After last year's Vista-fest in Boston, 2007's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in the thinner air of Denver, Colorado, saw a more sedate Microsoft as it corralled about 8,000 partners for a week-long exercise in self-love, writes Eamon McGrane.
Microsoft's worldwide partner conferences are fundamentally group hugs. The keynote speakers are, predominantly, preaching to the converted, with only the analysts, bloggers and the media raising a sometimes weary eye.
This year, chief executive Steve Ballmer's address seemed more scripted than usual. Still, Microsoft manages to imbue these events with a combination of circus-ring hucksterism and actual information. It's just a matter of trying to strip the razzmatazz from the message to see what's actually being said.
Two things certainly were at the top of Microsoft's agenda in Denver: the realisation that "software plus services" is a goer and its customer relationship management (CRM) product, which could potentially drop a bomb into this market sector.
Software as a service consumed over the web as opposed to sitting on a desktop computer or server has been a trend for the past few years - albeit one that Microsoft did not seem to be taking on board.
Microsoft, however, argues that market demand exists for both on-premises software and hosted services. It is on this basis that its new approach is termed "software plus services", so customers can avail of its products over the internet or have them sitting on PCs/servers.
The company's Dynamics Live CRM software was greeted with much enthusiasm from the crowd, especially when it was announced that it would be selling for about $44 (€31.80) a month. Microsoft seems to be going after companies such as Salesforce and Siebel and, with a price point at about 40 per cent less than the market average, Microsoft believes this will be a disruptive influence in the sector.
While the online world was being embraced by Microsoft at its WPC, there were still a few creases in the company's cloth that were ignored at the conference, such as market and technology problems on the client and server end of the business.
Windows Server 2008 has been delayed. Originally planned for the end of this year, it has now been pushed back to February 2008. Trying to sweeten that bitter pill somewhat, Ballmer said the launch of Windows Server 2008 would coincide with the release of SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008.
At last year's WPC, Ballmer also talked up Microsoft's security products and how big they were going to be in this area. One year later, while its Forefront brand has been making slight inroads, it is certainly nothing to crow about.
Alison Watson, corporate vice president of the worldwide partner group at Microsoft, said Ballmer usually has his eye on a five-year window and, although the security space has yet to hit the heights that Microsoft wants, it was getting there.
"It's an area we underperformed in last year. You will see us make more of an impact in security this year. We probably didn't have the partner programme just right. I think we had it styled up too high and we didn't have the products quite right a year ago," she said. "Are we all the way there yet? No. I think though in the next 12 months, our security products will have a bigger impact than the previous 12."
