Partners and Certification

ISV/Software Solutions Competency
This site is intended for organizations that are developing packaged software products. The ISV/Software Solutions Competency site focuses on how you can work with Microsoft as an ISV, includes resources to help you build your business, and technical resources to help you build your software products. You can also participate in the business focused community including a peer-to-peer business newsgroup, business-focused webcasts, chats, and sign up for the monthly Microsoft Partners Newsletter, ISV Edition.

Microsoft for Partners Web Site
The Microsoft for Partners Web site supports the technical readiness, marketing and business information needs of our valued partners. Use this site to gain easy access to a wide array of resources to support your solutions and services and help increase your market opportunities.

Microsoft Regional Director Program
Regional Directors are independent developers and architects, volunteers chosen for their leadership in their local technology circles, whose primary purpose is to share information about Microsoft technologies with their developer communities and to provide feedback from developers. Microsoft Regional Directors have gained developers' trust by providing an objective viewpoint and talking with developers in their own language. Regional Directors are not Microsoft employees, so they tend to be very open about our products, both good and bad.

Microsoft Service Providers
If you are a service provider, the Microsoft Service Providers site is your one-stop resource for the latest information about Microsoft technologies and solutions specifically for service providers and the telecommunications industry. We have the solutions and technology answers your business needs to succeed in this competitive market.

Certified for Windows Program
The Certified for Windows (CfW) program allows you to provide your customers with the highest level of assurance that your applications will perform well when deployed on Windows Server operating systems. Visit the CfW site to find out the specific program requirements.

Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP)
The Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program is designed for Independent Software Vendors (ISV's), Systems Integrators (SI's), academic institutions, corporations and developers interested in integrating tools, components, and languages into the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

MSDN For Partners

The MSDN team provides many opportunities for partners to get more involved with Microsoft Canada. These opportunities include MSDN national tour events (MSDN User Group tour, MSDN Deep Dives), local events, and online events such as MSDN Web casts.

We offer you exposure to tens of thousands of developers, more credibility, co marketing opportunities that help to maximize your marketing budgets and leads.

MSDN National Tours
As Microsoft partner you may choose to co-brand portions of MSDN Canada national tours. You could do so through speaking engagement, track sponsorships or even after event parties. Also, you can have your marketing material, such as CDs and promotional pamphlets distributed to all event attendees. If you are interested in joining forces with MSDN Canada please contact us via e-mail.

MSDN Web Casts
MSDN Web Cast is a 40 minute online seminar on development with Visual Studio .NET and Microsoft .NET. Using Microsoft Live Meeting for online presentations provides a highly interactive online experience and a great cost effective way to increase your reach to Canadian developer community. If you would like to take advantage of our Web Cast infrastructure, please contact the MSDN Canada team and we will guide you until the web cast is successfully finished.

MSDN Speakers Bureau
MSDN Canada Speakers Bureau is a collection of top Canadian speakers who are dedicated to delivering high quality presentation and demonstrations at MSDN events and at MSDN User Groups across Canada.

Speakers in MSDN Canada Speakers Bureau include independent developers, Microsoft partners, architects, well known authors and speakers that are members of MSDN community programs like Regional Director Program, MVP Community and MSDN User group program. If you would like to be a part of the speaker's bureau you can apply for inclusion. The MSDN Canada team will choose those applicants they see fit to be included in the bureau. Speakers will be admitted to the bureau on a quarterly basis (January, April, June, and September).

MSDN User Groups
User groups are a critical part of the developer and .NET community. You can choose to sponsor a user group in your area. There are twenty two .NET User Groups in Canada. Let MSDN Canada put you in touch with local community leaders for creating a bigger and better community. Check out the listing of user groups, and if you don't find one – you can even start one, with full support of MSDN Canada team! For more information on starting a .NET user group in your area, email msdnteam@microsoft.com

	MSDN Flash The MSDN Flash is Canada's premier bi-weekly e-Newsletter for Canadian Developers. This is a convenient source for developers that saves time in finding the latest technology news, events, downloads, and programming information. Please contact MSDN Canada if you would like to submit information about your events for inclusion in the MSDN Flash.