Worldwide Partner Conference 2011

So, we've got another fantastic day lined up for you today. First, this is actually about bringing WPC all at the same time and taking our businesses to the straightway level. We're going to start off talking about MPN and the value of the partner program to your business. At that time you're going to hear from our chief compete officer, Kevin Turner, and last, at your request, you'll hear from Sir Richard Branson.

All right, so I said today is about bringing it at the same time. Day One, we had Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer came out and he showed us the future in other words happening right now. And he had Tami Reller helping him. Tami showed us the Windows 7 success that's going on with partners today and the amazing partner opportunities as we set up for "Windows 8."

Day Two was about recognizing the possibility. The possibility -- we had the business executives set up that possibility around public cloud, private cloud, and the existing on-premises business that we need to continue to drive.

The second thing partners mentioned is the Learning Center, the second thing is the Learning Center. The Partner Learning Center allows your people to get online and instructor-led content, and these courses help your technical and business people stay business relevant, stay up to speed with the latest Microsoft technologies. So, the learning center is super, super important.

The third area is the Microsoft software we grant you to use through the internal use rights. This benefit is unmatched in the industry. Word for word, tens of thousands of software that you get to run your own businesses. Use it to run your business during getting the practical, hands-on experience using Microsoft software. And you as well get to take those hard costs out of your own business. Use the cloud, IUR rights, use the cloud to sell the cloud. Use the cloud to sell the cloud.

Finally, number four, partners that use the MPN technical support tell me they get a lot out of it. Some partners take great advantage of this benefit, nevertheless many of you don't. Support helps you better serve your clients and helps you drive higher customer satisfaction with them. Each of these benefits adds substantially to your business. So, I encourage you to get out there and take full advantage of them.

So, now as one business executive to another, I'd like to take a step back for a moment and talk about what we've done the last two days and where we're going.

The last two days

Over the last two days, we talked about the need to focus on public cloud, private cloud, and our existing on-premises business. However ultimately, what we're discussing is a set of shared business outcomes that we work on at the same time. Growth, profitability, and marketplace relevance. Growth, profitability, and marketplace relevance. And there's a relationship between those three, yet we believe that relevance is the key.

The new MPN is crafted to offer flexibility within a consistent framework. MPN evolution will be driven by three things: Market forces, advancing Microsoft research, and new opportunities in the channel. However the MPN framework as it exists today is structured to embrace change. Expect us to manage change on a steady, predictable cadence.

Major changes will be announced in July, and they will go live no before than October. This gives you an possibility to be able to plan for your own businesses.

Example of how MPN is going to evolve

Let me give you an example of how MPN is going to evolve. We've shown you at this conference the huge channel possibility in communications. Partners investing in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) are asking for help from MS MPN to drive their business and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

So, today we are announcing the new communications competency. The communications competency is a direct response to the at once billion-dollar possibility for Microsoft. You asked for it, we listened, go get it.

Second example

Advancing Microsoft technologies offers a second example. Such as System Center and Hyper-V have integrated and grown at the same time, partners have told us there's an possibility for us to streamline the competencies in this area. So, today we're announcing the systems management and virtualization competency, we're merging those two competencies into one. Yeah. I've had a lot of partners ask me about this, okay? This is specifically how we plan to manage change inside MPN, in a predictable cadence that allows you to plan your businesses around it.

But you've asked us for me. You've asked us to broaden our incentives, to cover more workloads. So, today I'd like to announce the new Lync solution incentive program. You've heard a lot about Lync, in effect exciting. So, we're going to increase the incentives for partners that lead with Lync as their communications solution, whether on-premises or in the cloud. This brings the power of our solution incentive program to Microsoft's then billion-dollar business.

Now, to fully realize the possibility and win at the same time, we need to think longer term. We're moving from a world of transactions to life-cycle solutions. We're moving from a world of one-time revenue opportunities to revenue annuity streams. This brings real benefit in terms of revenue stability and business resilience, and we've done significant modeling on this in partnership with lots of partners. A partner that offers cloud services by and large includes integration, migration, and training services alongside their cloud offering as so then. This is very similar to traditional on-premises solutions, nevertheless what differentiates the cloud solution is the annuity revenue stream that continues to accrue to that partner of record.

As partners serve more clients, the amount of your annuity base increases, delivering growth, profitability, and stability. The benefits are great, however we know that this transformation is not easy. Last year, we piloted a number of programs to help partners with business transformation. And what we've done now is we've packaged up the most successful programs into self-paced online content.

Today, I'm announcing the rollout of some business transformation workshops. Just in case to the online material that you'll find -- guess where? -- up on MPN in the Learning Center. Moreover to the online material, we're going to invest a million dollars into instructor-led workshops. This is another benefit that will help you on your transformation of your business to the cloud.

So, that's what we're investing, nevertheless your investments make a big difference too. Turns out, the partners who invest more make more. And if you think about it, it's logical. Partners invest more, make more. They make 28 percent more revenue per employee and they make 68 percent larger deal sizes. Significant numbers.

Partners making this transition with us are enjoying significant impact on their business. Let me tell you about one firm that's made the transition. NewsGator, a gold ISV with product offerings that span the entire Microsoft stack from Azure to Office 365. Let's hear a bit more about NewsGator.

So, let me summarize our transformation to the cloud. We transformed MPN. We've transformed our product portfolio to the best in the industry, and we've transformed our channel incentives. As I said previously, our joint business priorities, they are aligned around growth, around profitability, and around staying relevant to our clients in the marketplace.

PARTICIPANT: Then, Microsoft Holland made sure we make the most of our MPN benefits. So, deep down we migrated over our CRM on-premises environment to the cloud. We're currently totally online, and clearly Office 365 and Windows Intune. So, Office 365 is used for project management and sharing documents with our clients, and Windows Intune, which I actually love, especially the announcement that we're going up to 100 seats. We're going to transform it into managing our own internal PCs.