Goodbye, Microsoft Dynamics Partner Community, It’s Been a Blast!
After 15+ years with Microsoft and originally Great Plains Software – the whole time focused on Microsoft Business Solutions & Microsoft Dynamics – I’ve decided to the leave the organization. I’ll be joining my new company later this month. They are a Microsoft ISV, so perhaps we’ll run into each other at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in the future. Today is officially my last day at Microsoft.
My time here has been an incredible journey with a sense of “growing up” along the way, having joined Great Plains Software straight out of college like several other individuals before and after me.
I’ve always been a super fan of the Microsoft Dynamics partner channel having worked with many of you in one shape or another throughout my career. Partners are the livelihood of our business. Where would Microsoft be without you?
I’ve had the honor to work with the Microsoft Dynamics channel throughout my various roles in partner account management, readiness, marketing, resourcing, and development programs. It is fabulous to see companies I trained during New Partner Orientation years ago now in the spotlight as they earn the honor of President’s Club. This is a group which I feel completely blessed to have learnt so much from over the years!
I am also a huge fan of our products and solutions. My first gig was working the Message Center in Technical Support for our DOS based product Great Plains Accounting v9. Going from GPA DOS to ramping the very first Microsoft CRM partners with v1.0, and then watching the shift to the cloud with CRM Online and ERP Azure has been phenomenal. We have totally awesome solutions that continue to innovate!
For those of you who have been active followers of this blog, I want to extend a huge “thank you” for your support. The blog was started almost 5 years ago as an engine to help partners navigate through the plethora of communications shared by Microsoft. I hope the blog has enabled you to access key information faster or help you discover something new. As to the future of the blog, I expect a short interruption of service, and it to continue as strong as ever once the proper individuals and teams are aligned. You will be in good hands!
Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote that I think of regularly to feel a daily sense of accomplishment. It was delivered by Jim Valvano 20 years ago at ESPN’s ESPY Awards – “If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.”
If you wish to stay connected, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Take care,
Kevin Machayya