In day three’s vision keynote we were introduced to the people behind the R&D side of Microsoft and then straight into the main content of the keynote:
New Public Sector Initiative
Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector, Laura Ipsen launched a new public sector Initiative called Microsoft CityNext.
Navigant Research forecasts that the smart city technology market will grow from $6.1 billion in 2012 to $20.2 billion in 2020, generating a total revenue of $117.3 billion over the next seven years. The CityNext initiative aims to help cities make the most of existing investments while finding the right combination of solutions, applications and programmes to transform their cities.
Jon Roskill - Partner Cloud Insights
Jon Roskill highlighted provided some great insights and reasons to sell cloud, especially hybrid cloud. In short he focused on four Go Do’s:
- Lead with the cloud, close with Hybrid: Cloud is the door opener with partners who offer this averaging 34% higher newer customer acquisition via Hybrid Cloud.
- Get to know the CMO: 41% of IT budget is now coming from line of business positions – Not necessarily the CEO/CTO. By speaking to CMO you increase access to budget by 41%
- Optimise your Team for the cloud: Adopting a Cloud structure enables businesses to optimise their team with fewer people while being more productive. Research has shown 30% more revenue per employee by adopting a cloud model
- Scaling with your own IP: Start doing managed service offering through the cloud and looking at package your own IP.
The key to success is to use your Microsoft Partner Network Benefits. Cloud Partners on average use membership benefits far more than other traditional IT partners and research has shown that Cloud partners are growing 2.4 x faster as a result.
Kevin Turner – The FY14 Game Plan
Captivating as ever, KT highlighted the core focuses on the four big mega trends (Cloud, Mobility, Social and Big Data) and showcased impressive Microsoft Performance figures across all four areas. A selection below:
- Skype drives 1/3 of all international Phone traffic
- Skydrive 250 million people using skydrive, 1 Billion documents and 11 billion photos stored
- Office 365 – 1 Billion $ run rate with 500% growth
- 85% of Fortune 500 are using Yammer
- 90% of Fortune 100 use Lync
He then focused on the year ahead and the FY14 Game Plan:
1) Win in mobile – Tablets and phones
- Great devices coming along being lead by Windows 8.1 OS
- Need partners help to adopt the new technology i.e. integrating it into your own businesses
- Need investment by partners in developing consumer and Line of Business Apps
At this point KT showed some great Windows 8 versus IOS commercials.
2) Accelerating our customers move to the Cloud
- Highlighted the urgency around Clouds momentum which partners need to maximise and profit from.
- Currently only 22,000 partners transacting in the Cloud which although high is only a fraction of the total Partner eco-system.
3) Competing to Win
KT highlighted our competitors across Devices, Services and traditional channels. Also highlighted over 250 customers who have come back to Microsoft in the last 12 months.
4) Customer Satisfaction – taking it to new level
Big opportunity around customer satisfaction and five core areas 1) deploy current tech version internally in your own business 2) drive customer adoption, 3) Lead customers to the Cloud, 4) Keep customer business value front and centre 5) Leverage Microsoft's strong R&D story with customers.
He went onto to finish saying that in the old eco system there was a 338 million PC opportunity. In the new world this is now a 2.9 billion (PC, tablet and Mobile) opportunity!