With a tear in my eye the time has come for me to move my stick hut somewhere new. I have loved working in and with the small business community and with a set of awesome partners who can complain and nag, but normally with good cause and that are more willing to say thank-you and "good job" when the time is right. To you all I take my hat off for making me feel so welcome.
As a legacy we now have SBSC up and running, partner groups that support themselves, a voice into Microsoft from the smaller end of the partner community and a better understanding of the motivations of both Microsoft and our partners. We also have a new level of engagement with customers. I wish I could take credit for all of this, but I am just a figurehead for a great team of people inside Microsoft.
A nice chap called Mark in the OEM team will be helping to drive Cougar knowledge through the community when the time comes (no, this is not the time yet, trust me), SBSC has been supported by Jen as many of you would have seen from the e-mails and SBS has a product manager who cares in the form of Sonal. Finally campaigns like Mr Busy prove that while we still have some implementation details to improve on, the ideas are getting better and better and the team responsible for these will continue to push forward on this front.
They say you can take the boy out of the small business, but not small business out of the boy and this will be true for me - the blog will continue and I will still try to be a voice of reason and rant as I feel appropriate and pass on comments to the right people internally within Microsoft, just realise that I have less time to do this now. This points to the fact that I will still be with Microsoft. My next challenge is to help those ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) who wish it to move further along a path with Microsoft to do so, whether they already work with us today or not. This should be a fun challenge - viewing all of the Microsoft world as a platform rather than a solution, but this is something I have always said.
To those I have already told, thank-you for your kind words, to everyone else, good luck, don't go away as I will not, but remember that this is a business for all of us and the better the feedback the better the business!!
take care and see you soon!!
ttfn
David
Posted
Fri, Jul 6 2007 3:00 PM
by
David Overton
Filed under: SBS 2003, Office System, Support and Tools, Community, Personal, SBSC, Microsoft, Office 2007, SBS 2003 R2, Small business, Partner, If you only read one post today, SBS Cougar