Following our previous post referring to Joe Wilcox, comes this excellent example of why Joe is one of the best Microsoft watching thinkers around.

His analysis of Microsoft activities is spot-on in our opinion. You can read the post yourself, but the part that pricked our ears was his discussion about Microsoft partnering:

No company on the planet partners better than Microsoft-and that’s one of the most important factors to the company’s continued success. Affiliates and other potential partners will be harder-pressed as the economy slows. Microsoft should show them the money, how they could make more by partnering with Microsoft. While I expect Microsoft to see ad revenues decline with the economy, losses can be contained and partners snatched away from Google.

Source: Microsoft Watch

We totally agree with this. Microsoft has spent years fostering its Partner ecosystem, and is at pains to avoid competing with partners. In an economic downturn, partners will rely even more on Microsoft and in turn Microsoft – if remaining true to it principles – can gain much traction in key areas, all thanks to its partners. Joe’s comment above is in the context of advertising, but it applies equally to other areas such as Cloud and managed services offerings.

If we were a Microsoft Partner we’d be paying particular attention to key partner opportunities over the coming weeks and months. The economy may be gloomy, but there will be big opportunities for partners savvy enough to pick the key areas.

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We’re not really sure how to take Joe Wilcox’s post on the I’m a PC campaign. He seems to think it is a failure. That’s fine. Because we don’t really tune into his advertising related posts for his opinion anyway.

No, whenever there’s a critical post about Microsoft we tune in to have a good laugh at the comments he gets.

You should too. They’re a hoot. Out come the usual cronies and wackos. Joe really needs to invest in a good moderation tool for his blog.

For the record, we here at Microsoft confidential are big fans of his blog. He may be critical at times (as are we) but he’s always well considered. Keep it up Joe.

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