In Changes to Partner Program, Microsoft Will Encourage Dynamics Partners to Scale Up, Integrate, and Connect with ISVs

Microsoft will look for its ERP and CRM partners to become more industry focused, more scaled up, and better able to tell the full story of an integrated solution.  And partners who adopt this vision will benefit from more sales and marketing assistance.  This continued vertical focus and preference from Microsoft could lead to changes in the VAR-ISV relationship over the next year, as partners work to achieve the more selective and granular new partner competency standards.

"We need a channel that can deliver on [integrated solutions]," according to Jeff Edwards, Director of Dynamics Partner Strategy.  "It doesn't take a giant organization to deliver this type of solution, either." 

Edwards sees the recent increase in partner consulting firm consolidations as a potentially positive step toward what he says would bring a more integrated and targeted approach to the way partners sell Microsoft products in an integrated way.  From the keynote address onwards at Convergence 2010, Microsoft has focused on integrated solutions that go beyond Dynamics where, as Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop said in the keynote, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". 

The most recent acquisition was the recently announced deal in which Avanade acquired Ascentium's Dynamics CRM practice, primarily for its 90-member CRM team.  The Ascentium practice is strongly focused on US federal government clients and custom solutions for those clients, both areas that Avanade had lacked.  Earlier this year, national AX partner Fullscope was acquired by Edgewater Technology, Inc., a firm that focuses on other Microsoft solutions.

Microsoft Partner Network, as the new overall partner group will be labeled, will be launched with hundreds ...