Steve Ballmer and Jon Roskill: Worldwide Partner Conference 2011

Remarks by Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, and Jon Roskill, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group
Los Angeles, Calif.
July 11, 2011

STEVE BALLMER: Tami thought I’d actually put a landmine out here for her. I spilled water in the middle of the stage earlier, and I warned her there was water out, but I didn’t really tell her where it was. And whoever tweeted, because I was reading kind of the tweets from this crowd backstage, whoever tweeted that Tami and Steve are on the same page like Fred and Ginger, only she’s in heels, they had no idea what I almost did to her. So, I appreciate her remarks.

I certainly appreciate the chance to show you a little bit where we’re going with Windows. Windows is the backbone product of Microsoft. Windows PCs, Windows Phones, Widows slates, but Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows. That’s kind of where we’re grounded. The Windows technology in the cloud. The Windows technology in the server. Windows.

We’re moving in a great direction in terms of a common and coherent design language and user interface across phone, slate, PC, and TV that you see on the screen here. A common set of backend services anchored in Windows Azure, and in Bing, but supporting the great applications that you use every day to build the applications that power business, SharePoint, and Lync, and Exchange, and the rest of the Office suite and family.

I think we’ve had a phenomenal year. Our industry is more dynamic, things are changing more, there’s more competition than there’s ever been. That’s true for Microsoft. That’s true for every partner here in the room, despite the fact that there’s still a global kind of economic malaise that we read about every day in the paper, we’re seeing real dynamism and growth in the IT industry. And that’s attracting more investment, it’s attracting new vendors, it’s attracting new partners. It’s creating new opportunity.

We went out and had a heck for a year together. We launched new products, innovative, exciting products. Hopefully we showed you some things today that kind of fired you up a little bit, some things that prompt not only interest in the work that we’re doing, but prompt interest in the new scenarios that you can get after for your customers. Tomorrow you’ll see and hear what we’re doing in more depth with Office, and Dynamics, with Azure, and Windows Server, and Windows Phone, in addition to Windows itself.

And I hope you’ll agree by the time the conference ends, I hope you’ll agree with me on two things, three things. Number one, we all really did have a very good year last year. Number two, we all have a phenomenal opportunity for growth on the backbone of the products that we have coming in the next year. And, number three, at the end of the day, we’re all-in with you, 100 percent. As go you, so goes Microsoft. Your success is our success. We’re committed — tools, training, marketing. We have to do what we do together, and our businesses will grow and prosper, and succeed together, and that that’s got to be something that we double down, and really recommit to 1,000 percent.

I will have a phenomenal rest of the Worldwide Partner Conference. I’ll have a chance to meet some award winners, get into it and hear what’s going on with some of our partners who are focused on the cloud, talk to some of those guys who keep flirting around with the VMwares, and the Oracles and the Ciscos of the world, and get them really committed to the Microsoft fold. But, I know, number one, I’m going to have a chance to hear what you need, what you need to grow your businesses, to build your businesses, and what Microsoft can do to support it. And I appreciate that, and I appreciate your partnership and I’m interesting in hearing what you say, and if I get a chance to see it, great. If I don’t, you know how to reach me, [email protected]. Top to bottom, we’re all in for our partners and our own mutual success. Thank you all and have a great WPC. (Cheers and applause.)

JON ROSKILL: Great morning so far, folks. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Tami. Now, partners are doing amazing innovative work every day. It’s why we’re partner driven from the start. And the emerging technology and innovation category, it’s a new award category created for WPC 2011. We’re excited. Winners can be from small startups working on Azure, to large consulting companies.

An innovation award is not just a trophy on the shelf. We give winners real marketing opportunities, we give them PR support and we give them other types of support to drive their business. Let me go ahead and bring Steve back up to help me congratulate and celebrate these award winners. I guess we need to watch out for where that water is.

STEVE BALLMER: No, they dried it up.

JON ROSKILL: All right, cool. Okay. Are you ready to meet these talented partners?

STEVE BALLMER: I am.

JON ROSKILL: All right. Let’s run the video.

(Awards video segment.)

Good. All right, Steve.

STEVE BALLMER: Congratulations to all the winners. One more round of applause for them.

JON ROSKILL: All right.

(Applause.)

All right. So, now I would like to take us over to Steve Clayton. Steve Clayton is sitting over there with some news for us.

STEVE CLAYTON: Thanks, Jon.

I’ve been monitoring Twitter over the last hour, and taking feedback as we’ve been going through the show. We’ve started to trend on Twitter. I think we’re going to be trending a lot higher now that the audience in here, and the audience worldwide, knows that Steve Ballmer is following Twitter. We’ve got a ton of questions coming in. You and I, Jon, have been invited to a lot of parties, which I’ll tell you about later. Some of them sound pretty interesting. The cloud is a hugely hot topic. Obviously, we’re going to cover that in a ton of detail tomorrow. So, make sure you’re here bright and early for the keynotes tomorrow; we’re going to hear all about the cloud.

People love the Bing demos. Spontaneous applause for the Bing demo. Stefan did an awesome job. I’m sure everybody in here is using Bing anyway. If you’re not, then I’m going to encourage you to use Bing throughout the week. I think you will love it. Check out the Maps features. Bing is just an awesome tool. I think you’ll have a great time with it here in LA this week. The Xbox demo as well got great feedback out there.

Twitter really lit up when Tami started to talk about Windows 8. Clearly, there’s a ton of anticipation for that. We’re going to hear a lot more about that at BUILD back here in Anaheim later in the year.

You can continue to send me feedback. I’m @stevecla on Twitter, or tweet using the hashtag. Hashtag is #wpc11.

And then the final kind of question I had for you, Jon, is people enjoyed the SIC, the Solution Innovation Center video. They want to know when they can come over to the Solution Innovation Center, and where they’re going to find you.

So, back to you, Jon.

JON ROSKILL: Okay. Well, Steve, thanks much.

As I said, you’ve got to get over to the Solution Innovation Center. I’ll be over there tomorrow afternoon, shaking hands, talking to you. The thing that gets me most excited about being here. So, I’ll look for you there.

So, we’ve had a great morning, we heard from Steve. We heard from Tami. We’ve got so much more to come. We’re just getting started. We’ve got this afternoon’s business value keynotes, and then the sessions after that. And tonight’s celebrations, yes, people like the celebrations. Excitement is building for that Office 365 MINI Cooper. How many of you have seen the Office 365 MINI Cooper? Okay. Well, the giveaway for that happens on Wednesday. You want to make sure you attend the Office 365 partner launch session tomorrow at the JW Marriott, and stop by the Office 365 lounge to learn more about that and the MINI Cooper. Okay.

So, in closing, thank you again so much for being here, thank you for being a great partner to Microsoft, and have a fantastic afternoon. We’ll see you tomorrow.

END