The hills were alive with the sound of Microsoft ISVs

Ahhhh.  New Orleans in July.  When crawfish jump into the pan to get out of the heat. Yet all things Microsoft head there for the Worldwide Partners conference. And, as I said before, when you have the cure for what ails the Microsoft ISV, you go too. So we did. I have to say the crowd did seem to be 3 parts Microsoft employees to 1 part partner, but at around 6,000 attendees, that still leaves a goodly number of folks who want what AppZero has.

AppZero software can and does slash the time it takes to get software up and running for proof of concepts (POC) on customer sites and in the cloud. From days to hours or minutes. (I detailed the game-changing value AppZero brings to ISV POC work in general in my last blog: Cloud + POC = 'Obvious' ISV Revenue Growth. But Microsoft ISVs have very specific, additional considerations.)

Microsoft just entered its fiscal 2010 with big plans for its new year. Starting with the roll-out of Windows 7, the company plans to launch Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Azure. Have I forgotten anything? Probably.

In addition to slogging through economically feisty waters doing their day to day business, Microsoft ISVs will be furiously investigating and evaluating the 'what' and 'when' of incorporating these releases into their offerings. Then they'll be busy doing the work, making the sales calls, and - as spring follows winter - jumping into a new round of POC engagements as their customers say "show me".

There is so much work to be done just to stay current, never mind competitive. This is the time for ISVs to conserve and leverage their technical talent. And the fact is that any time an SE spends installing or configuring an ISV's POC is wasted time - zero revenue and zero constructive productivity.

But, you say, "It has to be done." What has to be done? POCs? Absolutely. Days and hours getting it up and running? Absolutely not. Installing once into an AppZero VAA, gives you instant proof of concept (POC) with no installation or configuration. Repeatable, predictable, lightning fast.

The math is indisputable. The Microsoft partners got it.

The only question that came up was, "Can't we do this in a virtual appliance (VA)/virtual machine (VM)?" Fair question. Our datacenter customers run VAAs in VMs all the time. But, if you're an ISV who is looking to simplify distributing your application to your prospects and customers, the VA/VM approach comes with some baggage. You will have licensing issues if you send your application off, complete with pieces of an MS OS. Issues you won't have using AppZero's VAA approach.

Bonus: If you also want to deliver your application to a cloud environment, that same VAA works unchanged. The ISVs we talked with liked the idea of having only one delivery container for customer premise (virtual or physical) and cloud. Less complexity. And when the POC succeeds, don't you want to harvest the work your folks have done with a smooth transition to production? Check. Check. Check.

You know, when you have paradigm-shifting technology in your go-to-market portfolio, you tend to think big ... complex ... market-making ... But the Microsoft ISVs have a real, straight-forward problem that AppZero just solves - without changing the world. Without even changing the business model. What it does change, is that it smashes pre-existing economics of doing 'business as usual'. AppZero makes easy and elegant POCs. Simple.