ICS Solutions - Partner Newsletter

ICS Solutions attend WPC 2011

As a well-established Microsoft Gold Partner at the forefront of Microsoft SharePoint and Cloud solutions, ICS Solutions took its Managing Director (Martin Neale), Solutions Director (Andrew Smith), Sales Manager (Steve Waterman) and Marketing Manager (Fiona Bridle) to the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington DC last week - joining nearly 10,000 other partners, over 3,000 Microsoft employees, from 130 countries to hear about Microsoft's plans for FY11. This newsletter summarises the key announcements and news from the week.

Cloud, Cloud, Cloud

ICS Solutions central mission is to help organisations profit tactically and strategically from Microsoft's Cloud investments we launched the Microsoft Cloud Advantage Program whilst at WPC. This new Program aims to help our clients transition to the Cloud and is available to our Partners to help find, win, deliver and support Microsoft Cloud projects. Read more here.

During WPC, Microsoft's focus was all about the Cloud. We heard about the impact of Cloud computing and the myriad of ways it will enables partners to deliver compelling new services to their customers. In Steve Ballmer's keynote he said "for customers, Cloud computing creates tremendous value, which translates to massive opportunity for Microsoft and its Partners. As in past technology transitions, Microsoft will help partners embrace the industry's transformation to realise their opportunity and continue to be economic drivers for their local community". We're all in.

Kevin Turner, COO for Microsoft, gave an energetic overview of the competitive landscape. He outlined Microsoft's progress against Google, Apple, VMware, and Oracle and reasserted Microsoft's goal for a world of "Continuous Cloud Services for Every Person and Every Business". Turner stated that Microsoft is the undisputed leader in commercial cloud services, and the best bet for every partner to transform their business and succeed now and into the future. If you missed Turner's keynote then re-watch it here.

Over the course of the 5 day conference, Microsoft made several announcements, including:

Windows Azure Platform Appliance - the first turnkey Cloud services platform for deployment in customer and service provider datacenters
Microsoft Codename "Dallas" - the data marketplace will be available for production at the end of 2010
Microsoft Dynamics CRM - MS Dynamics CRM 2011 will be publically available as a beta release in September 2010, beginning with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
Allison Watson passed leadership to Jon Roskill, the new Corporate Vice President of the Worldwide Partner Group
Windows 7 - announced beta release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2009 R2 Service Rack 1 which enhance the deployment and management of virtualised desktop infrastructure
Microsoft Online Services - no official version announcements, but Microsoft Online Services now has over 40 million seats of online services, the average deal size is 141 seats and 16,000 partners have signed up to the Microsoft Online Services Program
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference - for the first time, the PDC will be streamed live online in October 2010
The second Windows Intune public beta has been released - a new offering that uses the best of both Windows Cloud Services and Windows 7 to manage and help secure PC's
Two new Partner strategies for moving to the Cloud were announced - Cloud Essentials Pack and Cloud Accelerate for Partners as well as partner opportunity guides for Cloud services
Microsoft Pinpoint is being rolled out to 40 countries this year
Kinect for Xbox 360 - controller-free gaming device will launch on 4th November 2010
Windows Phone 7 will be complemented in the Cloud by a new Windows Phone Live site that will allow people to find and manage a missing phone with map, ring, lock and erase capabilities
Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Management and Virtualization Solution Incentive and the Private Cloud Deployment Kit, which offers financial rewards and guidance to partners as they build virtualization and private cloud solutions.
Microsoft Services Launches Practice Accelerator to Make Training and Offering IP More Accessible to Partners
The Microsoft Partner Network - further changes announced - the 'advanced' competency has been removed and partners can now attain a Silver or Gold Competency

We had over 50 meetings during the week with Microsoft and a number of partners, including SCC, Bytes Software Services, Sopra, Creative SharePoint, Ballard Chalmers, Logicalis, K3, Cap Gemini, 21C, QA and CONTEMPORARY. If we didn't manage to meet with you and you would like to discuss the Cloud opportunities for FY11 then please make contact with Andrew Smith to set up a meeting here.

Lastly, we'd like to say a special thank you to the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 Team, the Microsoft UK team and all the UK Partners who made WPC 2010 a great success! See you again next year!