Pinpoint Partner Marketplace

A new, searchable directory of partners and partner solutions sports a sophisticated interface with maps and drop-down solution categories that can ensure consistent search results. Aimed primarily at generating leads for partners, Microsoft Pinpoint will gradually replace other partner databases on Microsoft Web sites.

Partner Directories

Partner and solution directories have been accessible on Microsoft public and partner Web sites for many years, but have suffered from various defects. Early versions, such as the Microsoft Solution Directory, let partners freely list their skills—and sometimes skills they did not have—and were not considered very reliable.

The later Partner Solution Finder listed partners partly by competencies they had actually earned, which made it more reliable, and the database could be used by different groups at Microsoft to prefilter the results and narrow them down for customers. For example, the Dynamics group could produce a database that included only Dynamics partners. However, more than a dozen instances of the database, all filtered differently, were available—if one could find them, since some were not presented prominently—in various parts of Microsoft’s Web site, and customers had no obvious place to begin with a view of all partners that they could filter themselves.