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One can argue that Lora Gernon is the most important executive at Microsoft Canada (NASDAQ: MSFT); maybe even more important than the subsidiary president Phil Sorgen.

Gernon is the partner lead for Microsoft Canada and is responsible for the overall Canadian partner ecosystem. Since Microsoft Canada has zero direct sales, partners are vital to the success of the organization.

Virtually all partner groups report to her even though she only deals with system integrators and ISVs, along with marketing. That's a total of 1,400 managed partners and more than 25,000 overall partners.

Gernon also developed the Partner Leadership Team at Microsoft Canada about five years ago. This group became so successful that it was adopted as a worldwide best practice and now every subsidiary in Microsoft has a Partner Leadership Team.

CDN recently had a chance to talk to Gernon about last month's Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, where the company's Software Plus Services strategy was outlined, and about how she is encouraging partners to be ready for software plus services.

CDN: What is going to be Microsoft Canada's Software Plus Services strategy, and will there be any channel recruitment goals with it?

Lora Gernon: We're heading into this and it's all about choice; choice for the customer and for the partner. We are going to continue to develop that strategy at Microsoft Canada. There is a lot of excitement with a variety of partners. With Dynamics partners, with system integrators, and with ISVs. We're even seeing a lot of interest from resellers and smaller SIs. It looks like all the partner groups are very interested in it.

Channel readiness is the goal for us. As partners continue to get the information and start to engage, our focus will be to make sure they have the training that will enable partners to take this to market.

CDN: Will you be doing anything differently or new in bringing some of the messages from the Worldwide Partner Conference to Canada?

L.G.: Every year Microsoft lays out the strategy for the upcoming year and we take that worldwide strategy and adapt it to the Canadian market place. We also align it to the feedback from customers and channel partners. That's how we approach it each year. The plans are done and those strategies have come out during the Worldwide Partner Conference. The team in Canada planned it out in May and June and we kicked it off on July 1.

CDN: A senior engineer on the Windows 7 team said the company learned its lesson on Vista and will not pre-announce or hype features, and will be more careful with Windows 7, which will get its first sneak peak this fall. How will you approach that in terms of marketing Windows 7 to the channel in Canada?

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