Services for Microsoft ISV Partners: Advising On Strategy, Product, GTM & Sales Execution. If you’re a Microsoft ISV building and selling SaaS offerings that run on the Microsoft Cloud, (particularly Azure and Dynamics), we can help you to refine your proposition and grow your business with Microsoft.

Working with the Oaka Studio team, helping current and potential Microsoft partners to build stronger and more successful partnerships.

I'm delighted to join the board of the IAMCP UK, especially working on the connection with Microsoft itself. This is a part-time, voluntary thing, so I'm still working with clients via Mulsarna and Oaka Studio.

I managed the global relationships with a small number of strategically important ISV partners.Moving from focussing on Azure ISV development into Business Applications, a hitherto niche part of the Microsoft ecosystem where Dynamics ISVs had been building their business for years, this role gave me the opportunity to learn about a new part of the Microsoft Cloud ecosystem (Dynamics 365). I worked with a suitably diverse array of partners who get involved in everything from building quotes for complex projects, assembling and securing documents, soup-to-nuts vertical ERP solutions and sales force enablement which bridges the gap between CRM and the tools that sellers actually want to use; their day-to-day business comms and collab tools. Also, there were large and established ISVs who wanted to strengthen their portfolio in Microsoft's Power Platform, so my experience of Azure and Dynamics, along with the connective tissue of the way Microsoft's field sales org worked, was crucial.This saw me involved with some partners whose sales and adoption cycles are measure in multiple years, some who have thousands of AppSource leads every month. Some will spend $MILLIONS hosting their solution in Azure and others who have sold some of their core IP to Microsoft and are now differentiating through adding specialist vertical integrations to it. Relative to the rest of Microsoft and our amazing partner ecosystem, this business applications space is where Azure was 5-7 years ago - mostly not well understood yet just about to explode into the "mainstream".

I took the opportunity to go "back to the floor" to talk with ISV partners about a then-new technology, "Windows Azure". It gave us a great chance to engage in new business areas, from TV whitespace broadband providers to companies indexing thousands of hours of sports videos to provide easily searched footage that was licensed to broadcasters (eg Wayne Rooney goals, Roger Federer lifting a trophy etc).The role developed to help Microsoft's partners who develop and sell software products to deliver their offerings using the Azure cloud platform, initially at a time when infrastructure services were not even part of Azure. I became something of an expert in the nascent "internet of things", at least from a business development perspective, and wrote an award-winning ThinkWeek paper setting out how Microsoft should approach IoT as it attracts partners to use Azure as their platform for storing and analyzing data.

I was sales manager for a group of Solution Sales Professionals (SSPs) covering the Corporate Accounts space (working with 4,000 customers and teams of inside sales and field sales reps to generate and close opportunities across infrastructure, productivity and data workloads). I ran the technical group within Microsoft UK's largest revenue-generating division, helping our partners develop their Microsoft businesses, grow new technical and sales capabilities.I was responsible for the partner recruitment and business development function that brought SI partners into the Microsoft ecosystem (particularly switching from competitors' offerings), and I led the team of Partner Technology Specialists who help partners accelerate their readiness and capability.

Returned to the UK subsidiary to work on large messaging opportunities, covering both Exchange and the ascendent Office Communications Server real-time messaging platform. As well as involvement in large customer deals and competitive situations, I was a regular speaker at TechEd and other international customer events, as well as part of maybe the most fun roadshow event ever, the Exchange Unplugged Tour, where we got to talk to hundreds of people every "gig", held at music venues and theatres. It's the only time I've ever (arguably) been paid to play the guitar in front of an audience.

I stayed UK based but worked directly for the Exchange Server product group in Redmond as part of the Customer eXPerience team, dealing with large-scale customers and working on feeding back into product development cycles. I ran the world-wide Technology Adoption Program for Exchange 2003, ran the internal Exhcange TSP Insiders program and was the product group coordinator for the exclusive Exchange Ranger program.

Pre-sales technical architect for Exchange Server & associated technologies. Managed team of pre-sales Systems Engineers covering infrastructure (Windows Server, security, Exchange, LCS/OCS, mobility), working with enterprise customers across many sectors.

Worked in the Energy & Utilities division on telemetry projects for water companies (VAX/VMS/ELN and C) then the Information Systems Division (ISD) implementing both internal systems and consulting to external clients in aspects of Microsoft technology. As project manager in ISD, I designed and one of the first global production Microsoft Exchange Server environments (which replaced Logica's global email backbone and directory synch systems, running on Exchange 4.0.

Researcher in Human Computer Interaction, founding member of the University Interactive Learning Systems group. Designed & implemented Novell NetWare infrastructure for the Computer Studies department, providing email, file & printer sharing for the first time to all staff and students.

Internship - developing CASE tools for EOSE, the largest software project in EMEA, written in PL/1.