In a year of
high-level
executive departures, Microsoft will say goodbye to another senior executive.
Kevin Johnson, 47, will be heading to Juniper Networks as CEO in September.
Johnson, a 16-year veteran and the Platforms & Services Division president,
joins Bill
Gates and Jeff
Raikes in heading for the exits this year. He was also co-president for
a time with Jim Allchin, who left
in early 2007 when Vista shipped. Click here
for Kurt Mackie's in-depth news story about Johnson's departure and Microsoft's
reorganization of the division into the Windows and Online Services Business.
Microsoft's news release about the change makes it sound like Ballmer initiated
the change in the 14,000-person organization rather than simply responding to
Johnson's acceptance of a position with Juniper. The move would reflect the
reality that Johnson, like his predecessors at the company, has been unable
to turn Microsoft into a more powerful player online versus Google. Johnson
is described in several newspaper pieces as having been a key driver of the
(thus far unsuccessful) Yahoo acquisition attempt.
In any case, Johnson is staying around until September, and many other executives
(Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan, Bill Veghte and Satya Nadella) are involved in
the shuffle.
Something of a revolving door appears to be forming between Microsoft and Juniper,
at any rate: Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop came to Microsoft
in January from the COO position at Juniper.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 24, 20080 comments
There's plenty of argument about whether security giant Symantec's recent comments
to the investment community mark a reversal of its support for the channel sales
model. What's not at issue is that competitors view the FUD as a chink in Symantec's
armor.
Astaro Corp. today launched a "Symantec Switch" promotion for security
resellers. Astaro, a Burlington, Mass.-based maker of Internet security appliances,
is offering resellers an additional 20 percent discount for changing a Symantec
renewal opportunity into an Astaro purchase.
The effort derives from controversy over Symantec's plans to contact SMB customers
directly when it's time to renew -- listing the customer's partner of record
but not including contact information for those partners. Symantec is also in
hot water with the channel about comments to investors that partners would have
to show real value to edge out direct sales in its top 700-900 global accounts.
Astaro also promises margins of up to 40 percent for resellers who join the
Astaro Partner Program. "The value of our channel is simple: it's equal
to our total revenue," said Alex Quinonez, vice president of sales at Astaro,
in a statement. Quinonez offered Astaro's recent quadrupling of the size of
the field channel marketing team as an example of the company's commitment to
the channel.
Astaro currently has about 2,500 resellers worldwide. Although the company
has customers in 60 countries, the promotion is available only in United States
and Canada. More information is available here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 23, 20083 comments
Collective wisdom in the industry is that the advertising agency Microsoft
hired to turn around negative perceptions on Vista, Crispin Porter + Bogusky,
took on a tough job. Just how tough became clearer in a
survey
released today.
King Research surveyed more than 1,100 IT managers in June about their Vista
adoption plans. It was the second survey King Research has done on the topic
for KACE, a systems management appliance company based in Mountain View, Calif.
The most alarming aspect of the research for Microsoft channel partners is
that IT concerns about Vista appeared to have grown since the previous run of
the survey in November 2007.
This time, 60 percent of survey respondents said they had no plans to deploy
Vista, an increase of 7 percentage points over the 2007 result. The release
of SP1, historically a key milestone for enterprise adoption of Microsoft products,
didn't appear to change the mood on Vista. According to the survey, 92 percent
of respondents indicated that Vista SP1 hadn't changed their plans for Vista
deployment.
When it came to specific concerns, compatibility of business software appears
to be the deal breaker. Some 83 percent indicated they were concerned about
software compatibility with Vista.
Meanwhile, 42 percent said they would consider deploying Mac OS, Linux or other
operating systems instead of migrating to Vista. While it's good business for
a systems management company like KACE to play up the possibility of heterogeneous
client environments, the results aren't isolated. A recent survey of eWeek readers
brought similar results.
It's going to take a pretty good campaign from Crispin Porter + Bogusky to
turn this ship around.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 23, 20082 comments
We were scratching our heads during Corporate Vice President Brad Brooks'
speech
at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this month. For all Brooks'
talk about Microsoft drawing a "line in the sand" for critics of Vista
to cross, there were no fruits of the new $300 million ad campaign on display
and no hard data about Vista adoption.
Microsoft addressed part of that with a hard figure on Vista during its quarterly
earnings call last week. The news: Sales of Vista licenses have exceeded
180 million licenses.
On its face, that's a really good number. For a quick recap, Microsoft announced
20 million units sold in the first month (March 26, 2007), 40 million units
sold in the first 100 days (May 15, 2007), more than 60 million licenses sold
"as of the summer" of 2007 (Sept. 27, 2007) and 100 million licenses
sold in its first year (Jan. 30, 2008). So we're talking 80 million units in
the first half of calendar 2008, compared with roughly 50 million in the first
half of 2007.
Take away downgrade rights, and I'm not so sure the number is meaningful other
than as a measure of Windows' market power in general. But there it is, duly
reported.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 22, 20086 comments
By now you'll have heard that Microsoft is a $60 billion company, on the strength
of 18 percent year-over-year growth. Operating income hit $22.5 billion a year,
meaning Microsoft is approaching $2 billion a month in profit. Not a bad way
to go out for semi-retiring chairman Bill Gates. Go
here
for our news story on the financial results.
The earnings documentation that Microsoft released last week was short on direct
references to the channel, although COO Kevin Turner did give a nod to "strong
execution by our partners" among four generic components of success in
his canned quote for the press release.
There were a few items of interest in reading through the fine print. For one,
the usually conservative company's projections for revenues next year are in
the $67 billion to $68 billion range.
For another, there are a lot of references to increased costs -- nearly a billion
dollars in all. According to company documents, those costs reflect "increased
data center and equipment costs, online content expenses, and increased costs
associated with the growth in our consulting services, partially offset by decreased
Xbox 360 costs."
And nearly every business unit reports costs from increased headcount. The
company is up to 91,259 employees as of June 30, an increase of 12,694 people
in a year or 16 percent. Bill Gates' scrappy little company that used teams
of smart, focused programmers to beat giant IBM is no more. Not that it's been
around for awhile, but it hit home in this earnings release.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 22, 20080 comments
Microsoft's elite group of 50 managed partners in the U.S. National System
Integrator (NSI) program got a new member this month:
Inetium
of Bloomington, Minn.
Inetium is a 90-person Microsoft Gold Certified partner with a second office
in Omaha, Neb., and national reach. The ten-year-old firm offers consulting
practices in business productivity, customer relationship management, custom
application development, Web strategies, infrastructure and real estate technology
solutions. The firm was acquired in 2006 by the Pohlad family, which also owns
the Minnesota Twins and picked up Minneapolis-based unified communications firm
Avtex LLC in March.
Inetium received the managed NSI status on June 30 and announced
the milestone in mid-July. Keith Rachey, president and chief operating officer
for Inetium, said in a statement that the new level of engagement with Microsoft
will translate to a boon for his customers: "The NSI partner status will
ensure that we have even better access and alignment with Microsoft to continue
to provide our customers the best that Microsoft offers."
Microsoft is always on the lookout for new partners to add to its NSI group,
according to Greg Urquhart, general manager of National SI & ISV Partners
at Microsoft. "We continue to recruit, grow and align with the most influential
and impactful partners in order to stimulate growth for Microsoft and our partners
while delivering an exceptional customer experience," Urquhart said in
a statement.
Being managed by the Microsoft NSI Team brings more overall strategic planning,
greater alignment and engagement of Microsoft field resources and more collaborative
marketing efforts, according to the two companies.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 17, 20080 comments
The location for next year's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is set.
Allison Watson, corporate vice president for the Worldwide Partner Group, said
this morning that the show will be held in New Orleans in July 2009.
It will mark a return to the Big Easy, which was the location of the first
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in October 2003.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 10, 20080 comments
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner gave his annual closing speech at the Microsoft
Worldwide Partner Conference this morning. While he provided mostly a roundup
of announcements from throughout the week, he did have a big piece of news.
Turner announced a $600 million increase in the Microsoft investment in its
channel. The latest figure I'd heard was $2 billion. But Turner said Microsoft
invested $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2008 (which ended in June), and will invest
$2.9 billion in FY09. For those of you keeping score, that's a 26 percent bump.
Back when Microsoft put $2 billion into the channel, nobody else in the industry
was close, as far as we know. This increase makes that gap even bigger. Meanwhile,
the company will invest $7 billion again in research and development for FY09,
Turner said.
So how many hands are reaching for a piece of that partner investment pie?
Turner cited the figure of 645,000 partners, and said Microsoft had signed up
50,000 new partners this year. Some 400,000 of those partners are actually registered
in the Microsoft Partner Program. The rest are unregistered companies who partner
with Microsoft outside the formal program.
Partners interested in getting access to the money may need to use a different
approach than in the past. Microsoft insiders tell us that a lot of the channel
investment money is more centralized than it used to be, with general managers
in the field having less discretion over the cash.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 10, 20080 comments
On Tuesday, Microsoft laid out a
partner
compensation model for Software Plus Services. From the minute it was announced,
the company has been eagerly attempting to
reassure
partners that not only will S+S not mean a business disaster for them or
direct competition with Microsoft, but in fact will represent an opportunity.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took up the theme of partner reassurance in his
keynote speech on Wednesday. "Even as we're driving that business model
forward to new approaches, we see it as fundamentally critical that our partners
are in it with us and involved with us," Ballmer said.
"This world of S+S is not a world for our partners that should
be scary or problematic. If you know Exchange, you know Exchange. Those skills
will translate into the world of Software Plus Services," he added. "Same
thing with Dynamics, SQL Server, directory."
He also assured partners that they have a little time. "This isn't going
to happen overnight in the enterprise world. It's not like our customers are
going to wake up tomorrow morning and say, 'Hey, look, we all want to abandon
server implementations and move to the cloud.'"
Instead, Ballmer said, there will be a mix of server implementations and cloud
computing going forward. "The consumer market might race to be cloud-based.
The enterprise world is going to be a mix for awhile," he said.
But he used an example to illustrate that the way some partners do business
will have to change. "Even as the business model changes, for us, the notion
of partnering with all of you remains fundamental. We build from the present.
I'm not going to tell you the world of the future looks the same as the world
of today," Ballmer said. "Fifteen years ago, there were partners who
made their living integrating the TCP/IP stack into Windows. But, we'll build
from the present. We'll bring along your capabilities [and] your skills...United
all of us stand, divided we fall."
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 09, 20081 comments
Allison Watson, Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group corporate vice president,
took a few minutes in her keynote Wednesday morning to note the five-year anniversary
of the Microsoft Partner Program, and said, "It's time to evolve together
to the next step."
For more details on Microsoft's plans to alter the MSPP over the next few years,
see Anne Stuart's cover story from our July issue, "The
New Rules of Partnering with Microsoft." Highlights include adding
Good, Better, Best designations to partners, and requiring customer satisfaction
data on certain categories of partners.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 09, 20080 comments
While it will be more than a month until Microsoft is ready to discuss results
of its fiscal year that ended in June, tidbits are already coming out. One is
that sales of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server topped $1 billion again.
It would've been surprising if SharePoint sales had dropped, since the product
hit the $1-billion-a-year run rate some time ago. But in announcing the figure,
Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop revealed another more interesting
number for Microsoft partners: "In the year ahead, we estimate that partners
like you will generate $5.4 billion from selling SharePoint," he said.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 09, 20080 comments
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online seems like old news with the new
Software
Plus Services offerings that were rolled out at the Worldwide Partner Conference
this week. But in fact, the S+S CRM product has only been available for three
months.
Stephen Elop, the Microsoft Business Division president, gave an update on
progress during his keynote
on Tuesday. There are 500 customers on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, with
200 partners engaged in sales of the application, he said. That's a fairly impressive
number for a three-month-old CRM product, and evidence of how much quicker the
implementation cycle is on the online side.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 09, 20080 comments