Microsoft: What's Your Assessment?

I tend to adopt a bit more sympathetic view when someone’s dealing with egg-on-the-face. (I believe in karma and have to do enough public speaking that I KNOW it will come back to haunt me onstage one day if I’m COMPLETELY unfair.) So I decided to cut Microsoft a little slack in an otherwise troublesome week and mention this fun tidbit brought to my attention by worldwide channel chief Allison Watson.

In the spirit of making certain core tasks easier, the company’s channel team has launched something called the Windows Server System Assessment and Deployment Solution for Midsize Businesses.

Basically, this is a series of questions that let a solution provider collect information from a prospect and compare that account’s server readiness situation with other companies in the same industry. The tool will be available to all registered, certified and gold certified partners, and Watson believes upwards of 35,000 will use the template for at least half their sales within 12 months. Partners can get online training now on the Microsoft Partner Portal and hands-on help in July at the company’s worldwide partner conference.

While I have a certain amount of skepticism about making tasks too templated (there's SOOO much opportunity in gray areas), I doubt whether many partners today have already automated this. It could actually reduce the amount of time someone spends on this sort of thing, while enabling partners to more readily justify charging their customers for it.

I applaud Watson’s team for continuing to stay out in front with programs for Advanced Infrastructure partners. The Linux drums are beating in the background, and things will get real interesting this summer -- strangely enough, right around the time of the Microsoft partner conference.