In parallel, I have met with 11 industry and technology analysts and 3 sales and marketing consultants to the IT&T industry.

Although it’s not market research, it does help me to understand the issues that are top of mind in the Australian market place for the Microsoft community of partners when it comes to dealing with the transition to the cloud

During each meeting there was one consistent question we discussed – “Is there profit in the cloud for partners?”

The discussions typically fall into three categories

1. There is no money in the cloud
2. There is money in the cloud but we aren’t sure it’s big enough for us to change our business today
3. We have bet our business on the cloud and we are making money now

The cloud is a change to the delivery technology and the business model.

The cloud as a delivery technology will drive customer discussions and demand in the first instance around identity management.

Specifically the identity management focus will be around integration of user identity with cloud applications, ideally around single side on but more commonly revisiting broader identity and architecture discussions.

Some partners have seen this as an opportunity to deepen and broaden their identity management offerings, quickly monetising the opportunity by offering identity management assessment services – a net new opportunity when integrating existing applications with cloud delivered services.

The cloud allows end users to access the current version of the software continuously, which better aligns the innovation cycles of the provider with requirements of the software users.

Business model changes to the cloud especially in the Software as a Service market is the change in revenue and cash flow model – a movement away from lump sum upfront payments to monthly payments based on usage. This part of the discussion impacts organisational design principles about how much money is invested into sales and marketing versus operational support and ongoing usage based marketing.

It impacts the way you think about commissions and compensation models – payments now need to be aligned to user outcome and end-user usage rather than the invoicing cycles at the time of acquisition.

Organisational skills and competencies evolve towards those focused on retention and organic growth from existing customers. More focus and investment is required in automation of operational aspects of the business such as support and end-user training. Equally support staff needs to become the front line of selling – identifying new users in existing customers and new functionality for end users to activating.

Financing the cash flow of a resellers business in the cloud, means that the finance function is as important as the sales and support function.

Alignment of sales, delivery and compensation models essential in the new world.

Finally, and possibly most importantly – ensuring the people in your organisation are fanatical about creating great customer experiences.

Are your training, performance management and compensation systems aligned to ensure every touch point with the customer means they will become part of your sales and marketing organisation by recommending your solution to other customers?

Sometimes it’s about doing the basics – in the words of one of our category three partners (making money now) “It’s all about the customers we are engaging with, engagement models as well as hiring great team.”

What do you think?

Is it really only about the basics?

What role do you think the vendors should play in the journey to increased profitability?

Leave your comments below

During the very packed one day agenda, Greg Stone – Chief Technology Officer, Phil Goldie – Director Server & Tools Business Group, Carey Sadler APAC Analysts Relations and I presented across a range of topics including;

Microsoft’s Cloud Strategy Update

• Globally
  
  • data centre investments
    
  • consumer and enterprise milestones including 9 billion daily instant messages
    
  • 40 million paid users of hosted email solutions in 36 countries
    
  • Over 10,000 paying Azure customers
    
  • Microsoft’s 4^th generation data centres
    
  • US Government FISMA certification
    
  • Service provider & hosting partner licensing announcements
    
  • Yahoo search integration
    
• Australia
  
  • Customer success stories across Government, University, Commercial customers, Independent Software Vendors, Hosting and Service Providers
    
  • Our work with AGIMO, Attorney General, National Archive Office, and Privacy Commissioner to name a few.
    
  • Sales, Marketing, Partner and Services investments in the last 12 months
    
  • Update on the number of partners recruited and selling cloud services in Australia
    

Software as a Service update

• CRM 2011 launch, transacting partners, customer case studies
  
• Windows Intune 2011 launch, transacting partners and early evidence
  
• Office 365 launch, BPOS & Live@EDU progress
  
• The role of mobility in driving SaaS adoption
  
• The growing number of Novell Group Wise and Lotus Notes customers moving to Microsoft BPOS & Live@EDU including Australian National Maritime Museum,
  AMP, Coca-Cola, Freedom Furniture, WA Central TAFE, Edith Cowan University, Flinders University, Sydney University, Queensland University of Technology, Curtin University, University of Wollongong, Victoria University, University of Western Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, Australian Catholic University, Notre Dame University, University of Newcastle, University of Canberra, Murdoch University, Swinburne University Of Technology
  

Infrastructure as a Service update

• The role of Hybrid Clouds across Private and Public Clouds
  
• Hyper-V market share gains, transacting partners, customer case studies. Customer, hosting and service provider feedback on VMware pricing increases.
  
• Local hosting and service provider investments in Australia
  
• System Center investments including System Center Advisor & AVI Code acquisition
  

Platform as a Service update

• Azure and SQL Azure updates
  
• Customer success across ISVs including MYOB, Curtin University, Computershare, Brisbane City Council
  

Starting at 8:30am and finishing at with a great dinner at 10:30pm, we had an amazing range of topics and content to cover.

The quote of the day came from an analyst who said during one of the sessions just before lunch time “You need a day to cover this content, the best your competitors could do is a two hour briefing”

I think that best covers the breadth and depth of Microsoft vision for the Cloud and IT as a service

Truman and Hoyle Cloud Computing Contracts White Paper – A Survey of Terms and Conditions

The original article appeared in IT News Australia as Analysis: Ten clauses to watch in cloud contracts

This document looks through the lens of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS and they surveyed 25 vendors who provide these services in Australia. They reviewed the following terms choice of law jurisdiction and dispute resolution, variation to terms, privacy laws and trans-border data flows, security and backup, service level agreements, transition out arrangements, warranties and liability limitations and multiple parties in the cloud stack.

The document is interesting more for the documents referenced in the white page including APRA, Federal Privacy Commissioner, Google, Competition and Consumer Act, 3Tera, Akamai, Amazon, Brennan IT, Cloud Central, GoGrid, IBM, IntraPower, Joyent, Macquarie Telecom, MelbourneIT, Microsoft, Ninefold, Nirvanix, OpSource and PayPal.

It would be great to get your feedback about what you are seeing with your customers and service providers in Australia

I feel very privileged to have benefited from these gifts from others. I thought that I need to find a way to share these gifts with others. I decided
to try an experiment this time and encourage others to contribute what has impacted their lives to other via this blog so they can learn from each other. I
am not sure where this experiment will lead, I hope it will encourage others to share and learn from each other.

As someone who understands that the value of your network is a function of what you contribute to it, I wanted to share three things that have helped
me in the last 12 months to think about my business and my life in a different way.

Three people who touched my heart when they shared their stories

• Nigel Marsh In this TED Video he talks in a very direct what about “Work Life Balance is an Ongoing Battle”

• Tara Prasai our guide in Nepal. Tara showed me how to lead by example, every day with a diverse team of 25 people in difficult terrain and keeping everyone focused on a common goal

• Mike Cannon-Brookes Co-founder of Atlassian an Australian Software company that raised $1million through software sales for Room To Read – a global education not for profit

Two books that challenged my thinking and assumptions

• The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by Arbinger Institute – it shows how to get past the preconceived ideas and self-justifying reactions that keep us from seeing the world clearly and dealing with it effectively

• Time to think – listening to ignite The Human Mind by Nancy Kline – This amazing book outlines how meaningful results come from pausing, listening and engaging everyone. This book challenged me to do two things much better than before, listen and ask meaningful & impactful questions.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and let me know what’s influenced you in the last 12 months – people, ideas, books or anything else

• 3 business opportunities have resulted from me seeing a LinkedIn contact’s status before I send them an email
• 2 opportunities to connect two other LinkedIn members as I saw their status as a result of them sending me an email
• 1 very funny status update, I would never have seen except I was just about to call a LinkedIn contact

If you haven’t seen what Outlook Social Connector looks like, here are some real screen shots.

To install the Outlook Social Connector for LinkedIn follow the link

Back 90 days later to see whether my data was trending in the right direction or not.

I ran the same search again on Seek.com and the result 637 open roles in Australia, up from 436 open roles in January

So what might the updated data say?

1. The original size of the market is roughly correct
2. A basic trend can be established
3. The market is continuing to grow

One suggestion from two industry players is to approach local Technical & Further Education Colleges (TAFE) to get SharePoint into the curriculum

Keen to understand if this is worth looking at for the long term, also interested in addressing the short term imbalance

Interested in your feedback about how to balance the supply and demand equation for SharePoint professionals

25/1/2010

I recently did a search on Seek.com and discovered over 436 open positions for SharePoint professionals in Australia

I admit there will be double counting in my basic survey with more than one recruitment agency may advertise the same role.  I decided to cross checked the same search on LinkedIn about 384 open positions.

So either way there are a huge number of SharePoint roles open in Australia.

No unusual national trends in the distribution of roles either.

Then I start to listen to some of the events going on at the moment.

1. Oct 8 2009 SharePoint Saturday Melbourne
2. Oct 27 2009 SharePoint Designer 2007 Seminar – BRISBANE
3. Jan 18 2010 SharePoint 2010 Hands On Day for Developers – Melbourne
4. Jan 28 2010 SBTUG: SharePoint for Managers
5. Feb 6 2010 SharePoint Saturday Perth
6. Feb 25 2010 SharePoint 2010 for Developers, Hands on Day Melbourne
7. June 16 2010 Australian Community SharePoint Conference

Is the issue with the role roles being unique to a specific SharePoint role type? There is a range of roles including

1. Architects
2. Admins
3. Developers
4. Data warehouse
5. Project managers
6. UX
7. Even some SharePoint 2010

The roles are across Customers, Systems Integrators, Recruiters and Contract agencies. In public sector there seems to be more contract roles on offer than full time positions.

The imbalance between supply and demand will increase with the release of SharePoint 2010, expanding to six capabilities including collaboration & social computing, portals, enterprise search, business intelligence, Business process & forms enterprise content management.

Is there a shortage because there aren’t enough trained SharePoint people in Australia?

Or is the explanation much simpler – the jobs on offer aren’t paying enough?

Let me know what you think (especially keen to hear from recruiters & Microsoft partners) and the reasons why so many positions are open?

This journey started with a book call Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand by William Arruda

Does your online identity matter to you?

I did this exercise recently to understand my digital relevance to see if it’s aligned to my brand

If you want to calculate your online identity visit www.onlineidcalculator.com – it takes 5 minutes

What could you online score be?

1. Digitally distinct
2. Digitally disastrous
3. Digitally dissed
4. Digitally dabbling

 This formula is a bit of fun and unproven but a mental model I keep in my head to make sure I help people 10 times more than I expect them to help me. That’s the ultimate  paradox it’s about giving more than you get.

I am presenting the last presentation of the last day on the topic “Prepare for Tomorrow while Driving Success in Your Business Today”

We are very lucky at Microsoft, measurement is an important part of our culture and so it is with our partner conference evaluations.

We started rehearsals yesterday, a full week before the event.

We are told every year, “there is a direct correlation between the people who rehearse, and those who score the highest”

So I take rehearsals very seriously, as I consider it a privilege to present to our partners – our partners are our sales organisation.

Yesterday Melony from NRG solutions spent 1 hour with me in rehearsals.

 Melony is a great coach, providing great feedback on connecting with the audience and more importantly for me connecting with my emotions and the emotions of the audience.

 Melony’s feedback helped me improve my thinking and delivery during rehearsal yesterday. Thanks Mel