More than 1,500 ISVs have been partnered with a Microsoft employee who could be an advocate on their behalf. The ISV Buddy Program may be useful for Windows software vendors who need to quickly find someone at Microsoft who can answer their questions. However, other recently announced program changes, such as an improved Royalty Program and access to the Windows Error Reporting program, could be equally important to ISVs.

ISV Buddy Program

Announced at the Microsoft Partner Conference in July 2004 by Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of developer and platform evangelism, Microsoft's ISV Buddy Program is designed to match an ISV with a Microsoft employee who will serve as their advocate within the company.

The ISV Buddy Program is designed to show that Microsoft employees, including Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer, are actively listening and responding to Microsoft’s partners.

How well it will work remains to be seen. Although there might be a lot of interest in being paired with Gates, Ballmer, or another high-level executive, these "buddies" may need to spend too much time on corporate responsibilities to be truly effective. The best buddy will be someone who has enough authority to get quick response from others in the company, yet is willing to research and respond to their buddy’s requests in a timely and complete manner, willing to work across the various product groups and teams, and when necessary, willing to fight for their ISV within Microsoft.

As of Oct. 2004, 1,553 ISVs have been matched with a Microsoft buddy, and 674 have been tentatively matched pending a finalized registration. Although 463 are still waiting a match, it is not too late for an ISV to enroll in the program, which is scheduled to run at least until mid 2005.

This program builds on other "developer community programs," such as Channel 9 and Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) blogs.

ISV Royalty Program

The ISV Royalty Program is designed to help ISVs who incorporate Microsoft products into their software for commercial distribution to their customers. The ISV Royalty Program benefits ISVs by allowing them to offer their customers an integrated application or solution and get competitive pricing for the Microsoft product. Moreover, because Microsoft tracks revenues for each ISV through the program, the ISV can easily prove to Microsoft that an application is leading to additional sales of Microsoft products, which could help an ISV show its importance to Microsoft.

Under the program, which was updated in Aug. 2004, ISVs can integrate a Microsoft product into their application or solution in the following ways:

• Embedding the Microsoft product into the application
• Including the Microsoft product along with the application on the installation media
• Preinstalling the Microsoft product on a computer system that is part of the unified solution.

To take part in the program, the ISV must commit to the following:

• Paying a minimum of US$10,000 (or published non-U.S, currency amount if applicable) in royalties over the two-year agreement term
• Maintaining a Certified or Gold-level membership in the Microsoft Partner Program, or obtaining a Microsoft Premier Support Contract or Microsoft Professional Support with five prepaid incidents.

The updated Royalty program eliminates the previous Product Integration Program (PIP) and reduces the eligibility requirements to provide greater flexibility to all ISVs. For example, although the ISV Royalty Program started with SQL Server, it has been expanded to include almost all of the products in the Windows and Office Systems.

Currently, Microsoft has more than 1,000 ISVs from around the world participating in this program.

Windows Error Reporting

The Windows Error Reporting program, originally known as Dr. Watson, captures information about why a program running on Windows failed and sends that information to Microsoft for analysis. Originally used to detect and fix problems with Windows, the program was expanded to include third-party device driver manufacturers, as device driver problems are the most common cause of Windows failures.

As of Aug. 2004, all ISVs can register their applications for inclusion in the Windows Error Reporting program so that if their application fails, a report about why the failure occurred is sent to Microsoft. Microsoft then makes sure the report gets to the ISV so that the ISV, with Microsoft’s assistance, can develop a fix. Helping the ISV solve problems helps the ISV improve their product, but also helps to make Windows more reliable and available.

Resources

For background on developer community programs, see "Community Building Aims at Developers" on page 21 of the July 2004 Update.

For more details on Windows Error Reporting, see "Windows Error Reporting Tracks Down Bugs" on page 3 of the July 2003 Update.

For information and to apply for the ISV Buddy program, see msdn.microsoft.com/isv/isvbuddy.

Additional information on the ISV Royalty Program is available at members.microsoft.com/partner/competency/isvcomp/royaltylicensing.aspx.

For information and to register with the Windows Error Reporting program, see winqual.microsoft.com.