Trying to make friends the Microsoft way
Published: 13 Jul 2005 10:45 BST
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?
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.
One of the things that Microsoft is showing at its partner conference is a set of tools to add presence (a knowledge of how someone can be reached) into a wide range of programs. In what ways do you think we will see such capabilities used in products two to three years from now?
Presence relates to one of the big things that both 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 voice and video, with data and with other integrated technologies. We've really only scratched the surface of integrated communications. We'll continue answering customer demand for deeper integration across the whole productivity platform — Microsoft Office System applications, including Outlook 2003, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Groove, as well as Exchange and some of the other infrastructure pieces.
In recent months, Microsoft has beefed up its own sales force and has begun adding vertical specialists in a variety of industries. Does this mark a change in the way Microsoft sells things?
The steps we're taking with our sales force represent an evolution of solution selling, rather than a marked change to how we sell. If you look at how our platform is evolving to support integrated solutions that align with business process, it makes sense that our sales force and partner investments will be optimised for customised solutions that work how our customers work. We started solution selling five years ago, and everything we're doing today in the field — adding more specialised resources by technology and by industry, aligning our account teams by industry where possible, integrating partner solutions more effectively into the sales process — represents the next era of solution selling.
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