InnerWorkings Blogs

I’ve just returned from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in the massive Colorado Convention Center in Denver, which will be home to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Similar levels of spin and PR were at play during the Microsoft event, but I came away from the show with two main points about Microsoft’s future strategy.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is now part of Microsoft’s mainstream platform strategy, although they’re coining the awkward phrase Software+Services in its place. Steve Ballmer’s keynote presented 4 platform pillars for Microsoft:

• client
• services
• mobile
• server

Certainly, Microsoft is not one for turning from the rich client that has paid out so handsomely in the company’s core desktop applications over the years, but they are betting on software services that exploit the natural advantages of the web. In short, the message to partners was to embrace .NET enabled services to meet customer demand. Take Outlook Web Access, for example: it doesn’t kill the Outlook rich client, but it’s very handy to access your mail over the web in a simple AJAX interface. Now apply that strategy to Office Live or Dynamics Live, and you get the picture of where Ray Ozzie is pushing Microsoft. Speaking of Mr. Ozzie, I was hoping he would present at the show, but I suppose he doesn’t waste time on the braying mass of partners with the mundane CALs, SKUs, and VARs on their minds! Despite the heavy focus on services, Steve Ballmer’s keynote made it clear that Microsoft would not abandon the rich client with its natural strengths, and the point was echoed through every subsequent keynote. You have to admire the dedication to “staying on message” at these big Microsoft events, something that Democrats would no doubt like to inherit when they take over this gargantuan building for their annual knees-up.

If anyone left this conference wondering about Microsoft’s desire to push Office as a business application platform, I’d say they must have never left the Vista “chill-out” bar (tempting, I know). The platform spin for Office was as plain as the giant 40 foot tall, 10,000 pound fiberglass blue bear staring in the window of the conference center.

At any rate, several keynotes emphasized that OBAs were the way forward (dear God, another acronym – this time it’s for “Office Business Applications” and sounds like “oboe”, you see). Forget about VBA and macros, now partners were encouraged to build applications that draw from the rich Office experience. The old demo horse here is a VoIP conference call and application share that exploits the “presence” feature across Office applications. I do get the sense that there’s far more to the OBA idea than could be articulated at this conference, but the presentation of Office as a true platform for application development was unmistakable. Even Sanjay Parthasarathy, who usually bangs on about the .NET framework, new APIs, and VS Add-Ins, devoted a huge amount of his Developer Tools presentation to building rich applications from Office.

As with every conference I’ve ever attended, the hunt for a decent cup of coffee was as challenging as ever. Savvy conference goers tracked back to the little cappuccino huts dotted in odd secluded locations around the center – I found one early on and became a loyal customer; on a side note, can you really be a customer if the product is free? The level of staffing was a bit overwhelming – one to take your order, one to grind the beans, one to boil the milk – ordering coffee was a nice way to meet so many people. Anything to avoid the tepid brown stuff in those dreaded coffee tanks, which were absolutely a last resort for most attendees.

On a final note, I did manage to escape the Partner Awards ceremony (note to the event organizers: I’d skip the Oscar format and just run product showcases from the winners) this year to grab a meal with a friend of mine who’s based in Boulder, working for a very bright young company called Me.dium. The company just closed a whopping B round very recently and continues to innovate with a really clever browser add-in that makes surfing the web a more social and contextual experience. Check it out on Firefox, and it’s coming to an IE7 browser near you very soon. Dinner is my shout next time, Tobias…

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