Microsoft WPC13 Sizzles: Ballmer’s Keynote, Office 365 Monitoring, Surface Discounts, More
Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (MSFT) is this week in Houston, and this blogger, for one, is glad that The VAR Guy is covering the event so that I can avoid Texas in July and monitor events from my "monitoring dashboard" in my air conditioned office. If you, too, are watching WPC from afar, stay tuned to MSPmentor, The VAR Guy and Talkin' Cloud this week for coverage
Microsoft’s (MSFT) Worldwide Partner Conference is this week in Houston, and this blogger, for one, is glad that The VAR Guy is covering the event so that I can avoid Texas in July and monitor events from my “monitoring dashboard” in my air conditioned office. If you, too, are watching WPC from afar, stay tuned to MSPmentor, The VAR Guy and Talkin’ Cloud this week for coverage of Microsoft’s giant partner event. Meanwhile, here are some highlights from today.
Ballmer’s Pep Rally
Ballmer’s keynote was full of love for partners, especially partners who came to Houston in July — the really loyal partners who don’t mind the heat or the humidity. Check out The VAR Guy’s live blog and recap of Ballmer’s annual pep rally here. (My favorite quote: “There are no phones better in the market than phones with Windows 8. I say that with all the objectivity of the CEO of Microsoft. It’s unbelievable how objective I am on the topic.”) Ballmer, who was one of the few at WPC who was not experiencing a bad hair day amid the Houston humidity, also spoke about Microsoft’s partner momentum, Windows 8.1 and other hot Microsoft topics.
Surface Discounts, Long Lines
Loyal partners who made it to Houston in July were rewarded with special prices for first generation Surface tablets — Surface RT 64Gb for $99 and Surface Pro 128 Gb for $399. More on that here. (We hear the line to redeem the offer is 3 hours long. Let’s hope everyone brought their water bottles and camp chairs.)
Office 365 Monitoring Coming into its Own
Looking for a monitoring tool for Office 365? Exoprise today announced CloudReady Monitor for Office 365 and simultaneously launced a channel program for it at WPC. The company is apparently working with Microsoft to take its IT cloud monitoring offering to market via Microsoft partners. Check out Talkin Cloud’s coverage of the news here.
Love for Partners, but No Love for Google, VMware or Salesforce.com
The ever-sharp fedora-wearing VAR Guy spotted this ban on Microsoft’s WPC14 registration site. No employees from the aforementioned companies allowed. Could Microsoft be acknowledging the competitive heat from these rivals? There’s no location named, yet, for next year’s event (normally announced at the end of the WPC week) but personally I’m hoping for a more temperate location, such as Iceland.
What else?
What other news might be coming this week from WPC? We are expecting to hear more from Dell, from Parallels and maybe some others as well. Stay tuned to MSPmentor, The VAR Guy and Talkin Cloud for what you need to know from WPC13 this week.
