Microsoft to ready partners for Vista and Office 2007 with new program 15 October, 2006 By Vanessa Ho

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The program, called Early Start, will be launched on November 10 as part of Microsoft's Partner Program.

"It is a way for partners to get ramped up and start working with the technology," said Carol Terentiak, Microsoft Partner Program manager for Microsoft Canada.

Companies that are part Microsoft Partner program, Terentiak said, often offer competencies to its customer to help them in specific areas such as network infrastructure, information worker and security. But, to qualify for a Microsoft competency, partners need to write exams to obtain Microsoft certifications and need three customer references to say they've helped a company implement a specific technology using Microsoft products. And since Vista and Office 2007 have not been released yet, Terentiak said there are no exams right now for those products.

"Because the products have not launched yet, it is hard for partners to get [the competency] and to get three customer references. [Partners] don't want to sit and twiddle their thumbs, they want to be ready to go [with Vista and Office 2007]," she said.

The Early Start program for Office 2007 and Vista gives partners targeted training and lines them up with customer opportunities to go in and work with Microsoft to develop expertise and specializations in those areas so partners are ready to write the exams and have three customer references, Terentiak added.

The goal of Early Start is to support the launch of Office 2007 and Vista but Terentiak said the program is also a permanent part of the company's partner program for any new technology that it comes out with.

"[Early Start] is so our partners are ready when a product launches not six months after," she said.

Michelle Warren, senior IT industry analyst for Partner Research Corporation, said that Early Start is something that Microsoft needed to do something to allow its partners to grow its own business as well as Microsoft's.

"Vista and Office 2007 are huge launches for Microsoft. These launches are critical and have to go off smoothly. Microsoft has to rally its partner community to make these a success," Warren said.

She added that there has been some uneasiness around the size and scope of the launch of Vista within the partner community and created a trickle down effect for hardware OEMs and resellers on how customers will respond to Vista and when will corporations adopt the new operating system.

"This is a prevalent launch and you have to have the partner community ready to go and convey the benefits to customers on why they need to shift to Vista," said Warren.

With the Early Start program and the Get Ready Web site, Elliot Katz, senior product manager of Windows Client for Microsoft Canada said that he expects adoption for Windows Vista to be absorbed into organizations quickly than past operating system releases.

"We expect a more rapid adoption because of the advanced capabilities [Vista offers] but the real key benefit for organizations is the ability to have a much more secure PC," he said.

Despite the security benefits of Vista, Warren said a key question that Microsoft needs to answer is why should users bother moving over to Vista?

"If there is a PC installed today that still works [with an old OS] then why upgrade to Vista? Microsoft has to answer that question and partners have to answer that question. That is why Microsoft has to educate partners on why customers should bother [making the switch]," she said.

Katz is realistic and knows that organizations will have an evaluation period before deploying Vista.

"That is why there are tools we provide in early releases before the launch," he added.