The Canadian channel was all a buzz with the news that former Microsoft Canada President Phil Sorgen has been named corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group; effectively the channel chief.
That means Jon Roskill’s three-year reign comes to an end. To be fair to Roskill he had an extremely hard act to follow because of Allison Watson’s major accomplishments. Roskill did have his critics who said he did not provide much in terms of channel benefits for the cost associated to the solution providers. Some of that is channel griping. But you have to understand that Roskill was working while Microsoft was in the middle of a major transition from a software company to a software, devices and services company. That transition has worked out well for some channel partners and not so much for others. Hence no middle ground was gained under Roskill’s time. He did provide significant margin incentives for channel partners under the “All-in the Cloud” program. And, I would applaud any channel chief for providing margin incentives. But was that enough? Even Roskill said in his blog post more needed to be done. So if I had to grade Roskill he would get an incomplete grade because I think he and Microsoft for that matter needed more time to figure out the cloud, devices and what they should do with legacy customers who want to remain on XP and have on-premise solutions and are struggling with investment protection.
Keep in mind that it’s impossible to make 640,000 worldwide channel partners happy and your bosses at Microsoft at the same time. To me Roskill was courageous enough to take this job at the time he did. Does anyone remember who replaced Vince Lombardi, John Wooden, Scotty Bowman or Red Auerbach?
Roskill said in that same blog post that he is going back to the product development team. His new role is yet to be defined and I wish him very well. Roskill was always very generous with his time with the media and myself. I appreciate it, Jon. Thanks!
Can Sorgen be that game changer? I think he can. Insiders tell me that Sorgen goes the extra mile for people. Case in point – the dog story. Instead of placing his dog on a plane for six hours; he drove from Seattle to Toronto. That’s 40 hours of driving in case you were wondering. If he did that for a dog imagine what he’ll do for humans?
Channel partner Brian Bourne of CMS Consulting of Toronto told me that Sorgen was very successful during his time at Microsoft Canada. Bourne found Sorgen to be very approachable and good to work with.
Bourne added that he felt CMS Consulting had the most success working with Microsoft during Sorgen’s time along with Eric Gales running SMS&P. Gales is now the President of VMware Canada.
Sorgen will have his work cut out for him, Bourne believes. And, I agree with Bourne. Sorgen’s biggest challenge will be the Surface in my opinion. The Surface has not done well and that’s partly because of an ill-conceived limited direct sales strategy. In the final days of Roskill’s tenure Microsoft did open up Surface to the channel. Timing may be on Sorgen’s side. I see a day coming soon where customers consolidate from a three-device environment to a two-device environment. The Surface is a great option for those who want to give up a notebook and still have that notebook look and feel.
We shall see how Sorgen does. He starts working on the channel on Sept. 1st.
One quick hit before I go. Long time channel veteran and friend of CDN Larry Shulman joined Jerry Diakow’s IT Channel Group based in Mississauga, Ont. The former Tech Data Canada executive will be working on increasing the sales of Buffalo Technology and NovaStor with solution providers in Canada.
