TORONTO, July 11, 2004 — During a keynote address today at Microsoft Corp.’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2004, Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of developer and platform evangelism, outlined key Microsoft programs aimed at strengthening and growing the world’s largest and most successful ISV ecosystem by helping ISVs more successfully develop and sell compelling software solutions built on the Microsoft®
platform.
Parthasarathy announced several significant new investments to help ISVs grow and succeed in today’s market. The new programs are targeted specifically at ISV partners, building on the investments announced during Microsoft Vice President Allison Watson’s keynote today.
“Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to investing in and partnering with ISVs, and the programs we announced today build on our more than 20-year history of deep investment and leadership in the ISV community,” Parthasarathy said. “The new investments in ISVs will provide additional resources to partners, helping them take full advantage of key Microsoft platform technologies, including Windows Server (TM) 2003, the Microsoft Office System and Visual Studio®
.NET, to bring compelling solutions to market aimed squarely at meeting the needs of customers. We see tremendous opportunity for ISVs in the months and years ahead, and we look forward to deepening our investment and support to ensure continued growth and success in our industry.”
Parthasarathy announced several new investments designed to help ISVs be more successful in the marketplace:
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The ISV Royalty Program provides a single, integrated way for ISVs to embed key elements of the Microsoft platform into their software applications and package it for resale, helping streamline the sales process and improve the delivery experience for customers. The program enables ISVs to ensure that their customers have all the technology components required to deploy their solutions without having to purchase certain elements separately. In addition, the newly enhanced ISV Royalty Program will include an expanded product offering for Academic customers. Enrollment forms and additional information on the ISV Royalty Program will be made available online on July 31, at http://members.microsoft.com/partner/competency/isvcomp/royaltylicensing.aspx .
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The ISV Buddy Program pairs ISVs with Microsoft employees, giving ISVs a personal point of contact inside the company. The program is aimed at fostering a one-on-one relationship, designed to provide increased technical support and access to resources throughout the development, sales and marketing process. Approximately 430 ISVs are part of the ISV Buddy Program, which is now open for enrollment, and over 800 Microsoft employees have signed up to become ISV buddies. ISVs can enroll at the ISV center on MSDN®
, at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/isv/isvbuddy/default.aspx .
“The program opened many doors for us, including introductions to people and departments that would otherwise be closed to us,” said Eric Melka, CEO of GotCompany Inc. “Through it we were successful at having face-to-face meetings with quite a few departments, helping in the overall planning and strategy of our company.”
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ISV Community on MSDN is an extension of MSDN, one of the most popular community Web sites for software developers, that provides new resources specifically targeted at ISVs developing applications on the Microsoft platform. The updated site offers unique vertical-industry-specific and technical content designed to address issues that specifically impact ISVs. In addition, members will be directed to ISV-specific programs, offers and business-related content. ISVs can access the new MSDN for ISVs at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/isv/.
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Channel Builder is a combination of an online tool and off-line events that allows Microsoft partners to share information, collaborate and promote their offerings and services to other Microsoft partners. The main benefits of Channel Builder include helping ISV partners drive additional revenue through working with other Microsoft partners and through the broader Microsoft channel; enabling ISV partners to extend their sales reach into new geographies; and enabling ISV partners to make connections and collaborate with the Microsoft channel, including other ISV partners, system builders and system integrators.
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Windows Error Reporting for ISVs. ISVs that register their applications with the Microsoft Windows Error Reporting service will be able to receive information to help them find, fix and update application problems using real-time feedback from application users. In this way, ISVs can participate in a continuous feedback loop with their customers, driving more value to users. ISVs can visit https://winqual.microsoft.com for information on how to register to use the Windows Error Reporting service.
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ISV Community Days. Quarterly engagement with ISVs is offered through seminars in over 25 countries, at which Microsoft will deliver technology road maps along with product and partner sessions. Details will be available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/isv/ in August.
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The ISV Show. An ongoing series of webcasts provide visibility into key platform technologies, architectural trends and opportunities for ISVs. Information about upcoming ISV Shows is available at http://members.microsoft.com/partner/competency/isvcomp/isvshow.aspx .
Road Map for Microsoft Business Solutions
Parthasarathy also outlined for partners the platform road map for Microsoft Business Solutions. He noted that Microsoft Business Solutions has a dual focus, delivering a platform for ISVs to build on top of as well as a set of business management applications focused on customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Microsoft Business Solutions delivers broad, horizontal functionality to ISVs, allowing them to focus on adding specific domain expertise rather than having to reinvent code that does not drive differentiation.
The platform technology or “industry-enabling layer” extends the horizontal platform functionality to support the broad business management needs of small and midmarket businesses and divisions of large companies evaluating ERP or CRM solutions. Microsoft Business Solutions works with ISVs to address the CRM and ERP needs of businesses around the world that deliver specialized or vertical extensions of functionality on top of the Microsoft Business Solutions platform.
Several of the more than 2,000 ISVs building on top of the Microsoft Business Solutions platform are participating in the Worldwide Partner Conference, including the following:
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Avaya Inc. , a leading global provider of business communications software, systems and services, offers its Avaya IP Office portfolio, developed to meet the communications needs of small and medium-sized businesses, branch offices, and home offices. Avaya’s IP telephony and call center reporting and management applications integrate with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM. The two solutions communicate using the Microsoft CRM Web service application programming interface (APIs) and the extensibility features offered in the Microsoft CRM application. Using these technologies, Avaya can integrate with Microsoft CRM, embedding its user interface and enabling users to directly navigate to specific records in the Microsoft CRM application from IP Office.
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Zoomio Inc. offers MyMarketingMachine, a hosted marketing execution platform that enables marketers to build and execute multichannel marketing campaigns that are completely trackable. Zoomio has developed an application connector to provide a live connection to Microsoft CRM, enabling marketing campaign responses in MyMarketingMachine to trigger the automatic routing of leads and the assignment of activities in Microsoft CRM. The two solutions communicate with each other through Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 — the Web server for the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system — and standard Web services by using SOAP and XML.
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Scribe Software Corp. offers Scribe Insight, a data management solution that is integrated to help customers automatically import general account data, customer contact information, order history, product and price lists, and employee information into Microsoft CRM. With the Scribe solution and Microsoft CRM, customers can feed leads into Microsoft CRM with financial and order history data from ERP systems, synchronize customer data in real time between Microsoft CRM and other applications, and enhance and validate information with third-party data using Web services, XML or data feeds.
Detailed case studies on these and other ISVs building on Microsoft Business Solutions are available at http://www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions/casestudies/crm/default.mspx .
About Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference
Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference provides Microsoft’s partner community with access to key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and information regarding specific customer solutions designed to help partners succeed in the marketplace. Along with informative learning opportunities covering sales, marketing, services and technology, the Worldwide Partner Conference is an ideal setting for partners to garner valuable knowledge from their peers and from Microsoft. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/partner/events/wwpartnerconference/ .
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