THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

So Michael is on stage talking about the growth of small business technology trends...7.3% growth of services.... 8.7% growth of software sales, and 4.9% grown of hardware is what they are saying will be happening in the future in the small business space.

Andrea was on stage in this view (yes I know it's a bit blurry ... what can I say it's an older mobile phone)

Michael is still talking about Partner finder and Solution finder that they will be upgrading the back ends and putting more changes in.

They've heard that they want the SBSC brand to have an impact.

They've heard that you want to have a better SBSC partner finder.

And they've heard that you want training materials. Online and in person.

Michael is talking about how what we see in the partner finder is just the framework.  They are planning a better "scrubber" of a database to ensure that that clients get the right partner.

New requirement for Action pack is an online training and assessment that you have to pass. There won't be a free riide anymore.. (not sure what it is...but it's raising the bar)

Michael is reminding folks that we have a SBSC exclusive private managed newsgroup.  It's now a more world wide newsgroup with the german language covered.  The rest of Europe will be covered later on this year as  it will be rolled out for the SBSC newsgroup.

https://partner.microsoft.com/assesssmbneeds  The Tech Assessment toolkit is being showcased now.

I've found a couple of partners that didn't know about the SBSC managed newsgroups.

Roadmap - Longhorn Server -- coming up in the future in the 64bit version of Cougar aka SBS.  But Michael is talking about sometimes don't wait for Cougar if that firm needs a server now.  You know what I'd recommend for those buying SBS?  Software Assurance... it makes sense right now (one of the few times) to lock in SBS and lock in the future.

BTW if you are here, I'm handing out SBS blog cards - one is "non information overload" and only lists the http://blogs.technet.com/sbs and http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz the other card lists a lot of the community blogs and sites and I call the "information overload" cards and I've got Cougar buttons.

Stop me and ask me for cards and buttons if you are here.

P.S. Even Vlad noted that Michael missed out on pushing Software Assurance - http://www.vladville.com/2007/07/wwpc-cougar.html