I was very impressing as the day unfolded. Allison Watson welcomed everyone in her typically gracious manner. She then offered a heartfelt farewell and handed off to John Roskill. He then conducted a short intro before handing off to Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer.
Mr. Ballmer entered to the chant of “oh Cloud, oh cloud…” and began by shouting about how Microsoft has been discussing “Oh Cloud” for 4 years. The kick off WPC 2010 is exciting b/c it is in a year that is a clear indicator that business and enterprise customers are clearly adopting cloud strategies, products and services. Ballmer goes on to say that there is no question that Microsoft is embracing the cloud opportunity with all the nearly 10,000 partners present and promised its commitment to a financial and partner-centric approach to next generation computing.
In his speech Mr. Ballmer outlined the following evolving vision and strategy at Microsoft:
1) The Partner transition to the cloud.
MS started FY in centre of gloom of financial crisis. Bt thru hard work of partners around the globe we’ve seen and been rewarded with success. Our success is built on the relationship we have with our partners.
- Win7 94% customer sat
- Office 40 M seats.
- Online services thousands of new enterprise customers are migrating to SharePoint and Exchange On-Line (BPOS)
- 670K trail downloads of SQL 2008 R2.
- Azure from 0 to hero, over 10,000 paying customer building applications to Azure.
Opportunities Ahead.
Opportunities for all of us in the Cloud.
Several themes that Ballmer and Microsoft are focused on, these are:
1. Cloud will create opportunities and responsibilities
- Windows Azure and Online Services will allows us to reach new markets and customers, streamline operations, improve agility, focus on business value, deliver reliable, secure and private innovations and solutions.
- With the MS Cloud tools we can remove barriers that partners face when selling a new sol’n. Rather they can sell the business value that IT can use to be more relevant to the business.
- Partners can better manage the experience and effectiveness of IT systems by managing, deploying, supporting, and creating applications and solutions in a dynamic manner. The cloud allows partners to effect change without disrupting the business
2. The Cloud learns and helps you learn, decide and take action
- Product Focus: Office, SQL, Bing
- The Cloud supports and facilitates natural language, stats/BI, and reasoning tools and helps bring enterprise to the cloud – working where, when and how people work.
- Dallas helps people publish data streams ia the cloud to allow business, customers and partners link their information to relevant stats and analytics.
3. New social and professional interactions
- Products: Office, Communications Server, Exchange, SharePoint, WindowsLive, Dynamics CRM Online
- Bringing social interactions into the enterprise e.g. facebook, twitter, etc. vi SharePoint, Office and Exchange 2010. Trying to improve the ability to collaborate (presence and secure ad-hoc websites) on the go and in real time with Microsoft tools and standards.
4. The Cloud drives Server Advances that drive the Cloud
- Products: Server 2008, Windows Server, Azure, SQL, SQL Azure
- Based on experiences with scaling Windows Live to millions of people in 100s of countries. the scale, complexity and management of these systems has influenced our architecture of SQL and Windows Azure to develop and propagate and infrastructure that our enterprise customers and partners can use to deliver a scalable, global, local solution.
- Now we are asking the Question, how do we bring Azure and SQL online into the enterprise. We want to deliver a full cloud infrastructure with a consistent develop, manage, and host solutions in the Microsoft cloud.
- SQL and Windows Azure are the cornerstones of Microsoft’s Cloud Strategy.
5. The Cloud wants Smarter Devices
- Products: KINECT, Explorer, Windows, WindowsPhone
- Build devices that can bring services down from the cloud and execute locally in a fast, rich manner.
- Integrate information and deliver that information in real time, where ever the user maybe and on what ever device that they may be using.
- The Cloud will be critical to the synchronization needed by enterprise to keep its records in check, meet governance requirements, and secure the privacy of its users.
Coming in 2010 and 2011 a big push on slates – interesting mix of brands (Foxconn a Chinese manufacturer) to the expected PC folks, but also Onkyo and other broad consumer brands Sony, Tosh, Panasonic, etc. Big press of MS Slates for Fall of 2010.
WindowsPhone 7: “in Barcelona it received really NICE reviews” the number of brands on the WindowsPhone 7 slide has really dropped DELL, HTC, SonyEriksson, Samsung are the standouts. But with Android rapidly growing with DELL, HTC and Samsung you have to question their commitment. Should Microsoft buy Nokia? or RIM?
Cloud pitch that Microsoft is all in. You want to help people be productive bet on Microsoft, Not Cisco, Apple, Google, etc. Microsoft’s Cloud “all in” strategy includes:
- New Form factors
- Windows PC/Netbook sales
- Business Productivity
- Enterprise IT and management:
- ISV Applications, Device Web and Enterprise
- Move to the Cloud
POV: It wasn’t SteveB’s most passionate speech, but I do feel he is nearly done mustering support and focus across Microsoft’s vast empire for the needed transition of the company from its very successful and profitable client/server business model to that of the cloud. The devil is in the details, but getting the partners, developers and ISVs on-board is mission number one and this WPC could be a turning point for Microsoft, its partners, and its customers.
