An Article By: David Tan, Chief Technology Officer, CHIPS Technology Group Inc.
Every July, Microsoft starts off their fiscal year by
bringing together their biggest sales and distribution channel, their partners,
at their annual Worldwide Partner Conference.
It’s an opportunity to spend 4 days reflecting on lessons learned from
the past 12 months, but also understand the direction Microsoft is taking as a
company, which invariably shapes the decisions of their partners. Despite anything that anyone might feel about
them, Microsoft is still a company that moves the needle in IT, especially for
a business like us, who has built so much of our expertise and practices around
their offerings. It’s essential to be in
lock-step with them on many fronts, and it’s a great opportunity to hold
high-level meetings with key management people.
We have been attending since 2004. Many of the decisions we make are shaped by
things we hear and conversations we have at this event. This year seemed a little different for me
however. There was an obvious change to
Microsoft’s approach across the board, and it was obvious right from the start,
when CEO Satya Nadella took to the main stage Monday morning to get the event
kicked off.
Nadella spoke for close to 90 minutes, and it was a great
showing by him. I’ve seen him talk on
many occasions and I think he’s really starting to get better talking to
partners and customers and understanding all our collective needs. What struck me though was how much different
this talk was than anything I’ve seen in the past, and the feeling grew as the
conference continued. Nadella went about
75 minutes out of his 90 before he even uttered the word Windows.
Now this may seem trivial, but trust me, it’s fairly
monumental. Windows is Microsoft’s bread
and butter. Their cash cow, and it has
been for well over a decade. Just about
everything they have done in the past has been tied to the core operating
system. For the CEO of Microsoft to
spend 75+ minutes talking to partners and not mention Windows truly illustrates
the change of tide Microsoft has undergone in the last 5 years. The trend continued throughout the conference
– focusing far more on solutions and business enablement than raw products.
I think Microsoft gets the trend we have seen emerging for
years. Nobody is making purchasing or
business decisions based on features and functions. That went away years ago. Microsoft products are the foundation for
business solutions. Before talking about
Windows, Nadella talked about everything from Office365 to Dynamics365 (a newly
announced cloud solution for ERP and Business Productivity Solutions) to the
HoloLens and Surface Hub. In general,
the conference was very light on “product” announcements. Some of the biggest announcements were around
things like enabling customers to lease Surface 4 devices and consume them as a
service, and retiring scores of old partner competencies around legacy
products. Everything Microsoft is
pushing from the partners out is about solutions, and specifically cloud
solutions.
We have seen this trend emerging for years. It used to be fun to sit with customers and
talk about speeds and feeds, or features and requirements, but that hasn’t been
beneficial for us or our clients for some time now. New versions and applications are always much
more about what they do to enable your business, or make your business safer,
or more productive. This is why we have
spent so much time and energy working with clients on strategies for
innovation. If we understand your
business process intimately, we can find ways to help you embrace technology to
optimize and improve your operations.
Microsoft isn’t always the most progressive company, and
they are often very reluctant to make large changes in strategy around their
key product offerings. The writing is on
the wall however, and they are the ones leading the change in many ways. If you ever have to look at a list of
features or functions for a technology component or partner you are evaluating,
you are 2 steps behind the times. We
have said for a while that every company needs to think of themselves as a tech
company. Understand how the solutions
you are buying can be developed to make your business work better, and you will
be leaps ahead of the competition before the race even begins.
