2013 is going to be a major year for Microsoft partners, as Microsoft continues to grow in the cloud and Windows 8 changes the OS market.
By Rich Freeman
It’s not easy to one-up Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer when it comes to hyperbole, but chief operating officer Kevin Turner pulled it off on day three of the 2012 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
On Monday, Ballmer described the next 12 months as an “epic year.” Today, during a spirited morning keynote, Turner described Microsoft’s fiscal 2013, which began July 1st, as nothing less than one of the biggest years in the company’s history.
“For the very first time, every single product in our portfolio, ladies and gentlemen, is getting refreshed and relaunched in a 12-month cycle,” Turner said. “That’s unprecedented.”
Turner then variously urged and commanded partners to “seize the day” offered by that forthcoming wave of major product launches. “I ask you today to really think about how you are going to leverage this opportunity,” he said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we’ve got to make the most of it.”
Like other Microsoft executives earlier in the conference, Turner described Windows 8 as a central component of that opportunity. “It will be the highest quality, most secure operating system in the history of Microsoft,” Turner said of Microsoft’s newest client operating system.
With its Metro interface, he added, Windows 8 will also put Microsoft in a unique position. “For the very first time in the history of operating systems, we will have the same user experience across the smartphone, the tablet, the slate, the laptop, the desktop, and the television,” he said. “No one’s ever done it before and we’re doing it.”
The impending end of support for Windows XP makes migrating customers onto Windows 8 even more essential, Turner stated, emphasizing that Microsoft has no intention of extending that product’s lifespan past its previously announced April 2014 end point. “This is it,” he said. “We have to move people off the platform. It costs us and them way too much money to support it.”†
Turner also joined other WPC speakers in playing up the opportunities associated with cloud computing, noting that Microsoft’s cloud revenues grew over 100 percent last year. “We knocked it out of the park on cloud and, guess what, we’re just getting started in that area,” said Turner, who warned partners against resisting what he characterized as an inexorable market shift into the cloud.
“The train is gone. Jump on. You’ve got to get on the cloud if you’re not, because it’s the future,” Turner insisted.
Earlier in the morning, Jon Roskill, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft’s worldwide partner organization, described all of Microsoft’s recent changes to its partner program—from the updated competency structure to the creation of incubation and incentive programs like Cloud Essentials and Cloud Accelerate—as preparation for the coming year. “It’s been an incredible 18 months, but we’ve just been laying the foundation,” he said.
Roskill also detailed new measures, based on partner feedback, aimed at enhancing the Microsoft Partner Network. The company is training its partner account managers to provide more business development assistance, hiring hundreds of new telesales reps to generate additional leads, and adding over 100 telesales product specialists to help partners turn those leads into closed deals. Plus, Microsoft will grow its sales incentive budget more than $200 million to $4.2 billion.
“We’re betting our business on you,” Roskill said. “It’s time to get out there and compete with passion.” Whether partners heed those marching orders or not will become clear in the coming months.
