I've read with interest the rants, raves and otherwise from Susan, Vlad and other partners who attended Microsoft's World Wide Partner Conference. It probably would have been fun to be there. We got to attend a party for the Central Region and an information gathering lunch for ResponsePoint on Tuesday night and Wednesday at noon. We had to tack those on to a visit to a client in Houston, or otherwise we couldn't have afforded either the time or the money to make the trip (not to mention the actual cost of the conference.)

On the way home (a 4-hour drive), Bill and I were talking about some of the same things that Vlad and Susan have been chewing over the last couple of days. One of the things that comes through loud and clear is a frustration with Microsoft's relationship and expectations of its partners, particularly the SBSCs – of which we are one. I think I've hit on the source of at least one really big problem.

Microsoft talks and talks about the great Small Business market out there, but I don't think they have a clue about what they are really looking for when they say "Small Business".

Small Businesses are soooo diverse, soooo different, sooooo dissimilar, that there is NO WAY to talk about a Small Business.

Susan touches on it when she says that there are many of her clients who don't want their data out in the cloud. They are very protective of their data. She's right – for some Small Businesses.

I don't really have any empirical data to go on, but looking at my CPA practice, and at our IT practice, I would say that small businesses are at least 50% professional services – Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, Accountants, Architects, Consultants, Janitorial Services, Printers, Real Estate Agencies, etc. These folks are 1-50 people/computer offices. They are VERY protective of their data – often because they have to be by law or other regulation. They have often just grown like Topsy with little or no IT plan. When we get a hold of them we make a REAL difference in their lives with Exchange and SharePoint. Another 25% are probably manufacturing clients. They – again – are 1-50 people, but few of them use a computer regularly, except the one that is attached to the lathe or mill. The last 25% may be retail/wholesale clients. Many of them don't have a storefront. Many work out of their house. I would include Financial Planners in this group, because they are reselling investments.

If Microsoft ever looked at who/what small business was, they probably threw up their hands because they couldn't figure out a common denominator to do marketing to.

Guess what, they have the same needs that the larger businesses do, but they don't have the same budget. They are desperate for some Business Intelligence – but PerformancePoint is a total non-starter. It costs more than their entire IT budget for 3 years.

They would dearly love a smaller version of CRM – more robust than Business Contact Manager, but at an affordable price point. ACT! has deserted them, they really aren't comfortable in the cloud with SalesForce.com, but they don't have an alternative – and on-line CRM doesn't get it for them any more than SalesForce.com does.

Microsoft effectively took away FrontPage, and many of them liked that, and supposedly replaced it with MOSS, but the price of the web connector made it a total bust for small businesses. What would it have hurt Microsoft to put out a small business edition of MOSS – still full featured, but with a maximum of 50/75 users (to match SBS)? I could have sold that all day long.

Microsoft needs to first figure out what they are talking about when they say "Small Business". And then they need to give them scaled down versions of the great software available for Enterprise – still feature rich, but just smaller. Then maybe they can quit chasing an invisible threat, and reclaim their market.