Sage, Microsoft: Dueling Partner Conferences For 2011
Sage has scheduled its Summit conference at the Gaylord Resort and Conference Center in National Harbor, Md., outside Washington, D.C., for the week of July 10 -- the same week Microsoft is holding its annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles.
Sage’s Insights channel partner conference is in Denver this week. But starting in 2011 the partner conference will be combined with the company’s Summit customer conference under the Summit name. Sage has been promoting next year’s conference at Insights this week.
Sage Summit 2011 will provide partner session tracks July 10-13 and customer tracks July 13-15.
Sage is combining its partner and customer conferences at the request of the company’s partner advisory council: Many partners attend the partner and customer conferences and traveling to both can be a financial burden, they told Sage.
Microsoft generally holds its Worldwide Partner Conference, or WPC, the week after the Fourth of July and this year it’s scheduled for the week of July 12 in Washington D.C..
Microsoft usually waits until the WPC to disclose the location of the event for the following year. But last week the City of Los Angeles issued a press release trumpeting the fact that WPC and its 15,000 attendees would be in that city July 10-14, 2011.
It’s not clear how many VARs resell products from both vendors. But some certainly work with Sage’s ERP and CRM applications, as well as with Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP and CRM applications. Microsoft also has the separate Convergence conference earlier in the year specifically for Dynamics customers and partners, and that show won’t conflict with Sage Summit 2011.