Thanks to everyone who came and welcome to all our visitors!

We made a couple of announcements that are worth repeating here

1) We have enrolled the group in the O’Reilly user group scheme. This gives us discounts on book purchases, access to review copies of books and potentially authors as speakers. There were catalogues available on the day as well as a sample book on C#.

2) Leading on from this – benefits. As well as the O’Reilly discount we’re starting to gather a couple of other offers that have been tailored for the group – these are for members only so are on the password protected benefits page on the AMITPRO site

3) TCA Conference – The Trade Channel Association has an event coming up in Leicester. If you’d like details about the event or membership to the TCA get in touch with us

4) We forgot to mention this on the night but you can now send money to AMITPRO via paypal@amitpro.org. This is for anything that may require a payment such as subscriptions. There are also buttons on the site for doing the same thing

Onto the speakers!

We had two very contrasting speakers this month but they both gave great presentations

First up we had Rick Shingler and Leigh Trojanowski from DataWreck

DataWreck, based in North Staffordshire, are primarily a data recovery company

They provide a free analysis, followed by a no obligation quote with a no recovery – no fee policy

Their focus is on home users and small businesses and they have a full price list on their website

As far as SBSC members go, they are looking to work with partners and either offer a commission on any referrals or are happy for partners to white label the service to offer to their clients

Rick and Leigh also gave us some great insight into what happens to a hard drive once their process starts including some pointers on some common physical problems a hard drive can suffer from

They also helped dispel some myths about hard drives and data recovery

• Fridge Freezers are BAD for disks
• Disks AREN’T vacuum sealed
• Good software isn’t free
• Hitting a hard drive really won’t make it work again

DataWreck are also expanding their business into other areas with data destruction, digital forensics and recycling new services that are launching soon

There was time for a quick demonstration of how flash memory in USB pens can be recovered before showing us some of the more interesting jobs they have had to deal with including recovering data from a USB pen that a dog had swallowed!

Rather them than us I think!

All in all it looks like a great service that is within a price point that will fit with the type of client our members work with so I’m sure DataWreck will be called on in the future

Thanks to Rick and Leigh for coming and also to Paul Dadge of PC Paramedics for recommending them

You can download the slide deck Rick and Leigh used HERE

After a short break, next to speak were Wayne Farrington and Chris Taylor from BrightFox solutions

Brightfox are a Coventry based web design company (Also on Twitter and Facebook)

They have been trading just over a year and have sold over 150 websites in that period

Their team consists of people who specialise in specific areas such as graphics design, coding, project management and marketing

This means any web site project is dealt with by team of people and each person can can just focus on what they do best

This means the project manager will stay in touch with the client and ensure the they are happy and the graphic designers and coders can get on with putting the site together

Each site comes with a CMS which has been custom designed by BrightFox so that once a site has been completed the end user can make their own changes. The CMS also keeps a track of the last five edits so their is no danger of loosing data as any changes can be easily reverted

All sites have a fixed price and they have a-la carte style menu where the user choose any extras they need so they know exactly what the the cost will be

The subject of search engine optimisation was covered with some best practices such as making use of Google local and ensuring your content is actually relevant to what you do so that search engine can index you correctly!

As well as doing brochure style websites they are also capable of producing bespoke web applications such as e-commerce enabled site and holiday booking sites given as recent examples

Wayne also talked about some examples of how their sites have specifically impacted their clients businesses

BrightFox are also looking to work with partners on a referral/commission basis or as a white labelled service

The work they are doing looks great (check out their website for examples) so I’m sure they’ll be working with some of members soon

We’d like to thank Wayne and Chris for coming along and speaking to the group

The slide deck used for the presentation is available for download HERE

Also in attendance were Gavin Gardener and Leigh Odell from Accredit UK (also on Twitter) and they introduced themselves to the group with a view to speaking at future meeting

Thanks again to all who attended

We look forward to seeing you in March!

Many of the requirements and benefits of the new MPN are similar to the previous Partner Programme, and most of the details have aleady been published in one form or another. However, there are some new changes which are likely to affect Partners of all sizes; I’ve summarised some of these changes below.

As the document clearly states, the information is subject to change.

Advanced Competency
“Four Microsoft Certified Professionals with advanced credencials”

This description is under Microsoft’s ‘General Requirements’ for the Advanced Competency, the requirements for the (standard) Competency remains at 2 MCPs. It’s important to note that this is the ‘General Requirement’, implying there could be some variation between Competencies. This change is going to hit smaller, specialist Microsoft Partners hardest, as they may not even employ four members of staff, let alone four MCPs.

While it’ll be harder for them to differenciate themselves as experts in their field, it does have benefits for other groups of people. Firstly, customers are going to have an easier job identifying companies with focus in a certain area – mainly as it’ll only be Partners who have deep knowledge in a given area that can achieve the highest recognition. Secondly, this adds significant value to MCPs within an organisation, especially those with new MCTS and MCITP designations; the new generation exams are likely to be the requirements for the revised competencies moving forward.

“Your employees or contractors who pass the applicable advanced competency exams are only eligible toward one advanced competency”

Again, this is going to hit smaller partners hardest, especially those boutique partners who have deep knowledge in multiple areas. The document implies that the Partners achieving multiple Advanced Competenies will be generally employing 8+ MCPs. It also reinforces the requirement of certification within Partner organisations, and pushes the bar higher than before.

“Advanced Membership Fee”

I’m not sure how much to read into this one, but the document clearly differenciates between a standard “Membership Fee” and an “Advanced Membership Fee”. Will there be a higher cost associated with the Advanced Compentency designation? I’d be interested to hear Microsoft’s answer to this question.

Small Business Specialist Community
“The Small Business Specialist Community (SBSC) designation will continue to be a Microsoft partnership opportunity in addition to the new Small Business and Medium Business Solution Provider competency offerings”

Perhaps the biggest news for AMITPRO members, will be the possible continuation of the SBSC designation in addition to the new ‘Small Business’ Competency. I’m sure many people will be delighted with this news, as there’s clearly a lot of support for the SBSC brand. It’ll be interesting to see whether the much-loved “blue-badge” will survive the transition.

It’s surprising that Microsoft have again made the SBSC an ‘exception’ to the general Partner Programme, especially as many of these changes were designed to bring the designation back in line with the other Competencies. As mentioned before, it’s important to note that the above information is subject to change, but it’s good to have an early view of the changes, and hopefully Microsoft are still listening to Partner feedback before finalising these details.

How will these changes affect your business? Will you benefit or lose from the above changes? Please share your thoughts below.

The first presentation was given by Paul Maloney from Technology Management and Consultancy (TMC). Paul discussed the importance of compliance, even in smaller organisations, and went on to compare some well known standards such as ISO27001 and ISO9001 as well as introducing PCI-DSS for companies taking card payments.

The talk then moved onto the topics of Asset Management and Patch Management, with suggestions for policies and processes for keeping track of IT equipment and how to help clients through stressful audits.

Throughout the session there was a lively dialogue between the speaker and the rest of the room, with Paul drawing on his experiences to answer questions posed by members. We’ve already had feedback from attendees saying how impressed they were at Paul’s security knowledge, so I’m sure TMC’s services will be called upon by members in future.

We’d like to thank Paul and Claire from TMC for coming to the group, and for David Ogden for recommending TMC.

Paul’s full slide deck is available for download HERE

Next up was Lee Clark from MXSweep, a relative newcomer in the increasingly competitive world of hosted e-mail security. The product is taking on the likes of MessageLabs (Symantec) directly, and hopes to win by offering a better service to both customers and partners. The pricing of the service is favourable compared to the competition, and is well aligned to the SME market.

Lee delivered an extremely slick presentation which was well received by the group, especially by the SoftScan resellers in the room, some of whom have been disillusioned by the recent Symantec acquisition and subsequent pricing hikes.

The presentation covered the features of MXSweep, the Sales opportunity, reporting and auditing features, and touched on the development roadmap for 2010.

Thanks to Lee for making the journey up to speak to the group, we appreciate the time and effort he put into the presentation.

You can download the slides from Lee’s presentation HERE

Fun, frolics and festivities aplenty at the AMITPRO Christmas meal last Friday! Hosted by the Chung Ying Garden in the centre of Birmingham, members, partners and friends descended on the restaurant from near and far.

After finishing the three course meal and exhausting our supply of balloons, the remaining few partygoers proceeded out into the cold West Midlands night for a few more drinks before heading off.

See more photos from the event on Richard Tubb’s Facebook album HERE. Big thanks to Veretech for organising the event, especially Jane.

Arriving in force on their way north this week were Tracey, Mark and James from Trend Micro. An initial straw-poll revealed that the AMITPRO audience comprised roughly a 40/40/20 mixture of existing Trend resellers, Sophos Parntners and ‘other’ AV vendors respectively. James began by discussing the new ‘threat landscape’ and showing how Trend are adapting to the constant changes in the industry, while Tracey followed with an overview of the partner opportunities and promotions currently available to new and existing resellers. For those who missed out, a full slide deck can be downloaded HERE.

Two of the most notable differences between Trend and the competition are the reseller-friendly Remote Management and the all-inclusive nature of the ‘Worry-free’ package which includes e-mail and web reputation filtering and URL filtering on top of the usual  features. Both of these were demoed by Mark, who also explained some of the technical intricacies of the cloud-based ‘Smart Protection Network’.

Next up, we had Lorna Riddle from DBAM Systems introducing their EP range of WAN optimisation appliances. DBAM are a relative newcomer into the market, but are building up momentum in the channel by working through distributors like Bell Micro and Tekdata. While it was clear that the range is primarily aimed at the enterprise, they do offer a small business sized appliance (EP60), which retails for £995.

After introducing the full range of products (including a virtual appliance), Lorna ran through a few real-world scenarios. Calling upon previous experience, she explained the various acceleration and traffic-shaping features in the appliances, and related the features to common examples often found in multi-site networks.

Thanks to all of our speakers for making the journey up to Birmingham, and watch this space for slides from the DBAM Presentation!

** UPDATE 21/12/2009 ** The full DBAM Presentation can be downloaded from HERE.

First was Dominic Gill from Microsoft

Dominic has been involved with AMITPRO in various different areas in his previous role as West Midlands Regional Manager for Microsoft

His current project is the helping to roll out the Microsoft Apprentice Scheme, Steve blogged about this in detail recently so check out his post here

The main aim of the scheme is to help school and college leavers to get into the IT industry and to ensure potential employers are confident in the level of training they have undertaken with the added bonus of having some input into their development as they also spend time in the workplace

Dominic also brought along Amrik Bhabra, Managing Director of Coventry based Adecs who was involved in the initial pilot of the scheme to help field any questions

Next up we had Alan Jones, HP Reseller Development at Bell Micro

Alan was here to speak about HP’s partner program and how Bell Micro can help partners develop the server and storage side of the business from an HP perspective

He gave lots of details about the various levels of engagement you can have with HP, the product range, the areas in which Bell can help and passed on information about some of the resources that are available when selling HP equipment

After this Guy went through the results of the recent member survey. We got some good feedback about what AMITPRO members would like to see in 2010. This information is invaluable to help with improving the group and also helps when speaking to potential presenters as we illustrate the value they will get as well as ensuring their presentation is designed to give maximum value. A copy of the results are available from here

Feedback is always welcome so if you have any please leave a comment here or drop us an email

The slides for Dom’s presentation are available from here and if anyone would like to quiz Amrik on his experiences with the apprentice scheme let us know and we can put you in contact with him

Thanks to everyone who attended and we look forward to seeing you in December!

Microsoft is running a new Sales Programme called “On Track”.
 
The programme works on three levels:

• Senior Managers/Directors
• Field Sales people
• Internal Sales people

 And there are a variety of sessions and resources available.
 
The launch event, which me and my colleague Tony Robinson (no, not the guy from Black Adder) … are delivering is at Microsoft TVP on 24th November – for Senior Managers/Director.  We are running through the whole sales engagement process (using the Microsoft solutions sales model) from 0% (planning and prospecting) through to 100% (closing and effective post sales behaviour) and not only will we be sharing our best practice advice and guidance with the audience, but we will also run through what the OnTrack programme is and how partners can get involved in some of the other areas of the programme.
 
As always, this will be a highly interactive one day session, Tony is bringing his experience to the table having not only helped me to learn a lot about professional presentations over the years, but has also presented at many, many corporate events all over the globe including events for O2, HSBC and the BBC.
 
Here is the link to register:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=557602

Thanks to Andy Trish for bringing this to our attention.

So the changes…if you’re a regular attendee to AMITPRO you’ll already know that Steve Wright has decided to stand down as group leader

He’s done a great job over the last twelve months and will still have input into the group via his Partner Area Lead role

As of this month the new leader of the group is Guy Gregory of Peak Support and me!

Both Guy and I had shown an interest in taking on the group lead role and decided a joint effort would bring more to the group and sharing the responsibilities can only be a good thing

Since I’ve been involved with AMITPRO there has always been a great spirit of collaboration so it makes perfect sense from my perspective to take this on with someone else

If Guy and myself can keep up the great work from Steve and Vijay before him AMITPRO will continue to be a great resource for IT Professionals in the Midlands area

Tonight’s meeting was our first as joint leaders. Steve had already organised the speakers so we were able to hit the ground running!

Our first speaker was Zoe Russell of ZHR Marketing

She gave a great presentation about marketing specifically for the small business. It took a while for the group to warm up but once they did there were lots of questions and ideas about different marketing ideas. Hopefully it will have given everyone some new ideas!

Next up was Cécile Cathala and Richard Zinner from StorageCraft Europe

While StorageCraft isn’t a new name over in the States they are only just branching out into the UK.

StorageCraft is a backup imaging product for grabbing snapshots of servers and PC (competing products are Backup Exec System Recovery and Acronis TrueImage) that can also restored to dissimilar hardware or even a virtual environment

They have editions for Desktop PCs, Servers and Small Business Server

There is also a managed service provider licensing model if you would like to provide backup and recovery as a service

One of their unique features is their IT Edition. This is a technician license that allows you to create images of as many servers as you need. You can also run this directly from a CD or USB Drive while the system is running

There are trial versions of the products available so it’s definitely worth a look

Just a quick overview of both speakers. They both did a great job

Afterwards we retired to the bar and continued with our usual mix of chat about business, life the universe and everything!

Next month we’ll be organising speakers of our own…that’s when it gets really serious!

Jamie kicked off the evening with a high-level overview of key Windows 7 features, particularly focussing on business technologies like DirectAccess, BranchCache and AppLocker. The presentation was rounded off by an explanation of MDOP benefits, including App-V and MED-V with a brief demonstration of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT).

After the break, we were introduced to Dell Quinn, recently appointed SBSC lead for the UK. Her discussion focussed on the Microsoft Partner Network, due to replace the Microsoft Partner Programme in 2010. Advice was given around transitioning from the familiar Cert/Gold Cert/Blue Badge brands to the new competency-focussed levels, followed by a projection of support for SBSC partners in FY10. While it was clear that there are still a few kinks to be ironed out with the new Partner structure, Dell provided useful and fair responses to the ‘barrage’ of questions levelled at her.

Many of the members will now be looking forward to the Microsoft Partner Network 2009 event at Wembley stadium next month. I’ll be there representing Peak Support – hope to see you there!

Last night’s AMITPRO meeting saw a presentation from James Cole and Andy Dreier from Security IP. The Oxford-based company provides niche security solutions to IT resellers in the UK. Although they resell a wide range of security products, their focus last night was on Interguard suite and DataGuard.

Interguard is a collection of three complimentary products, designed as answer to internal security threats and includes the following:

• Sonar – monitoring and reporting of all employee computer activity on or off the corporate network
• Datalock – provides protection for IP, trade secrets and confidential data
• Laptop Cop – track and recover stolen laptops (or data)

The second part of the presentation featured DataGuard. This is an encryption solution aimed at home and small business users. Essentially a stripped down version of apSec’s fideAS file Enterprise product, the product handles full volume encryption as well as folder/USB memory stick protection. More information on both products can be found at Security IP’s web site: http://www.securityip.com

Thanks to both James and Andy for bringing these excellent products and solutions to the attention of the group.