At a three-day conference, which kicks off Friday in Minneapolis, Microsoft's CEO will try to summon his best sales pitch to more than 6,000 application providers, hardware resellers, distributors, systems integrators and software developers of all types.
His message? Those so-called partners should bet on his company's software in order to generate new business and profits.
Partners are a critical component in Ballmer's strategy to expand the company's reach into new areas. Microsoft competitors, such as IBM and Sun Microsystems, are also investing heavily in partner relationships. Ballmer will also need to convince partners that Microsoft is a safer bet than a growing list of open-source software options.
The CEO discussed Microsoft's strategy in an e-mail interview with CNET News.com on the eve of the conference.
Q: At the partner conference this weekend, Microsoft is demonstrating some new forms abilities that will come in Office 12 and is discussing Longhorn. How important are those two releases for Microsoft, and can you give an update on where things stand with development of those two products?
Ballmer: Office 12 and Longhorn form the foundation for what is potentially the biggest wave of innovation for us since the Windows 95 time frame. We are on track to deliver both in the second half of next year. There will be tremendous new opportunities for partners from the innovations we're working on in Office 12, like the new file formats, new forms capabilities and other new technologies still under wraps. We estimate there will be a $140 billion annual partner services opportunity on the Office 12 platform. When you couple that with the additional capabilities and opportunities for partners with Longhorn, you can see why we're excited.
Ballmer: Customers want flexibility in the way their software is delivered, especially due to the differences in priorities for IT by industry. Some customers care most about high uptime; some care more about easy manageability. Companies want to focus on their core competencies, and they want to reduce the complexity of running IT. The role for partners will certainly change over time as different technologies come and go and customers request new options--that's always been the case. One thing that won't change, however, is our dedication to working with partners to deliver value to customers.
At the show, Microsoft is announcing a promotion in which midsize businesses can buy a collection of Microsoft server products at a discount. Is this a prelude to a midmarket server product along the lines of what Microsoft did with Small Business Server?
Ballmer: That is an interesting idea that we are exploring. With this immediate offering, however, we're providing a solution that will serve as a first step for midsize businesses, and the partners that serve them, to address their IT needs with attractive pricing and essential guidance. Our current product offerings--Windows Server, Exchange Server, MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager) Workgroup Edition--provide a solid, integrated solution set that they can use immediately. Many midsize businesses are seeing great value with these products now, but we wanted to provide even greater value, less complex licensing, more tools and resources, and simplified deployment guidance.
Ballmer: Presence relates to one of the big things that both (Microsoft Chairman) Bill (Gates) and I have been talking about this year, which is how the world of work is evolving. Presence is part of this trend. It empowers people. It's already being integrated into business applications, along with instant messaging and call control, by partners like Siebel, OSISoft and BrightWork.
Our goal is making it easier for developers to embed various modes of communications into their applications. We'll continue to create additional toolkits to help them. For example, the right-click options we make available for developers can be expanded and enriched with
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convince developers not to opt for alternate platforms.
well and Longhorn is still vaporware, The application market for
corporations also has sagged; no need to update Office when
you're still runnung Win2K or WinNT (or even Win98). Actually,
there is very liitle reason to update Office even if you did go to
XP. And the rest of the MS applications are not all that
interesting.
Windows XP Server may be selling- don't know about that one.
Som Mr Ballmer has to go out and beat the bushes trying to
come up with new andor more customers. And he does have to
try to deflect the moves to Unix/Linux.
I would guess that maybe he's now got a bigger job than he can
handle - or that anyone could handle.
What I personally think we'll see is more "priming the pump" type behavior.
There was a time when Microsoft Office was practially a give away with every new machine. Now that it's become a standard -- go take a look and see what you can get it for.....
Microsoft needs to leverage monopoly power and while all the sexy infrastructure talk is cool - I betcha they do it in a way that will make even more money.
Microsoft can start charging for Windows Updates and Anti-Virus and Spyware Removal, etc. There are lots and lots of add-ons that Microsoft has yet to fully explore. Of course one of the reasons they don't explore these add-ons is because it raises the question of exactly how secure their O/S is and ultimately how motivated would Microsoft be to be improving their security if they were also peddling tools to tweak the O/S from other dangers.
This is indeed a mature market. People aren't impressed by sizzle. They've been burned umpteen times. The next sale of technology is always tougher than the last one.
M$ vs open and free to cheaper is no contest in any market. It just takes time for people to adjust to the shift that is all.
The Internet is a good example of this. It was the realm of geeks once, but is mainstream now. MS even tried to compete with it once, but gave up when it became mainstream. That is why they were late to the game.
They will eventually work with Open Source themselves to some degree, but they will be terribly late to that game too. It remains to be seen what kind of market they can carve out for themselves when they eventually arrive at the the inevitiable OSS conclusion.
Perhaps it will be too late for them? Or perhaps their best bet is to keep making money of boxed software as long as those who know no better keep buying?