I noticed the difference of approach from MS too. I attended a dog food dev con about 3 years ago. What a different world. MS BPs were actively partnering with developers from MS to create their unique and powerful products. Never mind that the solution required fully 5 servers to implement, it gave users a level of capability unavailable anywhere else and there was a strong partnership of support and promotion from MS towards the BP.
I know IBM tries, but MS is "winning" with BPs and hence a lot of customers. Now, in fairness, I am not in a position to regularly speak to an IBM person who might support the company I work for. But from all I've heard about how things have gone in the past, that one day conference was enlightening to say the least.
I noticed the difference of approach from MS too. I attended a dog food dev con about 3 years ago. What a different world. MS BPs were actively partnering with developers from MS to create their unique and powerful products. Never mind that the solution required fully 5 servers to implement, it gave users a level of capability unavailable anywhere else and there was a strong partnership of support and promotion from MS towards the BP.
I know IBM tries, but MS is "winning" with BPs and hence a lot of customers. Now, in fairness, I am not in a position to regularly speak to an IBM person who might support the company I work for. But from all I've heard about how things have gone in the past, that one day conference was enlightening to say the least.