By Paul DeGroot [bio]
Posted: Dec. 3, 2007

• Illustration: Unisys Field Readiness Kit

The following is the full text of an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

As Microsoft becomes more selective about the partners with whom it goes to market in the enterprise, several of the company's largest partners are ensuring that they are literally on Microsoft's map. By constructing and staffing laboratories near Microsoft's campus, they can stay in daily touch with staff at the company's headquarters, work closely with Microsoft engineers on new products, and give their own engineers access to Microsoft product and marketing teams when developing their own solutions.

Staying Close

Within about one mile of Microsoft's sprawling campus at the top of a hill in Redmond, WA campus, many of Microsoft's largest partners have their names on office parks and buildings.

These offices have a dual purpose. They serve local customers, just as the partner's offices in other cities do; but they are also the locus of these partners' Microsoft relationship efforts. One sign of the importance of the Microsoft relationship is that these offices are not across Lake Washington in Seattle, but are in or near Redmond, to capitalize on their proximity to Microsoft.

For example, the Unisys office, staffed by the company's Microsoft alliance staff, is an easy walk from Microsoft's campus. A group within the alliance organization, the Unisys-Microsoft Solutions Alliance Technology Center (SATC) had its origins in Unisys' efforts to work closely with Microsoft on Jupiter, a planned combination of BizTalk, Commerce Server, and Content Management Server. Though Jupiter was cancelled, the collaboration proved beneficial for both companies, enough that Microsoft itself invested in the Unisys Partner Solution Lab.

That lab includes an ES7000, Unisys' premier enterprise server offering (capable of using 64 processors and 512GB of memory), and several commodity servers, all in a highly virtualized environment and connected to EMC storage; offices for Unisys personnel and engineers who work on Unisys projects that utilize Microsoft products; and offices for customers who visit the facility and can work with both companies to design advanced customized solution.

One office houses a Microsoft consultant who works at the lab full time, rubbing shoulders with a senior architect from Unisys and other staff members. Together they help develop new solutions and fine-tune Unisys solutions. For example, Unisys is migrating the Child Welfare Information System from its original Powerbuilder/Oracle foundation to a .NET application. The solution is a mission-critical application for many Unisys clients, but between Unisys and Microsoft engineers, the laboratory quickly developed a proof of concept demonstrating the advantages of .NET, such as easy customization and a more effective user interface.

Working Together

Judy Mirkin, a Microsoft global business development manager, works with Unisys to ensure that the partner remains visible to Microsoft product and marketing teams. Many Microsoft staff are unaware of the lab and what it can do for them—in some cases, it is easier for them to fund development of a key component at the Unisys lab than it is to find scarce development resources at Microsoft, with the added benefit that Unisys sales personnel can identify and work with customers who can prove the product's value in the field.

The companies work closely to align Unisys products and capabilities with Microsoft's sales priorities. Dozens of Unisys solutions have been carefully mapped to Microsoft customer campaigns and to Microsoft's sales tactics and vocabulary. The description of Child Welfare Information System, for example, identifies the following:

• Business decision makers to whom it is relevant
• Customer "pains" that it addresses
• Infrastructure optimization categories (application and business productivity, in this case) that it fits into
• Customer Campaigns (e.g., "Drive Real-World Business Processes" and "Improve Compliance") that it can support
• Microsoft products that it uses (such as SQL Server, Office, and SharePoint Server).

These elements have been pulled together into a full-color, 80-page Field Readiness Kit (with both Microsoft and Unisys part numbers) that Mirkin distributes inside the company and to enterprise account managers, such as those in public sector accounts, where Unisys is particularly strong.

(For an image of the kit, see "Unisys Field Readiness Kit".)

No Charge, but Commercial Purpose

Another benefit that partners gain from close proximity to Microsoft is exposure to next-generation development methodologies. As one of the leading developer tools vendors, with important new investments in software modeling and collaboration, Microsoft is a worldwide center for developer excellence and innovation from which partners can benefit. At the same time, Microsoft can test its theories against real-world requirements in partner labs.

Michael O'Connell, director of the Microsoft Solutions Alliance Technology Center for Unisys, notes that the Unisys lab is not a profit center and does not charge for the work that it does. Still, "everything we do has an external customer focus," whether it is a current customer with a complex problem, a possible customer who needs to see a proof of concept or some other demonstration that a project is feasible before committing to a purchase, or a Unisys business unit integrating Microsoft's software into a repeatable solution, the case with the Public Sector group and the Child Welfare Information System solution.

The SATC lab also has a history of building solutions frameworks, such as the BizTalk Server—based Information Sharing Management Framework, that underlies the company's Integrated Justice and other solutions.

An emerging focus of the Unisys lab is development of "software factories," which are of interest to both Microsoft and Unisys. For Microsoft, software factories requires not only high-quality development tools, efficient collaboration and workflow, and software modeling, all of them targets of the company's Visual Studio product. For Unisys, software factories would allow the company to make efficient reuse of code, so that software for one U.S. state could quickly be modified for use in another, or important components of a business intelligence solution written for an insurance company could also be used for a telecommunications firm.

Resources

New partner selection processes were described in "Solution Plans Define Enterprise Partner Relationships" on page 30 of the Dec. 2007 Update.

The collaboration and modeling features of Visual Studio are described in the Nov. 2005 Research Report, "Visual Studio 2005 and Team System."

The Web site for the Unisys Solutions Alliance Technology Center is www.unisys.com/about__unisys/partners/alphabetical__listing/microsoft/microsoft__programs/jupiter1/index.htm.