That’s What He Said: Ballmer on the State of Microsoft

Steve Ballmer’s WPC 2011 keynote turned into a lengthy state of the state of Microsoft, as he expounded on products like Skype, Windows Azure and Bing and how they will affect enterprises, partners and competitors. Here are some of Big Steve’s most quotable fightin’ words.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage for his keynote at Microsoft’s 2011 Worldwide Partner Conference with his usual fist-pumping exuberance.

 

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After thanking Microsoft partners profusely for their hard work and revenue generation (Microsoft does 95 percent of its business through partners), Ballmer stressed the importance of the cloud computing, and urged partners to go “All In” just like Microsoft.

“We need partners who want to come with us to the cloud. We need you to decide, and  to see 15,000 people here coming with us to Windows Azure and Office 365 is exciting after being nervous last year when some of you said you were not ready to be all in,” Ballmer said.

“Yes, it’s disruptive technologically — we’re redoing our business model and you will have to retrain and reskill yourselves for this new world. But I’m glad you’re making the journey with us.”

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Another part of Microsoft’s journey is giving  partners and anyone else watching (that means you Wall Street investors and Microsoft’s many competitors) a detailed update on how Microsoft is doing. And with that, Ballmer laid out an extensive state of the state on all of Microsoft’s services and products. How does Ballmer think Microsoft is doing? Awesome of course! Although there was a shred of humility for struggling products like Windows Phone 7.

Here are Ballmer’s WPC keynote fightin’ words on everything from Bing to Windows Server.

Office 2010 and Office 365

“Office 2010 is our highest selling version of Office — a year after its release and it has already sold 100 million licenses … Two weeks ago we announced Office 365, where office meets the cloud. Leading up to the launch, we had one business every 25 seconds trialing Office 365.”

Regarding Office 365 competition:

“Basically the other guys have yet to really show up [an unsubtle reference to Google] … Any place we engage with Office 365 we win.”

Note: Tell that to the U.S. GSA (General Services Administration), which chose Google Apps over Microsoft’s cloud service, after a six-month bidding process, to migrate all its employees in 17 locations around the world to the cloud for email and collaboration tools.

Skype and Lync

“I’m very enthusiastic about acquiring Skype. It is very consistent with one of Microsoft’s core businesses, which is to help people communicate and collaborate. Some partners have asked: Does having Skype mean you’re not serious about Lync? Quite to the contrary. One of the great motivations in acquiring Skype is to enable the enterprise to have all the control it wants in communication and collaboration through Active Directory and Lync, and yet be able to connect people within enterprises to consumers, businesses and partners around the world. Lync, in some sense with Skype is a strategy that will allow the consumerization of IT to really proceed with full vim and vigor.”

“Seventy percent of the Fortune 500 is now on Lync. Certainly if you look at a product from Microsoft that is growing most quickly, it is Lync in the enterprise. With the combination of Lync and Skype under the same umbrella, we think we’ll be able to do even more fantastic things together.”

Windows Phone 7

“We’ve gone from very small to very small, but it’s been a heck of a year! [scattered laughs from the crowd]. You’re going to see a lot of progress in that market.”

“Windows Phone 7 sold millions of phones in last year, and 9 out of 10 people would recommend it to a friend. It’s a competitive market, but we have 20,000 apps built for WP7. Nokia bet on Windows Phone over Android, and they are pushing us to go broader geographically. Also Gartner and IDC both did predictions this year that said Windows Phone will be the number 2 phone in 2015. We’ve already shipped two updates, and our ‘Mango’ update available this fall will have 500 new features. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but like the cloud, we’re all in when it comes to mobile devices.”