buzznovation: WPC….Day 2

Today, in Boston at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Day two of blogging comes before day one, the reason being that all my notes from day one are in analog, i.e. in my notebook; hence today or at least this morning will get blogged first.

Boston is not one of my favorite cities. I have come to view it as a big town, with the problems of a big city. Traffic is awful, the summer weather is hot and humid, and hotel accommodations are expensive and really just adequate. It is easy to see why cities like Orlando and Las Vegas have pre-empted huge chunks of the convention and trade show business.

The first keynote this morning is Andrew Lees, Microsoft VP of server and tools marketing. I am looking right now at 4 slides that he has up with a stunning amount of data. Not sure why all 4 slides are on the screen at the same time, as the ability of the listener to understand the data is very limited. Lees. is loaded with stats and data. One point he made a moment ago was that for every dollar of revenue Microsoft received from server software generated six dollars in revenue for its partners. Another slide shows the complexity of the server offerings for all the different market segments.

New acronym, i.e. HPC, or High Performance Computer, i.e. 64 bit, running fast. I didn’t hear how fast, fast was. Microsoft has 6% of HPC computing. Massive opportunity for servers in small businesses. 21 million small businesses without servers.

Now they are running a clever little movie, as if it were a movie preview. Take off on DaVinci code. With Steve Ballmer as the Mona Lisa! Lots of clever Microsoft history wrapped in the movie. Pictures of the founding team at Microsoft. Tied in to the DaVinci code theme.
Punch line “All you need is a Microsoft partner”…Funny and clever and better than the originally movie.

Lees..is now talking about the four promises…almost sounds Biblical…

Dynamic systems initiative…another complex slide. Way too much data, and gone in a second. I am told that Microsoft has a style that insists that presentations to execs include only three slides, so tons of data is mashed up on the three slides.

Needless to say the assumption is that everyone understands everything which is hardly the case.

Demo showing installing Office 2003 from the server. Or maybe it is just a service pack.

Also showing a nice tree chart where you can tell when and if you have problems with the installation.

Seems to me that there is a real dilemma here in the “partner” is being provided with tools that are going to take away the profitable parts of his business. At the end of the day the customer will benefit, but the service provider is going to loose a source of revenue. The notion being that the “partner” will provide monthly management services billing.

New word…”co-opitition” Funny part is that the first time I heard this word was in Steve Ballmer’s keynote. When I tried the spell check, it recognized it.

Data point, 92% of E-Mail that comes into Microsoft is spam?

Over and over in talks here, the “partners” are being asked to place their bets with Microsoft. I guess I am curious as to who else they might work with? Given Microsoft’s dominance in the marketplace, someone who was in the computer service business would be crazy not to work with Microsoft.

“Big kahunna of technology” as a metaphor for the idea that Microsoft is going to ship a lot of products in the server space. Again, for every one dollar Microsoft makes a partner makes six dollars.

Next up is Sanjay Parthasarathy, VP of Developer Evangelism. More you bet on Windows the faster the ISV growth. Need to jump for a meeting. More to come….

Comments

Buzz --
I attended this session as well; sorry I missed you. You're right about the slides -- slides by most Microsoft presenters at this show have been ridiculously overloaded.

Posted by: John Powers | July 14, 2006 at 07:12 AM