Converging Business Solutions with Information Worker Solutions

As I spent time with an up-and-coming Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS, now known as Dynamics) partner today who clearly understood the maturation/commoditization of the MBS opportunity, the following occurred to me:

-- MBS partners who are going to win are going to expand their business into Information Worker, by building it themselves, finding the best partners, or acquiring practices

-- MBS partners have a preferred position, in many cases, of already having resources with strong business and technical acumen close to the business decision makers whose mindshare Microsoft craves so badly

-- Information Worker (IW) partners will be well-served to partner with MBS partners to blend their technical skills with the MBS partners' business acumen (and add to their CIO-heavy rolodexes a bunch of CFOs)

-- Microsoft is blurring the edges between Information Worker and Business Solutions partners

·         by merging the Business Solutions and Information Worker divisions

·         with their "People-Ready" campaign

·         with strategy of selling MSCRM through volume licensing, LARs, etc., and as a hosted service

·         with PerformancePoint Server, a set of applications that span reporting, planning and analysis

·         with SharePoint Portal Server, which serves as the foundation for Business Portal

This trend will be interesting to follow, especially for smaller, "lifestyle" partners who are either basing their business model on the margins remaining from the waning "dealer/VAR" model or focused only on MBS or IW and perhaps not capable of investing enough to have capability around the other line of business...