I've just gotten back online after attending a Microsoft TS2 seminar for its small business partners.

Aside from the smarmy combination of propaganda and the "oooo-ahhs" from the small (usually sole practitioner) resellers in the room drinking the Kool-Aid about Office 2007 and Vista eye-candy, I was struck by something else, something I am not sure anyone else might have been thinking about.

I saw this simply as a channel marketing program. Now, this is one heck of a program in scope, scale and resources…just what you'd expect from Microsoft because of its wealth and capabilities. In many ways, it reminded me of IBM in its glory days: almost anything said to the faithful was received as inspired, unquestioned truth. Example: you should have heard the presenter's explanation of why ODF is not open, but OpenXML is. I won't bore you with it except to say that sometimes I wish I was capable of seeing the world so exquisitely wrong just to support my own beliefs.

But what really struck me was the ultimate lack of control MSFT has over this channel-to-die-for. Sure, they can fill a theatre with 50 resellers any day of the week. Sure, their presenters are great technically, and can even throw in some good sales training to boot. Sure, they are about to enter a killer product cycle that leverages monopoly the way nobody since IBM in the mainframe days could. And, sure, they know they have this small business channel and it is something they want to leverage.

But damned if they can. The cracks showed as soon as the technical presentation segued into the sales talk. MSFT has killer rebates targeted at small resellers, but the resellers can't get them because many can't compete with direct distributors like CDW. MSFT has channel conflict. And guess who wins in that case? CDW or the guy with 10 clients?

MSFT has tried for two years to get a small business specialist program going. But it continues to promote something it cannot seem to get itself to commit to. Want small resellers? Send them leads and eliminate the insane certification requirement. Apparently, MSFT has something greater than 40K leads just sitting in a database somewhere. Some enterprise guy in Redmond probably fears giving away good ones, so nobody gets 'em.

In short, they've got the ultimate small business channel, but they don't know what to do with it because they are at their core an enterprise company. It makes me wonder if any technology company can really be multi-channel effectively, in ways that don't taint the secondary efforts with third-order harmonics from the main thrust.

Every time I come in close contact with MSFT, they remind me more and more of IBM in its post-Baroque, pre-Rococo days.

Close your eyes and it's not a leap to see them wearing curl wigs and face powder.

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