Question: Programs For Targeting SMBs

How do you envision your partner program evolving to meet the needs of SMBs specifically?

Ballmer's Answer: Well, I'd say a couple of things. First of all, it's not like this SMB focus is brand-new [laughs]. The question is how do we take something that we have been doing for years reasonably successfully with our partners and crank our game up to a whole new level. I still think that SMBs are the least well-served part of the market. Consumers and larger enterprises are still, in some sense, served better than SMBs. So, how do we do that in conjunction with our partners? No. 1 is to make sure that we are doing a more effective job with our partners that serve the SMB space. And that partner community is always in flux. If you take a look at the number of partners that were in business 10 or 12 years ago and are still in business with us today, it would be less than 50 percent in many parts of the world. So it's not just about building the relationships, but about building our effectiveness with a community that is not static. Our next-generation partner program is designed to give us greater connection and give those guys [who target SMBs] better support from us from an education, training [and] benefits perspective. That's No. 1. No. 2, I would say, is a set of improvements we are trying to make in what I call the Microsoft classic product set to enable both our partners and those customers. I love our new Small Business Server product, for example. I hope it's a really popular product because I think it's really well-targeted to make life simple for partners and customers in the SMB space. And No. 3 is the addition of a whole, new set of products we got as we pulled together Microsoft Business Solutions. [We] try to make sure we have a more extensive offer that, in a sense, allows our partners to get more complete solutions with easier customization more quickly in front of our customers in the SMB space.

Raarup's Response:
Ballmer's first point is right on: When we partner with Microsoft, we rely heavily on the relationships with our Partner Account Managers to help us navigate the ever-changing organizational structures and go-to-market strategies in the enterprise space. In the future, it would be very helpful to introduce more process into the partner relationship through a set of programs that Microsoft and the partner community take to the SMB space, where Small Business Server [can shine].

Penetrating SMB Accounts
When Inetium, a Microsoft Gold partner, was founded in 1998, it focused on the needs of the SMB marketplace. Today, 100 percent of Inetium's business is geared to the Microsoft platform. Any help Microsoft provides in terms of education and training greatly assists Inetium and others that desire to establish themselves as customers' trusted IT advisers, notes Eric Raarup, director of business solutions at Inetium. Trouble is, coordinating all of that knowledge transfer can be tricky. "The biggest challenge will be to get Microsoft and the Partner Channel working toward the same goals," he says. "I would like for Microsoft to be more direct about its expectations of partners at different levels, including Certified, Gold etc., and then provide the necessary resources to get everyone working toward the same objectives."