Microsoft Expands Partner Group

Microsoft has ushered in a series of organizational changes to its worldwide partner business, including naming several new executives to the team while also bringing the company's small-business group under the auspices of the lead channel division run by Allison Watson.

Watson, sporting the new title of vice president of worldwide partner and small business groups, has been charged with overseeing Microsoft's small-business team--headed by Microsoft veteran Doug Leland--along with tending its traditional partner organization. The newly created group is now called the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group and Worldwide Small Business Group.

Watson says the changes, particularly those made at the personnel level, reflect an even stronger top-level commitment to Microsoft's partner strategy.

"The [program] stands the same as ever, and the overall focus is not changing in terms of senior commitment inside the company," Watson tells VARBusiness. "Rather, with the people we are bringing on board, we are strengthening the line leadership in the group."

Watson says this is critically important as the company enters a pivotal year for the new partner program and its system of IT competencies. For the first time, partners must re-up their competency certifications by meeting Microsoft's stringent customer-win requirements and other conditions, she says.

"I hear unilaterally from all types of partners that they are seeing value of the program," she says. "But my call to action is that they have to meet the requirements. And you may see a culling out of our channel in the next six months if some can't make the commitments."

Helping to drive the program into the future is new hire Sherle Webb-Robins, who takes over as general manager of the Microsoft Partner Program. Webb-Robins replaces Kevin Wueste, who helped craft the new partner program at Microsoft during the past three years. Watson says Wueste is looking for a career change either inside Microsoft or externally and is considering various opportunities.

Webb-Robins has spent 20 years in partner and direct sales, most recently working at Sun as vice president in the global sales organization where she was responsible for worldwide partners sales and marketing. Watson touted Webb-Robins' key role in helping Sun establish its strong ISV program and her work helping establish Java-based partner systems under Sun CEO Scott McNealy.

In addition to Webb-Robins, Microsoft has brought Kati Hvidtfeldt over from her role at Microsoft's Navision group in Denmark to become senior director of ISV and MBS partner strategy. She replaces Vlad Martinoff, who recently changed hats to run Columbus Business Partner, a solution provider and Microsoft partner. Meanwhile, Jenni Flinders has been named director of business management for the partner program.

Leland has taken on one of the more prominent roles. He will oversee a team of 23 sales and marketing specialists in the small-business group and also liaison with product teams responsible for such wares as Windows Small Business Server, Office Small Business Edition and the recently released accounting package.

Part of Leland's challenge going forward is finding a way to cultivate partners in the Small Business Specialist program that are adequately skilled to sell into this voluminous space. To date, nearly 87,000 partners have expressed interest in getting certified as a Small Business Specialist by Microsoft, with just north of 1,500 actually doing it. However, many of those 87,000 are not where they need to be with respect to technical, sales and marketing skills to gain the designation, according to Watson.

"We need to educate partners that they need to be able to do this well," Watson says. "We are finding that there is a lot more segmentation in the small-business market, whether you are calling on one-to-four person companies, or those with a server, or without. They are very different go-to-market models to consider."

Leland says he's eager to build up the partner ecosystem around small business. For this fiscal year, ending July 2006, Microsoft is looking to recruit 20,000 small-business specialists. The expectation is to grow that number in fiscal year 2007.

Leland also touted the investments that the company had made in Web-based resources for partners in this segment, namely the Small Business Center portal.

"The Small Business Center is designed for the owners and managers of companies. These are people who are nontechnical," Leland says. "But the portal helps them see where technology can further their business."

Leland adds that his team will also be using the Web to build out core marketing activities for partners.