Cloud Computing & On-Line Services:

This is the first of several blogs on my experience at the Microsoft World partner Conference held in Washington DC, during the week of July 12^th. I share this with you because I believe this conference marked a BIG change for my business and for yours. I’ll share more about this with you in the coming weeks.

The major theme of the conference was THE CLOUD and the potential of On-Line Services. So I’ll plunge right in and answer the question of why I think this conference marked a BIG change for my business; because I think the cloud can:

· Save me money

· Simplify my technology environment

· Let me do more with less

For this note THE CLOUD from Microsoft means:

· Exchange

· SharePoint

· LiveMeeting

· Office Communications

· CRM – Customer Relationship Management

This is not a complete list of offerings but is where I’d like to focus initially.

Now some background on how I came to this point of view. I have been going to this conference for several years and have always felt rewarded for attending. The first thing that registered with me this year was the number and composition of the attendees.

· More than 9000 Partners

· More than 13000 Attendees

· More than 130 Countries represented

In addition Bill Clinton was the featured keynote speaker but this is a topic for a separate piece.

Another thing that registered with me, in addition to being more international, the technical focus of the attendees was also shifting. In the past, system integrators, Partners that worked with clients to understand and use Microsoft technologies seemed to be everywhere. Well they were still present but developers, Partners writing and building things to be used by clients and integrators seemed to be more visible.

I mention these points because I think they are contributors to why I came away from this conference with a different point of view than in other years.

This conference was a BIG change for RoseBud and I believe the same reasons why, are applicable to your business. In the coming days I’ll share more about my change in point of view – what’s the background to the change, what are we doing in our business to take advantage of this situation and what it means to our clients as we work with them.

In the meanwhile if I can help with this or any other technology topic - please contact me.