Remarks by Phil Sorgen, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Channel, in Orlando, Florida, July 15, 2015.

PHIL SORGEN:  Let’s hear it again for American Authors.   What a great way to start the morning.  Come on!  (Cheers, applause.)

Well, welcome to day three of the Worldwide Partner Conference.  And to start the day I actually want to reflect back on a year ago in Washington, DC, on this same day starting this same keynote.  And I said to the audience then that in this mobile-first, cloud-first world our success was going to be achieved through a highly successful partner ecosystem.

And I went on to say that the ecosystem was going to evolve, that the business models inherent in it would change, but that there was a place for every one of you in this ecosystem.

Our position on that hasn’t changed at all, but the world is changing, and we have to change with it.

This is an industry transformation and Microsoft is going through it with you.  We’re committed to helping through this transformation and supporting all of you to go achieve that growth opportunity that’s ahead of us.

Now, on Monday, I introduced the four ways that we consistently invest in this partner ecosystem.  And the keynotes on Monday were more focused on the product and technology innovation.

This morning’s keynotes are going to be more focused on the other three pillars where we forge ahead to create markets, to win together, to win in the marketplace together, to go out and get that last mile of sales and marketing execution, and to make sure we’re enabling your business.

More specifically, there’s three topics we’re going to dive into today.  The first, whether your business is domestic or you sell across the world, this is a global business.  And events happening on the world stage impact you and they impact your customers.

And in this increasingly complex world there’s one constant that remains:  If people don’t trust the technology, they’re not going to use it.  And that’s never been more important than when our customers are evaluating their journey to the cloud.

We’re fortunate to have Brad Smith, our General Counsel and Executive Vice President for Legal and Corporate Affairs, here to talk about how Microsoft’s addressing this important topic and how together we can build a value proposition of trust to win in the mobile-first, cloud-first world.

The second topic’s oriented around how the cloud is creating business models disruption at an unprecedented scale.  Steve Guggenheimer, our Corporate Vice President for our DX organization, is going to talk about business model disruption, the opportunity for IP and how you can take your innovation to be successful in the market.

Then I’m going to come back up and I’m going to talk about essentially one question:  What are we seeing in the most successful partners in this transformation and how are we here to help.

And then the keynote I know we’ve all been waiting for, Kevin Turner, our Chief Operating Officer, is going to come up and talk about how we can achieve more together with an action plan for us to go compete to win.

So without any further ado, I want to ask you to join me in giving a warm welcome to Brad Smith, a first-time presenter at our Worldwide Partner Conference.  Come on up, Brad.  (Applause.)

END