Written By: Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online

Yesterday, I announced our FY11 BPOS deployment strategy at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2010. BPOS sales are growing and it is important to have the necessary resources from Microsoft and partners to deploy those customers. In FY11 our objectives for BPOS deployment are to:

• Increase velocity of customers’ move to BPOS while simultaneously reduce time and effort required to deploy, especially for our larger customers, so that customers can realize value faster from BPOS
• Make deployment cost more predictable and ensure that customers have a deployment plan at time of sale of BPOS, and establish time-to-deploy standards to manage customer expectations
• Scale our partner ecosystem through guidance, training, and deployment support to facilitate them to deploy BPOS to thousands of customers across all segments

Partners will play an important part in BPOS-S deployments across all customer segments, and we expect them to sell deployment to thousands of their customers in small, mid-market, and enterprise segments. To enable partners to scale to do these thousands of BPOS-S deployments, Microsoft will:

• Publish Microsoft Online Deployment Guide (MODG) on “Deployment Central” website
• Deliver the following benefits to Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Partners (a new partner program)
  • Develop and deliver technical deployment training based on MODG
  • Provide deployment support to partners based on size of deal to help partners meet Microsoft’s quality and timing deployment standards and to help them build their deployment expertise (3 deals maximum per partner)
    • Up to 40 hours for each deal between 500 to 2400 seats
    • Up to 160 hours for each deal > 2400 seats
• Microsoft Cloud Accelerate partners will also have 20 hours of support as part of the program benefit which can be used for the consultative support on BPOS deployments

We expect partners to build the necessary expertise to offer BPOS-S deployment to customers as partners go through training and the hands-on experience on BPOS deployments. We will publish a Recommended Deployment Partners List on deployment central website by end of Q1 FY’11 to highlight the expertise of these partners to customers for BPOS deployments. If partners meet the following conditions, they will be eligible to be placed on the list:

• Are members of the Microsoft Cloud Accelerate program
• Have completed deployment training per the Microsoft Cloud Accelerate program
• Have deployed 3 customers with high customer satisfaction meeting Microsoft’s deployment standards for time-to-deploy (per the table above)

We believe that with this approach of investing in training and enablement of partners today, we will develop a vibrant partner ecosystem which will be ready to deploy the growing number of BPOS deployments in the coming years. In the near-term, as partners develop the required skill sets, Microsoft will provide leadership and assistance to both customers and partners to get through the BPOS deployments quickly and smoothly.

We will also continue to offer BPOS-S deployment, now called Microsoft Premier Deployment (MPD), to large BPOS-S customers in FY11 since we want to provide additional deployment capacity and expertise needed in the market to meet the accelerating demand for deployment from our expanding customer base.

Microsoft Premier Deployment (MPD) will include preparation for BPOS directory, messaging coexistence, messaging data migration (mail, calendar, contacts), and onsite and offsite deployment consultant (as appropriate). MPD will not include moving data and apps to SharePoint Online, custom development, AD federation/synch with MS Online, client software deployment, change management, etc.,.

We have decided to always offer/bid deployment with Microsoft’s BPOS-Standard sales proposal in enterprise segments where the number of seats purchased by customer exceeds 2,400. Customers will always have the option to purchase deployment from Microsoft, partners, or to do the deployment themselves. If the customer chooses Microsoft, then deployment will be delivered by MPD. MPD will not require any partner to sub-contract to us for their deployments since deployment of BPOS–Standard does not require anyone to physically enter the BPOS datacenters.

We have also streamlined the process of selling MPD. When Microsoft submits a deployment proposal, the account team will submit a deployment Statement of Work (SOW) using a standard MPD template and price it using a publicly available rate card. Microsoft will publish standard rates on per seat basis to provide customers clarity and predictability of cost.

MPD team will also be investing significantly to deliver the Microsoft Online Deployment Guide (MODG), deployment training, the deployment support benefits for partners, as outlined above, to help them build their expertise to deploy BPOS-S to their customers. I encourage you to learn about the resources available to you and to use the partner benefits at Deployment Central website.