At Microsoft"s Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston July 11-13, the company again is hoping to go vertical via its massive Microsoft Business Solutions partner channel to become a bigger enterprise resource planning player.
At the Worldwide Partner Conference in Minneapolis last year, the push from on high was to create a sea change within the MBS partner channel, prodding partners through new programs such as IBI, or the Industry Builder initiative, to develop more vertically oriented applications and align sales around "classic" Microsoft technologies from .Net to Visual Studio.
Microsoft again is evangelizing IBI, announcing on July 10 four new partners—Atos Origin, Infonizer, TXT e-Solutions and WellPoint Systems—and their industry-specific modules developed under the IBI umbrella.