Windows 7: To Be Released in Q4

InformationWeek is reporting that Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will be released some time in the 4th quarter. And, according to some insiders I spoke with recently, it will, in fact, be called "Windows 7".

So...to recap, Windows was numbered for versions 1.0-4.0, then was named by the year of (planned) release with 98 and 2000, went to 2-letter names for ME, CE and XP, expanded to a full word for Vista and Mobile...and now has come full circle to "7"...without the ".0". I can't imagine the marketing brainpower that must have gone into that cycle.

Anyway, here are some other key points from the InformationWeek article:

• "It's unclear whether Microsoft will release the operating system just in time for the holiday season, or earlier in the quarter, perhaps during October."
• "According to a recent report, an executive with computer manufacturer Acer has said the company plans to begin selling laptops running Windows 7 by Oct. 23."
• "Early test versions of Windows 7 have been getting generally positive reviews, and a number of organizations testing Windows 7 have told InformationWeek that the operating system also does not suffer the application and hardware compatibility problems that Windows Vista did at this point."
• Microsoft has said that "the Windows 7 Release Candidate code was closer to what would be shipped than any previous version's Release Candidate."
• Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available at the same time as Windows 7, and the RC is available now.

Engaging with Microsoft: Certified Partner Program

As I mentioned in a previous post, AdvancedMD has been a Microsoft Certified Partner since 2003 and a Gold Certified Partner since 2006. Both programs are available to any company that works with Microsoft, and both are fairly inexpensive (in the $1,500 range, including sales tax).

All you really have to do to be a Certified Partner is write a check, but the benefits are significant. A small company with 25 employees could get a five-fold ROI on Small Business Server and Office alone.

Becoming a Gold Certified Partner takes more work, in the form of “points” that you accrue through “competencies”, customer references, certified products, etc. It isn’t as difficult as it may seem. First of all, Microsoft really wants you to be a Gold Certified Partner, so they’ll cheat for you from time to time in the form of “promotions” that give you competencies for free, or that relax the requirements. There’s still plenty of work to do, but it isn’t out of reach for most companies that really use Microsoft’s products and services.

Here’s an example of a competency that we’ve held for the past few years:

The three little guys with checkmarks behind them represent three AdvancedMD employees that are Microsoft Certified Partners with a qualifying certification (MCSD, MCSE, etc.). (Getting a few of your developers and IT staff certified is almost a must for Gold certification.) The CD represents a “Tested Product”. In our case, AdvancedMD was tested to work well with SQL Server.

For us, getting our application tested against SQL Server every two years (as required to maintain the ISV competency) is the greatest cost to remain Gold certified—probably a week, on average, of a couple of developers’ time.

The benefits in software licenses, though, far outweigh the costs: We get 135 licenses for each of nearly every software package you would need in a business office (including Windows, Office, MapPoint, Project, etc.), and 35 licenses for Visual Studio for Developers (including a license for Team Foundation Server for each location). I haven’t taken the time to get a precise inventory of the software that we use, but I would guess we’re over $250K, with potential for another $100K or more if our staff knew what was available to them. Not bad for $1,500 a year!

We get a lot of other benefits besides software licenses. You can find those on the Partner website, linked below.

Two sites that every Microsoft shop should know very well:

Partner Program Website

This site demonstrates just how serious Microsoft is about working with its partners. I would imagine that they spend more on this site than AdvancedMD’s annual gross revenue.

Of particular interest is the Partner Program Value and Benefits page. It includes the oddly elusive Software Licensing for Certified and Gold Certified Partners page…for some reason it always takes me a long time to find this page when I need it. It lists all of the free (for training, demo, and internal use) software you get as a partner.

MSDN

Aside from comprehensive developer-oriented documentation, this is where you can download all of the software that you are entitled to as a Certified Partner.

The screenshot to the right will give you an idea of the huge variety of downloads available, just under Operating Systems. My nostalgic side desperately wants to download MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. (But where is Windows ME? Hmm…)

Windows Live Writer

For anyone who blogs (or tries to), if you haven’t already looked at Windows Live Writer, you should.

I’ve always been annoyed by Blogger’s online posting mechanism. It always seems to be inserting vertical white space where I don’t want it, and it provide an intuitive way to insert images and tables.

Windows Live Writer is pretty cool…and the only way I post these days. And it’s free…

Engaging with Microsoft

AdvancedMD has been a "Microsoft shop" since our inception back in 1999. Over the years, we've had plenty of opportunities to interact with "the Borg" (or M$, or whatever the kids are calling it these days), and our relationship has taken on several different forms.

At one point, we were one of 50 healthcare vertical ISVs being managed by a guy out of Redmond who helped us secure co-marketing dollars, subsidized training, Toshiba tablets, and other spiffs I can't think of right now. By late 2003, though, we were dropped as a managed account because we weren't a Gold Certified Partner yet...and then the program was morphed into something different altogether, so, by the time we were Gold certified in 2006, there was no program to get back into.

Today, I'm talking with some ISV evangelists at Microsoft to try to get some more focused attention again (and whatever else they'll give us). Since I'm in the middle of that process, I thought it would be interesting to chronicle our past and present experiences with Microsoft, and perhaps provide some useful tips for engaging effectively with such a huge organization.

Over the next few weeks I’ll try to cover topics like these:

• Certified Partner Program
• Conferences, summits, MS-HUG Tech Forums…
• Online resources

ICD-10 coming...CMS helping to prepare

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months about the CMS-mandated migration from ICD-9 to ICD-10, along with the separate but related adoption of ANSI 5010 for electronic claims.

Much of that talk has been around trying to get the compliance date of October 1, 2013 moved back a couple of years, but it's looking more and more like that won't happen.

CMS has made some good information available on their website, including (brace yourself) a crosswalk table that translates back and forth between ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM and -PCS. It's called the General Equivalence Mappings (or GEMs), and this guide answers 10 questions about what the GEMs are, how they came about, and how to use them.

This isn't for the faint of heart, but I'm sure our Engineering team is going to have a great time building tools into AdvancedMD to help our customers navigate the switch. We'll need to put those tools in place well in advance of the October 2013 deadline and provide training to our users.

CMS will be hosting a telephone conference on May 19th to discuss the implementation of ICD-10 and explain how the GEMs work.

SaaS in Tough Economic Times

If you google "saas recession" (as I just did), you'll find dozens of articles published throughout 2008 and into 2009 that suggest that SaaS companies will thrive in a difficult economy.

"SaaS is also popular on Wall Street these days. Companies such as Concur and Salesforce.com haven't missed earnings estimates, mainly because they have predictable revenue streams." - "A Recession-Proof Corner Of The Tech Sector", Sramana Mitra, Forbes.com Commentary, January 18, 2008.

"As IT is tasked to do more with less, that's an opportunity for SaaS to get a foot in the door." - "Is The Recession Good For Saas?", Andrew Conry-Murray, Information Week blog, May 2, 2008.

"In bad economic times many companies will want to preserve cash. Those companies will heavily prefer the SaaS model." - "Is SaaS Recession-Proof?", Paul Massey, GLG Group's The Expert Network, January 15, 2009.

"So, are managed services and SaaS the perfect antidote to a sick economy? I think not. But if I had a few extra bucks for tech investments, the most compelling bets remain SaaS, managed services and open source." - "Recession Proof Software? Try SaaS, Managed Services and Open Source", Joe Panetierri, Seeking Alpha, January 15, 2009.

We've seen some very encouraging signs at AdvancedMD, including a very strong sales month in January. (Of course, it's difficult to know whether strong sales are tied more to our business model and the economy or stronger sales efforts...but I believe both are in play.)

A worrisome aspect of the SaaS model is that, because it relies on continuing recurring revenue, it depends on the success of customers. In other words, absent new sales, if 10% of your customers go out of business, you've just lost 10% of your revenue. (On the other hand, a 10% dip in revenue is far preferable to the kinds of dips experienced by on-premise software companies.)

What that means to AdvancedMD is that we need to have even greater interest in our customers' financial success. Since we're so deeply embedded in their cash flow, we are in a unique position to help our customers reduce costs and maximize reimbursement.

Past efforts in this area have produced features such as online eligibility and claim scrubbing (known to our customers as eEligibility and Claim Inspector, respectively), as well as extensive auditing of claims volume and exclusion data to identify opportunies to reduce rejections and minimize A/R aging.

Our most recent release introduces significant improvements to takebacks, one of the most time-consuming aspects of medical billing. This should result in much greater efficiency for many of our customers, allowing staff to focus on revenue generating activies such as collections and denial follow-up.

Throughout our history, we have focused heavily on "getting the doctor paid", perhaps at the expense of flashier features. We have done so without any foreknowledge of the current economic troubles, but our customers are benefiting from that focus, as well as the ability that our SaaS technology model allows us to respond to shifting economic conditions.

SIAA OnDemand Conference 2008

I just attended the SIAA OnDemand Conference with our CEO and CFO. I actually didn't have high expectations, because the session summaries seemed to imply that the conference was aimed at client/server vendors that were considering migrating to SaaS. As it turned out, there was a broad variety of content, and we all walked away feeling like we had gained a lot.

I learned a new respect for Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com; Josh James, CEO of Omniture; and Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. These guys are true visionaries, and they "get" OnDemand software, even though their views conflict at times.

I was particularly impressed by Zach Nelson. His keynote was actually a "point/counterpoint" session with Anthony Lye, SVP of CRM at Oracle. Lye was obviously a smart guy, but he made a fair number of statements (minimizing the value of multi-tenancy, for example) that really didn't ring true.

The main impression that Lye left me with was how deeply entrenched senior executives at Oracle are in the anti-Microsoft mindset, and how arrogant they are about the superiority of Larry Ellison's vision of the enterprise.

Lye lamented the disastrous effects of Microsoft's "monopoly" on the OS, and said that it stifled innovation, and that it "didn't do any good for anyone." I would imagine that Microsoft stakeholders would dispute that assertion. So would hundreds of thousands of software developers that were suddenly able to administer their own database servers when SQL Server 7.0 was released. Or the millions of home users who could suddenly use a word processor to write letters when Word for Windows was released. And on and on and on.

Anyway, aside from the fact that Lye forgot that he wasn't at an Oracle Microsoft-bashing conference, he clearly didn't "get" SaaS and its value in the small and mid-market. (His primary argument against the value of multi-tenancy was that "none of the customers that we asked wanted to be in a multi-tenant environment." Well, duh! If you had a choice to fly in a private jet or a commercial airliner (for the same price), which would you choose? The point is that multi-tenancy lowers the cost of delivery and, hence, the overall cost of the solution.

But the conference was excellent, and very worthwhile. It was definitely targeted at C-level executives (the vast majority of attendees were CEOs or CFOs), so if you don't fall into that category I'd probably recommend the OpSource SaaS Conference next March (it was recommended to me by a Microsoft rep).

Speaking of Microsoft, they were conspicuously absent from this conference. I'm not sure why, unless they felt it was just too small. Or perhaps they find more value in talking to IT directors and engineers.