Welcome to the Microsoft ISV Practice Blog

This blog will hopefully have many authors but I'll get us started. We are a group of consultants who work with our ISV (Independent Software Vendor) partners on technology enablement. My name is Jeremy Rule and I manage the Application Development Consultants and Architects within the team.

As the "CTO" of the ISV Practice, I get a chance to look for technology trends. My measurement stick is simply how many requests we are getting from our partners for help where demand outpaces supply. If a request for a consultant comes in and can be staffed without escalation, it won't show up on this chart.

In most cases we are able to find the right consultant within a few days but it does give us a data point on what technology is hot at the moment.

General architecture help is the most escalated "technology" but it's not a technology per say. SQL/AS and the 3.5 era dotnet stack (including WPF and WCF) are clearly the high demand areas right now. If I look at trends, Silverlight and Visual Studio Team System are both coming on strong but not reaching the point of many escalations yet.

This chart helps me staff appropriately for our ISV customers but I thought it also might be interesting just from an analyst point of view to see what's hot.