In his keynote address on the third day of Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference, chief operating officer, Kevin Turner laid out a plan of attack for almost all of Microsoft’s competitors, from Oracle, to Google and Apple.
Turner laid out three key areas of focus for both the company and its partners in the coming year. The first of these was to adopt, evangelise and sell the latest versions of Microsoft’s technologies.
This has been a consistent theme throughout the conference in key notes, as the company exhorts all concerned to adopt the latest and greatest. The almost indecent haste that is being encouraged, particularly around Windows 7, makes Vista seem more and more like a cul-de-sac that is best left unmentioned. While Ballmer and Turner acknowledge that Microsoft got things wrong with Vista, the emphasis now seems not to be on fixing it, but rather improving perceptions of it, but most importantly, pushing Windows 7 to get beyond it. Turner did mention that Vista SP2 would “solve almost all of the problems” but it seems that Microsoft at least has learned its lesson and the Windows 7 development and launch cycle seems to hold more in common with what was done on the Windows 2008 Server launch than was done when Vista came on the scene.
The second area of focus was to continue to earn the right to be a trusted advisor. This element of the strategy has stemmed from earlier efforts to help customers save money. The trust built up through this exercise that encouraged customers to turn to turn to Microsoft and its partners for advice on what to do in difficult times is crucial, according to Turner, and must be built upon if the other elements of the strategy are to succeed.
The third area of focus was to compete to win. This was to be based on lower prices, better services and offering customers choice to take whatever elements of Microsoft offerings suited them and their business. A major element of this was also to directly compete with other companies and providers in key areas.
Turner mentioned the likes of Oracle, Google, open source and Apple directly and outlined how products such as Dynamics CRM, Bing and Windows 7 could be leveraged to take the fight to competitors.
Perhaps the most interesting element of Turner’s address picked up on a theme from Ballmer’s presentation the day before, and that was what the company terms ‘return on innovation’. Turner said that the company would keep its spend “flat” on research and development. This sounds reasonable until he mentioned that it was in fact a staggering $9.5 billion that would be sent on R&D.
The emphasis on innovation in IT products, said Turner, echoing Ballmer,
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