Excellent Windows 8 article from Redmond Channel Partner

excellent article on the website RedmondChannelPartner.com and it goes into detail about the top 8 opportunities that exist for partners when Windows 8 finally gets released. The opportunities it lists are the following:

1. Custom Application Development
2. Porting Corporate Apps and Web Sites
3. Consumer App Development
4. ISV — Corporate Solutions
5. Standard Migrations
6. Platform Guidance
7. Desktop Virtualization
8. Training

It’s pretty spot on, excellent analysis of some of the upcoming opportunities for Windows 8 developers etc. Here’s a clip from number 1:

Windows 8 brings a new type of app to the Windows desktop ecosystem. The UI for the apps is called “Metro.”It looks familiar to anyone who has used a Zune player or a Windows Phone, which is to say that it’s not familiar to many end users, but it will be familiar to a large percentage of Microsoft partners. More broadly speaking, the apps take advantage of new Microsoft development tools and are capable of appearing on a new tile-based Start screen paradigm, where they have limited space to display real-time information. At this point, it looks like the Metro approach will be ideal for lightweight apps that are obviously similar to the types of apps that run on an iPad. Partners involved in custom application development will need to spin up practices around the creation of Metro apps for customers’ internal corporate applications. This work will go hand-in-hand with discussions about the devices that customers will want to use (more on that later), creating a partner-to-partner business opportunity with solution provider partners… Because of the highly complex matrix of development language and application-type compatibility questions that are emerging around the different platforms — Windows 8 tablets, Windows 8 PCs, and Windows 7 and other legacy PCs — even customers with in-house development teams will be looking for guidance from partners who can help them navigate to the right combination of devices and apps. Partners with expertise at developing clean, creative and highly productive Metro apps that leverage the capabilities of a Windows tablet will find themselves in high demand from two sides. One will be customers looking for competitive advantage for their businesses. The other side will be Microsoft, which can be expected to lavish attention and resources on partners that can provide the proof points that all the platform bets it’s placing have real business value.

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