Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer delivered a
trademark upbeat speech to partners at the company's partner
conference.
"We're growing faster than anybody else and together we can
really grow our businesses in important ways," Ballmer told an
audience of about 5,500 partners from around the world on the final
day of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
Microsoft sells most of its products through partners. The
company's recently revamped Microsoft Partner Programme has about
800,000 members worldwide.
Microsoft perceived two "unique opportunities" - converting
Novell users and IBM's Lotus Notes users, Ballmer said.
"Those two installed bases are ripe for a little winning time
for our partner base," Ballmer said. "Let's go out and really get
after that Novell base and help them come into the modern
world."
Ballmer also said that he has seen more interest in a Lotus
Notes-to-Exchange migration than in the past five years.
Microsoft is putting its money where its mouth is and announced
a $200m (£108m) increase in its investment in partners to $1.7bn
this financial year compared with last year. It has also earmarked
more money for co-marketing campaigns with partners.
The extra financial resources will be used so that Microsoft can
better support its partners, Ballmer said. Its plans include
putting additional technology specialists in the field who can help
partners with things such as joint demonstrations to potential
customers.
All Microsoft partners will benefit from the budget boost,
though a slightly larger portion of the money will benefit partners
who sell Microsoft Business Solutions (ERP) products, said Don
Nelson, general manager of partner sales and marketing at
Microsoft.
In addition to increasing its partner budget, Microsoft has
instructed its subsidiaries to reallocate 35% of their budgets for
direct marketing to joint marketing with partners. This is a
substantial change for some subsidiaries, especially in Europe, but
not a big shift in other areas, Nelson said.
The company also announced a repackaging of its services
offerings in an effort to better cater to systems integrators,
resellers and independent software suppliers.
This comes in the form of two plans that are available to
partners of all sizes over $8,000 and offer access to Microsoft
experts and tools to help partners to develop on the Microsoft
platform or implement and support Microsoft products.
Some partners expressed fears that Microsoft will compete with
them in the services space, but Ballmer promised that the Microsoft
services group exists only to help partners. "We are not in the
services business," he said.
Aside from converting Novell and IBM Lotus Notes customers to
the Microsoft platform, Microsoft also targeted upgrading existing
customers as a significant market opportunity.
"There are 2.1 million [Windows] NT 4 Servers still left," said
Paul Flessner, senior vice-president of the Server Platform
Division at Microsoft. With support for NT 4.0 Server set to end
this year, Microsoft anticipates a lot of demand for upgrades.
Many of the NT servers host the Exchange 5.5 mail server, which
Microsoft also wants customers to upgrade. A migration also means
implementation of Active Directory, which translates into more work
for Microsoft partners, Flessner said.
The desktop is also a major upgrade target. Many still use older
version of Windows on the desktop. Research from Gartner last year
found that only 14% of people who attended its US symposium had
upgraded to the three-year-old Windows XP. The poll, answered by
186 people, represented more than 1.7million PCs.
Microsoft is making $50m available to channel partners to
persuade users to upgrade to Windows XP and Office 2003 from older
versions of the software and it has added 57 desktop deployment
experts worldwide, who will work with the software maker's partners
on the upgrade persuasion effort.
The move is part of Microsoft's key sales strategy for 2005.
Ballmer, in his annual strategy missive to Microsoft employees
earlier this month, said that Microsoft must work to "change a
number of customer perceptions, including the views that older
versions of Office and Windows are good enough".
Visibility is important for many partners. The additional
marketing spend will help customers to find them, but Microsoft
also announced that the company web site will be changed to link to
a partner search engine so that potential customers can find Gold
Certified partners.
Also Microsoft will make an online marketing tool available
later this year. It will allow partners to create and manage
marketing campaigns using standard Microsoft ads on which the text
can be customised and a partner company logo can be added.
Microsoft will make a low-cost training programme available for
partner organisations. Up to 40 sales and marketing people can
receive online "Microsoft Solutions Selling" training for a single
$500 charge, the company said. A new channel builder tool will
allow partners to find one another and share information.
For independent software suppliers, Microsoft announced several
enhancements to its partner offerings. These include:
- a Royalty Programme to provide a simple way for independent
software suppliers to embed Microsoft technology into their
products
- a new independent software suppliers buddy program that links
them with a Microsoft employee to improve technical support and
access to resources throughout the development, sales and marketing
process
- Windows Error Reporting for independent software suppliers,
allowing independent software suppliers to use Microsoft's error
reporting tools in Windows to collect information on user issues
with their applications
- ISV Community on MSDN, a special part of the Microsoft
Developer Network web site for independent software suppliers
- ISV Community Days, quarterly seminars in more than 25
countries at which Microsoft will deliver technology road
maps.
Joris Evers writes for IDG News Service
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