Fasttrack Reviews for ISVs

Speaking of ISVs, I was chatting to my friend and colleague David Gristwood over coffee the other day to find out a little more about Fasttrack Reviews, something David had mentioned in the past. Essentially, Fasttrack Reviews are an opportunity for ISVs to chew the fat with some folks from Microsoft about their technical and business challenges with a view to help try and figure out the best path for future development. Afterwards, the team write up a short summary of the review and publish it on their blog. You can see examples such as Rich User Experience choices or Data Mining and Mapping. Links to others are on the sidebar of the main blog.

It’s an informal setup, session last for a morning or afternoon and are held monthly with locations varying between London, Manchester and Edinburgh. If you’re an ISV at a critical decision point or maybe just surveying the landscape of upcoming technologies and trying to join up the dots with your own plans, a Fasttrack review might be a few hours well spent.

If you do think you’d benefit from a Fasttrack review, you can find out more on the Fasttrack ISV Virtual Design Review Team blog (bit of a mouthful that one). Details of the program itself can be found here and to get a little more detail about the actual review meeting, you can go here. Caveat: They don’t take just anyone. There are some criteria. Find our more on the application page.

And if you’re not in the UK but think this sounds like a great idea, perhaps you should bug your local ISV team and ask them why they’re not doing it too. Just tell them David sent you :-).

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