know who Microsoft is really going after — consumers? check. SMB? check. Enterprise? check. — there’s no denying that there are some really great products and integrations on the horizon. From voice controlled Xbox with expanded programming, integrated with Bing and Skype, to the Windows Phone “Mango” integrated with Office 365, there’s some incredibly cool stuff coming.  Even though they positioned many of their changes around the concept of “consumerization of IT”, which is a phrase I don’t think I’d hear Steve Jobs use – it’s clear that this ain’t your dad’s Microsoft.

It can be easy to drink a bit too much kool-aid at these types of event (among other beverages) but I came away clearly impressed and inspired about about promising partnership with Microsoft. And if you haven’t seen our new integration in action there are solution briefs, details and a video all available – let me know what you think.