Microsoft announced this week the availability of Office Next Customer Preview

The next release features an intuitive design that works beautifully with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard across new Windows devices, including tablets. The new Office is social and unlocks modern scenarios in reading, note-taking, meetings and communications and will be delivered to subscribers through a cloud service that is always up to date.

With this blog post we want to draw your attention to some key assets that were made available:

Steve Ballmer announced this week the new Office. Explore the keynote here.
Get Office Customer Preview here.
Get your Office 365 Tenant here.
Get the Exchange/Lync/Sharepoint server bits here.
More information on Technet is available here.
More information on MSDN is available here.

Please already bookmark our key events after holiday:

• 2012 Partner Connect (Sales Event) 11^th October
• Partner Bootcamp Week ‘The One and Only’   16^th – 18^th October
• October 16th Exchange & Office 365 “What’s New” Technical training Register now!
  October 17th SharePoint & Office 365 SMB Technical training Register now!
  October 18th Lync Community Technical Training Register now!
  October 19th SharePoint Enterprise “What’s New” Technical training Register now!

You can find an overview of all technical and sales readiness activities concerning Office Next and reserve already your seat at the Office Next Partner Page.

Enjoy Office Next & Enjoy your Holiday!

Scammers active in BeNeLux

Yesterday, we were made aware by the Computer Crime Unit that scammers are active in the BeNeLux market, trying to take over computers from innocent users. They call the person stating they are from Microsoft and that their PC is infected. They instruct to go to a specific website which then installs malware to be able to take over the PC completely. You can read our official statement here (in Dutch) or here (in French). Please spread the word amongst your customers and friends.

Your input is needed… Help a student!

A few months ago a complete make-over has been done on our communications to partners. As you probably all have noticed the Microsoft newsletter to partners was completely reworked and since June all partners have the possibility to opt in for extra newsletters depending on the partner’ field of interest. After executing this make-over and letting it run for a few months we are interested in what you as a partner think about our new concept. With your feedback we can keep working on our communications to partners and keep improving it! We want partners to get the information they need, on the right time and this in a way we are sure it is comfortable for partners to read. In this way we are sure that all important info will reach you as a partner in a good way. Again we aim to you, partners, to fill in this short survey and help us improve our communications to you!

Survey in Dutch – Survey in French

This survey is being done by student Yanne Lintermans as part of her internship. So, if you don’t do this for us, do it for her.

Exclusive Nokia Lumia Promotion for BeLux Partners

As you certainly know, Windows Phone is having great momentum with Nokia, and yet we want to have another boost. That’s why today, we are announcing a special B2B Partner Promo.

Partners have been telling us, they would like to get more value out of their partnership. Well, here it is. For partners from Belgium & Luxembourg, with at least one gold, one silver competency or that are Cloud Essentials can buy Nokia Lumia 800’s at a very special low price*. On top of that, for the first 80 orders of more than 10 devices, we’ll give 1 Nokia Lumia 800 for free*!!! First come, first served.

This is a now-or-never offer for you as a partner (promotion ends May 31, 2012).

You can equip all your employees with great smartphones, or work out a promo for your B2B customers.

For more details, go to the Dutch or French promo sites.

*full details, terms and conditions on promo pages (see links above)

Office 365 Hands-On Session: April 3rd

Come and attend this first occurrence of this Office 365 hands-on session on the 3rd of April, from 14:00 to 17:00 ! Come and try for yourself the product ! Office 365 is a simple, competitive and easy-to-use collaboration tool in the Cloud!! Come and see how the Cloud can work for your business. Office 365 enables you to: > keep familiarity—while getting flexibility > keep reliability—while getting scalability > stay in control—while going virtually anywhere Agenda of the session · Presentation of Office 365 (the Cloud offer, how your data is kept secure, the pricing …) · Concrete examples of Belgium SMEs who have chosen Office 365! · Hands-on ! Come and try for yourself this simple collaboration tool with the other attendees Important: you don’t have to be technical to attend this session. All types of profiles and users are welcome! Speakers: Patrick Viaene, Cloud Sales Manager at Microsoft Belux Jacques Denies, School Technology Innovation Center Manager at Microsoft For more information and to register click

Your opinion counts… Take the opportunity…

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve relationships with our customers and partners, Microsoft will conduct a periodic worldwide Global Relationship Study via an independent market research company, IPSOS.

From March 8^th onwards, you may receive e-mail invitations sent out from Microsoft Feedback (feedback@e-mail.microsoft.com) requesting you to participate to this Satisfaction Survey. We are committed to increasing partner satisfaction and highly value the feedback we receive through this research, thanking you in advance for taking the time to participate.

Ethical entrepreneurship and the role we play

It goes without saying that compliancy and ethics are high on company’s agendas these days. Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and local variations are forcing companies to be at their best behavior. But on the other hand, it should be something obvious. In Belgium specifically, there are organizations who focus on the ethics of doing business, especially in the IT sector. Microsoft is a big supporter of such initiatives (NL – FR). That’s why I would like to promote exceptionally an event that will take place on March 15th in the Business Faculty. Feel free to download the invite in French or Dutch.

Toronto is ready for WPC2012

I literally just got back from a great week of planning and site visits in Toronto, and I must say I was impressed with the way this city is ready for WPC 2012.

From a partner experience point of view, it’s going to be a lot more friendly than LA. Hotels are nearby the convention center, lots of restaurants and bars in the downtown area. And Toronto is a very “walkable” city.

We have also spent a full day on the content of the conference. All related to the best kind of information partners can get. I cannot disclose too much at the moment but stay tuned because more information is coming soon.

So if you plan to attend WPC, start preparing now. We have got some great events up our sleeves, so make sure you register as soon as it opens.

I’m really confident about where we are with the conference to make this the best one so far.

Wie volg jij? / Qui suivez-vous ?

Every year, we ask our partners and customers for feedback. On many occasions, partners have raised communication and the overload of it.

Introducing…. www.netgenoeg.info or www.justeassez.info, your one-stop shop where you – as a partner – can indicate what information you want and where to find it. Because let’s face it, it’s not always that clear who to follow on Twitter, or to become member of what LinkedIn group. Let alone finding the right email in the overload in your inbox.

Our goal is to send fewer mails, but more tuned to your needs. You will also see different colors in the mails. There are 3 flavors:

• the green ones: information on MPN or generic partner events
• the blue ones: anything that goes out from a sub community of partners
• the pink(ish) ones: all relevant information on training

So, go the site, indicate what your areas of interests are and you can immediately subscribe to the relevant newsletters or join the LinkedIn groups.

Let us know what you think about this and you can send us your feedback: via email, Twitter, LinkedIn and yes, even by regular post.

 

Register now for TechDays 2012 and benefit from 15% Early Bird discount

Starting today (November 2, 2011) registrations for the Belgian TechDays 2012 are OPEN!

About Microsoft TechDays
Year after year thousands of technology professionals come together to network with peers and experts, while diving deep into Microsoft technologies and learning about the latest products and solutions. Microsoft TechDays is one of the premier technical events in Belgium & Luxembourg and not to be missed.

With more technology areas than ever to explore, TechDays 2012 is the perfect place to get up-to-speed on the latest Microsoft technologies and up-level your skill on the technology you use every day. Content will be delivered by industry experts and Microsoft product team members.

Register now
Join our 10^th anniversary edition in a new location (Kinepolis Imagibraine – Braine l’Alleud) and learn about:
• Windows & Internet Explorer
• Windows Server & Hyper-V
• Windows Phone 7 development
• System Center 2012 & Windows Intune
• Tooling and languages with Visual Studio, C# and VB
• Cloud development with Windows Azure Platform
• Web development with HTML5, JavaScript and ASP.NET
• …

Kinepolis Imagibraine
After 3 great years in Metropolis Antwerp we’re moving TechDays to a new location: Kinepolis Imagibraine in Braine l’Alleud (Eigenbrakel). The movie theatre is easily reachable both by car and via public transportation.

  

If you’re coming by train: the Braine l’Alleud train station is very well connected with major cities in Belgium:

- Antwerp: direct connection from Antwerpen-Centraal taking approx. 1 hour
- Ghent: 1 hour trip from Gent Sint-Pieters, switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Brugge: 1,5 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Hasselt: 1,5 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Leuven: 50 min trip switching trains once at Brussel-Noord
- Mons: 1 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Namur: 1 hour trip switching trains once at Charleroi-Sud
- Liège: 1,5 hour trip switching trains once at Brussel-Zuid
- Brussels: 15 minutes from Brussel-Zuid

There is a direct bus line (bus 67 from the TEC company) running from the Braine l’Alleud train station to Kinepolis Imagibraine, taking about 10 minutes.

Coming by car? Kinepolis Imagibraine is just 5 minutes from the R0 highway (exit 24). Driving directions are available here.