Friday, July 16, 2004

SharePoint, Microsoft's number one focus?


A couple of days ago, CRN interviewed Jeff Raikes, group vice president for the Information Worker Business at Microsoft. The conversation revolved mainly around issues important to Micorsoft partners and solution providers.

When asked if Microsoft's message was to both "specialize" and "get many competencies", this is how Jeff began his answer:

"Well, the No. 1 focus we have right now is this connected productivity go-to-market--in particular, team collaboration. That's a very broad area, if someone really gets the expertise in Windows SharePoint Services, document workspaces and meeting sites, or I should say team sites."

Jeff also talked a lot about Randy Shilling of Quilogy and how he "has built a multimillion-dollar business doing Information Worker solutions, whereas three years ago he didn't have that at all. He'll be the first to tell you that what he is doing has gone from focusing on the IT infrastructure guys to focusing on the business decision guys."

Also

"Last night, he was talking about how Quilogy has 45 people who passed the SharePoint test, and the next highest partner had half. He was using that fact to promote the Quilogy learning platform. He has taken SharePoint as the foundation for a learning system that they use internally to train their folks, and now he's talking to customers about using it for their people."

Read the full interview here: CRN | Breaking News | CRN Interview: Jeff Raikes, Microsoft