WPC 2013 Sessions

You’ve heard the words "modern applications" and "modern application lifecycle management (ALM)" but what about customers in the modern world? Take a look at modern development stories from the innovation labs at CNN Turner, Nordstrom, Staples, Walmart, and more. The changing customer dynamics are the source of these trends. Get ready to have real conversations about the dramatically changing world of modern development with your modern customers. Join a conversation about driving agility your way, ensuring operations efficiency, and enabling quality in a world of reduced cycle times. This discussion goes way beyond the Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

When up against big competitors, they don’t come much bigger than IBM.  With their recognized thought leadership in the industry,   their broad portfolio that covers a wide variety of functionality and platforms, their ability to scale to the large and complex, and their support for a broad set of practices and development life cycles, they are indeed a mighty competitor.  Which are all good reasons for us to understand them better, so we can disrupt them and win!  In this session, we’ll walk through SWOT comparisons, hear about successes and create an informed story that will help you win.

Providing effective Microsoft Visual Studio customer solutions for key technical challenges can require the right partner-to-partner team that reaches beyond your own organization. This session is a connecting point that provides application lifecycle management (ALM) partners, Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) Program partners, and the Microsoft sales field the opportunity to engage in mutually beneficial solution-selling opportunities around key technical sales roadblocks with Visual Studio. Topics include enabling bring-your-own-device (BYOD) testing, keyword-driven automation, formal requirements management, and enabling third-party ALM system integration.

In this session you will learn what our current plans for .NET are and how position the Microsoft Application Platform. .NET is a critical piece of Microsoft hybrid Modern Development story which allows you to meet customers where they are and support them to continue leveraging their investments in the Microsoft Platform as they embrace modern business applications. Note: At least 30% of the session is expected to be Q&A and pointers to new go-to-market .NET resources for partners (Compete material, etc.)

Join IDC to learn more about Cloud Profitability, including: how Cloud affects your key performance indicators, the drivers of greater profitability, and advice from successful Microsoft partners in the Cloud. IDC's work with Microsoft and non-Microsoft partners over the last few years will prove that partners working with Cloud technologies can actually be more profitable than those who don't. There's no longer any question about the future of cloud computing. Your company should know how to take advantage of this powerful opportunity.

The most effective business leaders are masters at developing, growing, and motivating salespeople—the growth engines of their companies. These leaders have discovered the true secret to developing high-performing sales teams and putting them in position to win. In this session, you will learn coaching and communication techniques that can turn your salespeople into superstars and reduce your workload. Whether you lead the sales team or the entire company, this powerful session will give you an actionable formula to quickly improve sales productivity and give you the edge in retaining your best people. You'll learn the real secrets to: motivate and position your sales team to perform at the highest level; retain your most talented employees by building trust and loyalty; create an environment where salespeople grow, develop, and thrive; produce impactful communications that move your people to take action.

The four disciplines of execution (4DX) is a simple, repeatable, and proven formula for executing on your most important strategic priorities in the midst of the whirlwind. By following The four disciplines--focusing on the wildly important; acting on lead measures; keeping a compelling scoreboard; and creating a cadence of accountability--leaders can produce breakthrough results, even when executing the strategy requires a significant change in behavior from their teams. 4DX is not theory. It is a proven set of practices that have been tested and refined by hundreds of organizations and thousands of teams over many years. When a company or an individual adheres to these disciplines, they achieve superb results--regardless of the goal. 4DX represents a new way of thinking and working that is essential to thriving in today's competitive climate.

From the introduction of the Microsoft Partner Network, it has been clear that Microsoft wants partners to specialize, declare their core competencies, and distinguish themselves in those disciplines. This, of course, raises the question of what to do with customers who have needs outside those competencies. The best and most powerful answer to that question is “partnering.” Align yourself with other practices that have specialized in whatever competencies your customer requires. But effective partner-to-partner relationships require thorough and careful evaluation of each other’s strengths, business practices, track record, and much more. In this session, long-time International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) US board member and IT channel veteran Howard M. Cohen shares 30 years of partnering experience building successful projects, new client relationships, and mutual success with other partners, Microsoft, and other members of the Microsoft partner ecosystem.

The social revolution is brewing in the enterprise today. Mobile technologies, business velocity, collaborative engagement, advanced analytics, and unified communications are converging to deliver the promise of enterprise social success. Organizations that miss this paradigm shift from transactional systems to engagement systems will face dire consequences. How can you ensure that enterprise social technologies will be embraced and adoption will be sustainable? Join industry thought leader Dux Raymond Sy in this interactive session as he shares how you can positively transform your organization and lead the enterprise social revolution. You’ll learn how to apply practical steps to drive culture change and effective techniques to promote sustainable adoption with enterprise social technologies in your organization.

Cloud computing is reshaping corporate strategic thinking and implementation. This is demanding a new mindset to match the new skill set that technology companies are taking to market. Businesses are having to reinvent themselves and adapt to change in their environments--change that raises the risk and threat of unknowns or the misunderstood. Businesses need technologists who can talk real subject matter and help navigate them through cloud technology. Information data security is the number-one concern in the minds of business decision makers, when it comes to buying into the new cloud generation of technology. Get answers to your customers’ leading concerns over security and data in the cloud. This presentation is aimed to empower you with the knowledge to build your own service or product discussions with business executives who are confronting their security concerns around cloud adoption.