“Our small and mid-market business (SMB) leadership group, and specifically Birger Steen, has played an instrumental role in bridging the gap between the SMBs and technology through their leadership in the past year.  Microsoft remains committed to investing in small and mid-market businesses and our partners who serve them.   The list of products and offerings that we launched last year specifically for the SMBs is a great testament to the priority and focus we have with this customer segment.  I am even more excited with the opportunities that cloud computing can bring to SMBs now and in the near future.  We appreciate all that Birger has done and wish him well.” 

Steen spent eight years at Microsoft.  He moved to Redmond after leading Microsoft’s sales and marketing operations in Norway and Russia. A search for Steen’s replacement has begun. 

We are sorry that the Microsoft Partner community lost an advocate in this leader.  On the other hand, we are glad for Paralllels; they’re gaining his expertise and leadership.  Congratulations on your new role as President.  We are glad to see his career advancing and hope to see him  at future industry events. 

Varvid speaks with Wade DeVore, NetVision Consulting of Arlington Texas who was impressed with the Blueprinting and Process Automation aspects of Connectwise that were demonstrated at the Partner Summit. Wade has also committed to personally calling five customers per week, as suggested by Verne Harnish’s talk given on Friday morning at the 2009 ConnectWise Partner Summit in Orlando.

Chris Bates, The Computer Hut of Little Rock, AR appreciated Keynote Speaker Verne Harnish’s message of focusing on the customer’s needs for loss avoidance.

Key in this is emphasizing cross-department, full-team communication and meetings to ensure all hands know what’s going on, in general terms, with the company week to week.

Verne Harnish is founder and CEO of Gazelles, Inc., an outsourced corporate university for mid-size firms, and has published the book “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm”

Chris was speaking with Pat Dolan of Varvid.com at the ConnectWise Partner Summit held this past week in Orlando.

Pat Dolan of Varvid.com speaks with Ed Laprade of Adnet Technologies Inc. of Windsor Connecticut, a CPLS authorized Microsoft Training Center at the ConnectWise Partner Summit in Orlando.

Adnet utilizes Quosal, a quote/proposal generation application that integrates with ConnectWise, and Laprade really appreciates the seemlessness and productivity this affords Adnet.

Christy Sacco, Director of Operations for HTG Peer Groups speaks with Pat Dolan of Varvid.com about the Q Forums HTG presented to members during the ConnectWise Partner Summit in Orlando Florida.

Over 300 HTG members representing 220 member companies, over 25% of the total attendees were at the Summit this year.

Gregg runs Integral Systems in San Diego CA and this is his first ConnectWise Partner Summit. Gregg has rave reviews for the Partner Summit, this is his first ever and says, although he has attended a lot of confereneces in the past 24 months, this is the most professional and most informative/useful one he’s been to in a long time. The quality of the attendees and their collective experience make the ConnectWise Partner Conference worth attending. Gregg spoke with Pat Dolan of Varvid.com

Pat Dolan of Varvid.com speaks with Kim Trif of Trif Technologies of Dallas at the ConnectWise Partner Summit about the keynote speaker Chris Anderson of Wired. Kim was concerned about the ‘whole idea of free’ but after Chris’s speech, has put the concept in a new perspective.

Patrick Dolan of Varvid.com speaks with Brett Jaffee of IT4 from Woburn MA, Cloud Computing specialist and ConnectWise Partner since the first Summit and founder of the Northeast ConnectWise user group. Brett is excited to be at the Summit, as his group is formalizing its relationship at this meeting. Brett also echoes the sentiment that there is nothing like meeting peers face to face and sharing both technical and business operational knowledge.

Howard Cunningham Jr. of Macro Systems LLC of Fairfax Virginia has attended every ConnectWise Partner Summit shares why VARS should use ConnectWise. In the last five years since Macro has been using ConnectWise, they have doubled their revenues without increasing staff levels. The functionality and efficiency ConnectWise brings to an IT organization has been proven to Howard. Cunningham also ‘gives back’ to the ConnectWise community by participating in many IT groups and forums. He says contributing to groups and forums not only gives him a sense of pride in being able to assist peers in similar situations, but he has been able to utilize others’ expertise when he has a challenging situation. Howard Cunningham Jr. was speaking with Pat Dolan of Varvid.com at the ConnectWise Partner Summit in Orlando Florida.

Dan Shundoff of Intellicom and an HTG member speaks with Aaron Booker of Varvid.com. Dan has been an HTG member for 4 years and is President of Intellicom, a Microsoft Gold Partner and provider of outsourced technology solutions in Central Nebraska. HTG commissioned the University of Nebraska at Kearny (UNK) business management group to perform several studies of members’ regular communications, deep relationships, trust and accountability metrics in an effort to improve the value, relevance and accuracy of HTG education and management programs. Dan reports these studies are showing significant improvement by just being able to measure baseline and progress toward everything from business growth to customer satisfaction.