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Brier Dudley's Blog

Brier Dudley offers a critical look at technology and business issues affecting the Northwest.

July 29, 2010 at 8:45 AM

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Microsoft to analysts: Here's how we win business & the cloud

Posted by Brier Dudley

Microsoft has a four-point plan for winning business customers, Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told the 180 or so financial analysts in Redmond for the company's annual analyst meeting.

Turner at FAM.jpg

1. Leading with the cloud with our customers. "We offer choice" was the old message the company took to business customers. The new "leading with the cloud" message "signals a very clear commitment to our customers and our partners that when it comes to cloud computing we're not only all-in but in this space we're by far the market leader," Turner said.

2. Driving Windows 7 and Office 2010 refresh. Momentum is "huge," Turner said. Microsoft's "triple play" is the combination of Windows 7, Office 2010 and Internet Explorer versions 8 and the upcoming version 9 coming out in beta in September.

3. Driving customer satisfaction.

4. Growing our share. "That's certainly what we were able to do this past year."

Microsoft had been quietly cloud enabling its business products, waiting until they were ready for use to roll them out rather than promise things coming down the road, Turner said: "2010 was our year to bring it all to market."

Turner also criticized Microsoft's biggest cloud competitors.

On Google and Salesforce.com: "They're capabilities are far short of what we're doing from an Azure perspective."

On Amazon.com: "It only provides a limited set of platform as a service capabilities." Also, "there's no partner or hoster story with Amazon."

On VMWare: Turner said Microsoft's beating VMWare with a better and less expensive virtualization offering. "We see this as a really tremendous growth opportunity for us."

"Clearly we the sweet spot we have for our company - the most profitable part of our company - is providing this IT as a service for our customers," he said.

Turner also mocked Google's online productivity apps, saying that the company's adding features like a ruler that Microsoft's offered in its products for more than a decade. Microsoft's now winning back customers who tried Google applications and are returning, he said.

"Some of those that have actually gone are coming back and we're welcoming them with open arms," he said.

Microsoft servers are also gaining share against Linux and its database revenue is growing faster than IBM and Oracle, Turner said, continuing his skewer tour of the world's major software providers.

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