BMS Blog: SBS Consulting in the UK

While trawling the ‘net earlier I came across this Sharepoint blog which has some interesting content worth reviewing - worth dropping in your RSS feeds!

As I’m sure you are all aware the launch of SBS 2008 is just around the corner and Sonal Gathani is asking us what we want to see at the UK SBS 2008 launch. This is our chance to ensure the content is relevant and presented in the right format.

So if you’re an SBSC partner or sell and support SBS you are ideally placed to tell  Microsoft exactly what we need and want to see from the event, so lets make sure we all do our bit and provide some feedback.

You can email ideas directly to Sonal at sgathani@microsoft.com or reply to her blog post about the launch event here:

http://blogs.technet.com/sbsuk/archive/2008/06/27/what-do-you-want-to-see-at-the-uk-sbs-2008-launch.aspx

I’m proud to announce I have been voted the new AMITPRO Group Leader.

I’d like to say a personal thank you to Vijay who has done a sterling job of representing the group since he took on the role of group leader and I’m sure he will continue to positively contribute  and be an active group member.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite anyone who reads this blog to come along to the next AMITPRO meeting and find out what it’s all about. There are many SBSC and registered MS partners in the East/West Midlands, some of whom I know follow the AMITPRO members blogs and sit on the sidelines rather than become a part of what we are doing. If you’re one them this is an open invitation to get involved and make a difference.

The next meeting is on Tuesday 12^th August 2008 at the Arden Hotel (http://www.ardenhotel.co.uk) from 5.00pm for a 5.30 pm start. Vijay has kindly already organised the speakers for the meeting and they are:

· Emily Lambert, Microsoft SBSC Programme Lead

· Microsoft Windows Mobile Team and Distributor Brightpoint (formerly Hugh Symmons) to discuss a potential mobile offering with Orange.

I’m particularly looking forward to meeting with Emily as she will be helping to shape the SBSC program going forward.

So if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines wondering how to get involved come along and have your say at what is sure to be a great meeting. I might even be persuaded to buy a round of drinks to celebrate!

I was lucky enough last Thursday to be invited to a round table discussion with Scott Dodds, General Manager of Small to Medium Business and Partner Division at Microsoft, held at West Bromwich Albion Football Club (but we won’t hold that against them!).

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the challenges affecting Partners supplying the Small Business sector in the West Midlands. We’re actually in the East Midlands but our support cover does spill over into the West Mids as well.

Although the meeting was only an hour and a half lots of ground was covered including what partners believe Microsoft should be doing to help us raise awareness of MS products including the possibility of local case studies, videos and other marketing collateral that Partners can share.

With regard to building on the infrastructure stack most SBSC Partners provide it looks like the obvious way forward to drive more revenue and provide a better ROI for the customer is Sharepoint development. According to an MS survey the average consultancy time sold to a Sharepoint customer is 20-30 days - you have to shift an awful lot of tin to earn the same margins that that generates!

Interestingly Sharepoint is seeing a 250% growth year on year and is Microsoft’s fasting growing product to 1 million dollars ever. Now where did I put my copy of Sharepoint development for dummies…

From the The WSSG Community Lead Blog :

“The SBS Community Survey is floundering with very few responses.”

So if you haven’t already, get on over there and fill out that survey! How can we expect to be taken seriously if we don’t provide timely and concise feedback?

SBS WW Community Survey 2008

Now it isn’t every day I agree with what Vlad says, in fact there are occasions when I would say we were polar opposites, but I have to say he’s hit the nail on the head with this post, an extract of which is below:

“Everyone keeps on looking for a shortcut. There must be some process that you’re not in on. All the people that are growing and prospering must have some trick that they haven’t let you in in. Maybe I should just peer up with others who have as little clue as I do or maybe I should keep on revising my plan every two months?

There is no secret. There is no shortcut. There is no peer solution for lazy. There is no magic blog post to cure cluelessness. There is no lifestyle buffer between business ownership and unemployment.”

Go read the full post here.

We’ve all seen the unscrupulous partners that put unlicensed software into clients, but a recent contract win for us highlighted another way some less than honest partners generate income.

Having carried out a full software audit it turned out they were in fact correctly licensed. This came as no surprise to the customer who commented:

“I would be surprised if we weren’t correctly licensed as we have renewed the Microsoft licences every year with the previous support company.”

We assumed they meant they had software assurance and were perhaps renewing that or some such - but no. In fact the previous partner had been charging them for “renewing” the actual licences every 12 months! This was generating them some £7-8,000.00 turnover every year!

This pdf presentation from the recent MS PALS meeting brings together in one place an overview of the new products inc. pricing in US Dollars. Interesting that SBS 2008 is more expensive than the equivalent 2003 version. Looks like the pricing for EBS is aimed very much at the mid market. CALs are now available in units of one and are split up into either device or user, standard or premium. So the overall cost to the customer could work out less than before although the product is more expensive.

It seems Outlook is no longer included as it doesn’t come with Exchange 2007 (I hadn’t picked up on that before), so in other words Outlook will need to be sold separately or as part of Office, however if your client has SA then they will get Outlook CALs as part of the SA package.

A full 2 weeks overdue but eventually the next SBSer put in his first appearance at around 14:10 4th May 2008 weighing in at 7lbs 12oz. More pics over here at My Space.

I have a feeling that raising a family is going to be WAY harder than running a business!

About time too! I can’t imagine how many hours we’ve wasted over the years on hold to prove to MS  Support we really do have the issue reported in a specific hotfix.

Not any more though. As posted by Girish you can now get the hotfix by email link after accepting the MS agreement and choosing the version required. Nice one!