Microsoft promises to shake up IT market

Microsoft's recent Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) was a mix of rock concert production values, revivalist meeting and old-fashioned product peddling.

In truth, the Boston event was something of a "love in" for Microsoft partners such as distributors and resellers - essentially the middlemen between vendor and end user - as well as for the system developers and other solutions partners.

Many of the 10,000 attendees at the conference last month were already in Microsoft's thrall. They had come along to see new product goodies and catch a glimpse of some of the more high-profile Microsoft employees, such as chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Ballmer is something of a legend in IT circles. His opening address to a partisan audience of 7,000 had him prowling the stage as usual, cajoling the spectators and tantalising them with new product information. Ballmer said the audience would have choices to make in the coming year between their traditional partner offerings and Microsoft's. His eyes, however, betrayed the fact that, in reality, there's no choice when Microsoft is in the game.

Ballmer is part ringmaster, part evangelist - his opening address was peppered with sideshows that turned into something akin to a shopping channel commercial as he introduced some high-tech buddies to explain product features.

The linchpin of Microsoft's new product set is its latest operating system Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Internet Explorer Seven. Surrounding that will be the launch of products such as Small Business Server 2003 R2, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

In addition to the spread of new products, Ballmer noted that the company is pushing into new markets such as business intelligence, portal, workflow, search, security and unified communications.

The software giant was quite excited about its "spin" on unified communications, including voice over internet protocol (VoIP), mobile and other phone devices.

Essentially, Microsoft will be using its Office 2007 tools such as Communications Server as a private branch exchange (PBX) to manage calls and other communications. Indeed, Ballmer called Office 2007 the most significant iteration of the product ever.

And it's not just focused on the business user. The Microsoft chief emphasised and reminded the crowd of the importance of beating the drum on the consumer side.

"If we have a strong consumer launch, it creates the air cover where people are coming in and saying, 'I want this stuff at work'. And that air cover is incredibly important to our IT customers and to our business partners. So this will get massive investment from us, both at consumer level as well as at the business end."

However, alongside the initiatives the company is rolling out, the conference threw up a number of concerns. Chief among them is a training programme called Partners Skills Plus. Don Nelson, general manager of worldwide partner sales and readiness, told The Irish Times that the company had realised, through partner feedback, that there would be more opportunities in the market if its partners had extra people and training.

"We're trying to have three separate curricula: one for sales, one for marketing and one for tech people," said Nelson. "The further you get up that threesome, the more product-specific it becomes. We'll have three separate training initiatives: online, instructor led and labs.

"More often than not, our partners tend to be focused on the product and selling features, and what we really want them to do is be more open to the customers' needs and use that kind of discovery process to be more successful in delivering the solutions set."

Another talking point was the expected lag time between the launch of Vista (probably early next year in Ireland) and general take-up, with many customers holding out for a "Service Pack Two" style upgrade to ensure any potential security holes or problems are patched up.

Alison Watson, corporate vice-president of Microsoft worldwide partner group, said there would always be customers who are slow to take up new software for various reasons or because they're just not ready.

"I will say the security enhancement and the 'better together' story of Windows and Office are a good reason to get out there on Vista when it launches. There's enough innovation coming that I can't see why SMEs wouldn't go as soon as possible."

Around the thorny issue of licensing, which has been a bugbear for many businesses and Microsoft partners, Watson said the company had received a very positive reaction to the announcement of its Open Value system last year, wherein the customer can engage in a longer-term annuity relationship and pay over time.

Watson conceded, however, that Microsoft still had a long way to go to "straighten" out licensing issues.

"We know licensing is too complex. We are continuing to look at making it better and easier. We've got to make client and partner licence positions easier to understand and therefore more flexible, and we're doing work on that," he said.

While not exactly revolutionary, the worldwide partner conference did promise that Microsoft would give the IT market a good shake up over the next few years.