Last week on Thursday I was in Bangalore attending Microsoft Worldwide ISV Executive Strategy Day. It was hosted by Mark Young, Corporate General Manager of ISV Strategy. This is what I came to hear during the day:
1) For the Keynote speaker Dilip Misry of Microsoft India Developer Evangelist group it was all “India Shinning”. In terms of increase in IT spending, PC Generation, Wireless handsets growth in India and he was optimistic of ISV growth and potential in the packaged software industry.
2) Mark Young, talked about how the Microsoft ISV program started in 1983, has grown over the years. He gave some astounding figures like 750,000 Microsoft Partners worldwide (Microsoft Customers are going to have a tough time choosing a partner), 6 Million Developers using .NET, 2200 User Groups, 400 community web sites worldwide.
3) Manish Chopra from Microsoft Business Solutions Group (aka ERP/CRM group) it was about how Microsoft is adding value to the core Platform. First it was Operating System (Windows), then the Microsoft platform started to include Office System and now with MBS (Microsoft Business Solutions framework) it was about common ERP/CRM functions moving right into the core platform space. He briefly mentioned about the 4 different Business Solutions offering from Microsoft – Great Plains, Navision, Solomon and Axapta.
4) Vlad Martynov from the Partner Sales and Mktg Group mentioned about the new partner program and the benefits that it will bring to Microsoft Partners. The new Partner Points is aimed to differentiate partners between different levels and make it easier for customer to search and select a partner.
5) Sushant Dwivedy of Microsoft India, mentioned about the new Empower program that provides affordable licenses of Microsoft Software to startup ISVs. Through the empower program ISVs stand to get 5 licenses of Windows, Office, MSDN Universal User licenses for about $375 for a year. Sushant also highlighted on how few Indian companies generate world class IP (Intellectual Property) for their own. Companies that generate IP also don’t participate in any of the world standard body like WS-I (Web Services). I found this quite profound and thought-provoking.