Manchester SBSC User Group

A couple of Thursday's ago I headed up to Manchester to join the SBSC Manchester User Group. It was a really interesting evening with full agenda.

The evening kicked off with one of the members, Leslie Cupitt of Business Solutions Ltd , delivered a comprehensive session on Vista 64 bit in an SBS environment and his experiences. This was a really interesting session and Leslie has kindly provided me with his Word document he created and is happy to share it with other SBSC partners. I am looking into how we can do this in a formal way (through the Partner Portal) but if anyone is keen to get visibility sooner then drop me an email (emilyl@microsoft.com) and I will send it over to you.

Following Leslie's presentations, Vijay Riyait updated the group on his experiences at WPC and updates from a PAL perspective on the SBSC programme. Go here to see his blog post regarding the evening's meeting. For those who are yet to meet Vijay, he is a very active UK PAL who is working hard to help build a sense of community amongst the UK's SBSC partners. Check out Vijay's blog: The Sikh Geek for his updates on the PAL programme and comments around the SBSC and small business.

Also at the Manchester SBSC meeting was Gareth Hall - Microsoft UK's Windows Server Product (including SBS and EBS). Gareth and I went along to discuss and gather feedback on the the SBSC programme and to listen to our SBSC partner's requirements for the SBS 2008 launch. We, along with a virtual team at Microsoft, are currently working on these plans and hope to share more information within the coming weeks. Stay tuned to this RSS feed for more information!

For those in the Manchester area, next month's meeting will include a session on Office Accounting 2008 or and SPID overview. For more details and to find out how you can participate visit the North West Partner Community Site.

Best regards,

Emily Lambert - Channel Development Manager, Microsoft.