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Microsoft's Feisty COO

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner is a critical executive to partners. Recently, Allison Watson's Worldwide Partner Group moved into his chain of command, following a similar shift for Simon Witts' Enterprise and Partner Group earlier in the year. Turner delivered the closing keynote at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference: Velocity 2006, giving a lot of partners their first glimpse of the former Wal-Mart executive.

This guy is feisty. A few quotes from his keynote give you a sense of his style:

"The fact of the matter is, there's not very many 501(c) nonprofit organizations in here, and certainly we aren't one of those."

"You want to make money. I heard that loud and clear from our partners."

"We are not going to let Google win in the enterprise search business. That's our space, that's our house. And those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, which is what they're attempting to get."

Posted by Scott Bekker on July 17, 2006


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