Convergence Thursday Update

My stint as booth candy is finally done and before I present again I've got some information and a perspective on the Conference so far.

• It is a smaller, more intimate conference. We saw fewer, but better interactions in the booth. Folks are having fun on Bourbon Street but they are NOT here for vacation. This year, people are here for solutions.
• Customers I've talked to are excited about version 11 and other products like Extender.
• There is no dedicated information worker track this year but the SQL Reporting Services, Sharepoint and similar sessions have had good attendance and reviews.
• In contrast, customers and partners are unhappy over the FRx/Forecaster/ER/Management Reporter/Performance Point mess. The road map to roll all of these products together goes all the way to 2014. The market won't wait 6 years. There was also very little clarity on when many of the pieces will get SQL Server 2008 support. For FRx it was announced that SQL 2008 support would come in the version 11 timeframe, or roughly Q2 2010. A year!?! What about the rest?
• People will be buying. In contrast to Bill Kennedy's thoughts, we are hearing from customers that they like what they see at Convergence and want more. It won't be monster ERP implementations since most people here already have a solution, but there will be lots of smaller Sharepoint, BI, Reporting and efficiency projects for partners to work on.

I do want to reiterate the point that I'm not picking on Microsoft with the negatives. Customers want the best solution and they want MS to be the best. The expectations for the Blue Monster are high, especially when someone has handed them the core of their business. Microsoft needs to make sure that they are meeting those high expectations.