First post by Andre

Hi all,

This is Andre Kieft from the Dutch PTS team. So let me first introduce myself and then see if I can share some useful info with you.

Almost 9 years I've been at Microsoft now and started off in the Product Support Services (PSS) group. Here I supported products like Office 2000, Windows NT/2000, SMS 1.2/2.0, Exchange 2000/2003 and last not but not least SharePoint 2001/2003/2007. This last product I really liked and determined that this was the future for me. I stuck with it and became a team member of the MOSS beta team for a few months. This was a really great experience! After this I moved into a TechLead role where I coordinated the overall SharePoint support quality and customer satisfaction throughout EMEA. Just at the moment SharePoint 2007 went RTM I moved into the Services Group within Microsoft as an IW Consultant. In this role I really learned a lot and gained a lot of customer experience. The most important thing I learned when implementing a SharePoint solution, is that technology is often not the problem, but rather other business related matters like setting up requirements, relating back to business goals, setting up processes and taxonomies etc. As of May 1st this year I started as a IW Partner Technology Specialist here at Microsoft. In this role I will be mainly focused on partner readiness. Here is my official role description:

With focus on IW and business productivity products, the Partner Technology Specialist - Biz Prod is a specialized role intended to both enable and support partner success in the technical pre-sales process. The job’s primary purpose is that of enabling partner presales capability and co-selling on qualified opportunities. Some of the activities a PTS will engage in include: selecting and enabling high-potential “growth” partners for in-depth capacity/skills development, working in active sales engagements with partners on well-qualified opportunities and delivering presales presentations at one-to-many breadth-partner events.

My focus for this fiscal year will mainly be on SharePoint, BI and Search. As Microsoft is quite new to the BI market, I'm really looking forward engaging with partners in this area. And with our new FAST acquisition I will expect search to become really hot.

Just some other personal notes: Today I turned 32 (what a coincidence ), I have a wife and daughter and when I still have some time left, I like to watch movies and play xbox games. I also try to stay healthy by playing squash with some Microsoft colleagues once a week.

Anyway, enough about me. Let me share an interesting new BI whitepaper link with you:

Empower Your People with Self-Service Business Intelligence
www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ebc35869-9982-4acf-bfd6-8923c9464465&DisplayLang=en
This white paper reviews current trends and challenges and explores the advantages of an appropriate and effective BI solution in an ERP environment. It also discusses how Microsoft Dynamics® AX, along with other Microsoft technologies and integrated programs—such as Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server—can help organizations harness the potential of information, use it to empower everyone in the organization and supply chain, and turn the resulting insight into competitive advantage.

More to come next post...

Regards,
Andre