…where we want to play. And I would tell you that that's a great example of where we're figuring that out in real time, but doing it with partners versus developing the solution and then saying, "OK, how does it all work?", and making it work.
So this is a different, subtle shift. Everybody always wants more, and they always will. But it's a real-time evolution... I really like the way we're approaching it, I agree with it and I'm really excited about the opportunity this is going to provide for the whole breadth of partners that we have.
You mentioned product road maps as one thing you want to approach differently. What do you hear from customers — and you said you've met with a lot of customers recently — and from your sales team about the top customer concerns? Have they changed in the past year? At one time it was security or product road maps or licensing changes.
The biggest thing I hear from customers is, look, in the past the grade card for a chief information officer or for somebody running an IT shop was: "Keep the lights on, be under budget and don't stop growth". What's changed now is the fundamental shift that says: "Hey, we need to use technology and systems as a competitive advantage so how do you help me create business value?"
The biggest thing we have to do for chief information officers and business decision makers, as well as IT professionals, is to help them create that. They've got a standard budget that doesn't go away. They've got to keep it running right.
But the bar has changed; it's raised. I think it's an evolution, and the art of our selling has to continue to evolve at the same rate, if not faster, than the art of the solutions. So one of the sessions I'm running next week at our national worldwide sales conference is world-class selling. We have a whole segment on: "What does being a world-class seller mean?" It means listening to people; it means saying thank you; it means the little things. But then it also means how do you transition into selling solutions? How do you articulate the software road map? How do you connect to business value? How do you learn somebody's business to be able to see what solutions map to that?
Do you think there will be a challenge for the salesforce? I mean, they haven't been doing as much of that in the past, you know, so it's kind of a new area — the solutions area.
I find our people hungry for it, because our customers and our partners are hungry for it. So it's not something we have to jump-start. It's something we have to facilitate.
Ballmer mentioned the other day that there's going to be a massive effort put behind launching Vista and Office 2007. Can you tell us any more about what's going into that launch? Is that something you're involved in?
Oh yeah, marketing and public relations and all of that are areas I get to work with. [Regarding the Windows and Office 2007 launches] I will tell you that it's the biggest thing the company has had in many years for obvious reasons, and the company has a history of doing these big launches really, really well. There's a lot of learning from the past, as well as how the environment has changed and how we need to adapt and go into that.
You mentioned the concept of "one Microsoft" in your speech this morning. I think you were talking about that aspect of the partner relations. But does that also apply within Microsoft — that idea of bringing together these many areas of the company?
It certainly does, and the "People Ready" campaign that is in the process is also how we're trying to run Microsoft. I'm very much a proponent and a supporter and a driver of the initiative. It's about putting people at the centre. It's about making sure we're all on the same page. I believe that getting us all on the same page, that's the job of leadership.
This morning, you made some interesting comments about Google and enterprise search. Are there other areas you're concerned about besides enterprise search as far as Google is concerned?
Well, we have a lot of competitors. As broad as our portfolio is, it invites competition. And I also believe that competition makes us better. So I've told our group that the hardest products I find to run within Microsoft are the ones that don't have competition. We're not going into any enterprise search area because of competition; we're going into it because our customers want it and that's a space that we should excel at. So I'm very excited for us to get after that and make sure we drive deployments and adoption of our enterprise-search solutions. But yes, there are others, but in a lot of different spaces.
The "solution sell" has been IBM's game for quite some time. When you go and speak to chief information officers of a big company, do you feel like it is a harder sell because you are being compared to IBM in that aspect?
No, I think that our definition of it is different from IBM's. We don't intend to help people on how to run their business. We intend to tell people: "These are some opportunities that we want to enable you to run your business." We want to map our technology to how they do their work and optimise that, and we want to do it with partners and with customers. So our whole approach to both services and partners and our solutions is quite different. You would know that from tracking the company for so many years. The question is, how do we enunciate that? How do we amplify that? And then how do we capitalise on that difference? That's what's going to determine how well we do in that space.
The customers and our partners, they want it. They have been needing it — and our ability to step into that and fulfil it — because our stuff works really well together, and it can work independently. That's the beauty of the Microsoft solution. And our competition can't always say that. It doesn't always work as I described. So that's something that we've got to leverage — what we do really well and how we bring that together in the seamless environment for our customers and our partners.
What's your major concern? What keeps you awake at night when you think about Microsoft?
The only thing I think about when I go to bed and when I get up in the morning is people. Do we have enough skilled, trained qualified people, and are we equipping them to take care of our customers and our products? I see my job as twofold. One, make sure we take care of our people. Two, make sure we take care of our customers and partners. And if I had to add a third, it would be: don't get confused about what my job is. Just take care of our people, and take care of our customers and partners, and those are the things I try to stay grounded on.
