Sunday, July 31, 2011

Xbox Releases Avatar Kinect, Kinect Sparkler Interactive Experiences

Editor's note – July 28, 2011 – This article was updated to reflect that today Kinect Sparkler became available.

REDMOND, Wash. – July 25, 2011 – Kinect Fun Labs, a hub for innovative Kinect Gadgets on the Xbox 360, is launching two new experiences this week: Avatar Kinect and Kinect Sparkler.

In Kinect Fun Labs’ Avatar Kinect Stand-Up Comedy Fest on Facebook, users will view a handful of comics and their avatars and vote for their favorite.Avatar Kinect, available today, lets you – or rather your personalized avatar – interact with or hang out with up to seven other friends in 24 virtual stages ranging from a late-night talk show set to outer space to a sports tailgate party. To make the cyber socializing more real, Kinect’s camera tracks gestures and facial expressions – eyebrow raises, smiles, belly laughs and all.

Kinect Sparkler, also now available, lets players use their fingers to draw sparkling lines that whirl glowing, gold stars in front of, behind, and around 3-D photographs of themselves.

“Avatar Kinect and Sparkler are fun, creative experiences that allow consumers to get a sneak preview of cutting-edge Kinect technologies today instead of waiting until it’s in full-blown games,” says Eric Lang, general manager for the Microsoft Startup Business Group.

Avatar Kinect lets your personalized avatar interact with with up to seven other friends in 24 virtual stages ranging from a late-night talk show set to a sports tailgate party.Avatar Kinect lets your personalized avatar interact with with up to seven other friends in 24 virtual stages ranging from a late-night talk show set to a sports tailgate party.“We think these are very interesting and important capabilities for the platform – if you think about gaming, it’s all about making the experience more immersive,” says Umaimah Mendhro, a senior product manager for Microsoft Startup Business Group.

Adds Mendhro: “Some of this technology may be realized in games farther in the future, but we worked on these Fun Labs projects to offer a compelling, fun and cool experience that we could deliver today, using the power of Kinect.”

Users can share creations from both Avatar Kinect and Sparkler with the wave of a hand on the Fun Labs Live friends feed or uploading to KinectShare.com. From KinectShare, users can share their creations on Facebook or download them to their computers, email them to friends, and more.

Test-Driving Avatar Kinect

Avatar Kinect makes all kinds of interactive experiences possible – from hosting virtual events to creating your animated shows to just hanging out virtually with friends. Along with using Avatar Kinect to record monologues, or to chat with friends, there is tremendous potential for bloggers and podcasters to use the gadget as a new platform. When it comes to Kinect, including Avatar Kinect and Sparkler, “it’s about forgetting your inhibitions and letting your funny, creative side out,” Mendhro says.

To celebrate the launch of Avatar Kinect, Microsoft invited a handful of up-and-coming comedians to record stand-up routines – but to perform them as avatars, using some of the virtual stages in Avatar Kinect. The videos will go on the Facebook Xbox fan page, where fans will get to vote for their favorite, and the winning comedian will get his or her routine highlighted by Xbox.

One young comedian, Sam Comroe, gave a touchingly funny routine about Tourette’s syndrome and joked about whether his avatar now has Tourette’s syndrome as well. Another comedian quipped about being small in real life, and how it was nice to give his avatar more height and muscles; another wanted to explore hairstyles for his avatar.

In fact, personalizing the avatar is a big part of the fun. Last week, Maria Bartiromo – anchor of CNBC’s “Closing Bell” and anchor and managing editor of “Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo” experienced this firsthand.

Bartiromo customized her avatar, selecting just the right jacket and gold earrings from the Avatar Marketplace. Then, Bartiromo’s avatar conducted part of her interview with Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, using Avatar Kinect’s virtual News stage. The interview, avatars and all, was broadcast on Sunday’s Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo.

“I really like this avatar-based interview,” Bartiromo told Mundie. “And maybe I don’t even have to come to work to do it.”

Kinect Sparkler lets players use their fingers to draw sparkling lines that whirl glowing, gold stars in front of, behind, and around 3-D photographs of themselves.Kinect Sparkler lets players use their fingers to draw sparkling lines that whirl glowing, gold stars in front of, behind, and around 3-D photographs of themselves.Bloggers and podcasters Rebecca Levey, Nancy Friedman, Heidi Leder and Amy Oztan – who write and podcast as “The Blogging Angels,” a spoof on Charlie’s Angels – also tried recording their podcast using Avatar Kinect. The special avatar edition of their podcast, typically audio-only, took place on a talk show-style stage.

“It was really funny – when we went to record, Rebecca had to leave the virtual room because she and Amy were wearing the same dress,” Friedman says, laughing.

“It was horrifying!” Oztan says.

The four women say that though Avatar Kinect is for fun, it could be adopted by bloggers and podcasters as another platform for sharing. Friedman says she was impressed by the technology.

“When you’re playing Kinect, you’re seeing your avatar move, but there’s something about seeing it talk and have facial expressions that’s way cooler,” Friedman says. “The first time I saw Kinect, I thought, ‘The future is now,’ but this adds a whole other element that makes it seem that much more personal – like you’re that much more involved in the experience.”

Adds Oztan: “If you guys had seen what I was really wearing and looked like you would have been appalled, but my avatar looked fabulous.”

Invisible Technology, Connected Consumers

Kinect Fun Labs, home to several new Kinect innovations, was launched at the E3 conference earlier this year, and is part of a growing catalog of controller-free experiences – including several Kinect and Kinect-enhanced games for Xbox 360 coming this holiday season.

- Blogger and podcaster Nancy Friedman Kinect Fun Labs plans to release new applications (called gadgets) on a regular basis. Avatar Kinect is free for Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers who have Kinect, although it will be available to non-Gold-subscribers for 45 days so everyone can try it, Mendhro says. Kinect Sparkler will cost 240 points on Xbox LIVE.

The gadgets are meant to showcase Kinect technology in an approachable way – things like finger tracking, facial expression tracking, object capture, player scanning and augmented reality, says Shawn Wright, design director for Good Science, a Microsoft subsidiary and developer of Fun Labs. 

Wright also worked on the game “Kinect Adventures.”

“We tried to make the technology invisible and focused on the consumer experience. They’ll say, ‘I don’t understand how this works, but I don’t care. It’s cool,’” Wright says. “In addition to putting the latest Kinect technology into games that will come out two years down the road, we’re trying to give it to consumers as quickly as possible.”

Other key ideas behind creating Fun Labs, Wright says, are to help people make social connections and to inspire creativity – even from the Kinect community.

Kinect, which was released prior to last year’s holiday season, became the Guinness World Record holder for the fastest selling consumer electronic device over 60 days. Not surprisingly, a community of Kinect enthusiasts has emerged, including scientists, students and hobbyists.

Wright says people outside Microsoft are constantly thinking of new ways to enhance and use the device and its technology, and Fun Labs is a great avenue.

“We’ve had people submit ideas, and some of them are actually going to get built,” Wright says. “We’re very open to ideas that come from anywhere, and we’ll produce them – the idea is to release gadgets on a regular basis, all focusing on the different Kinect innovations. Kinect is really tied in with its community.”


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Saturday, July 16, 2011

Microsoft Announces the General Availability of Windows Embedded POSReady 7

REDMOND, Wash. ? July 5, 2011 ? Today, more and more businesses rely on devices to interact with end users and customers. The retail and hospitality industry, for example, provides a unique opportunity for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to create compelling and engaging point of service (POS) devices ? including digital signage, cash registers, self-service kiosks and fuel pumps ? that offer a differentiated user experience.

To better help OEMs and retailer and hospitality organizations take advantage of this opportunity, today Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Embedded POSReady 7.

Windows Embedded POSReady 7, previously released in community technology preview at this year’s National Retail Federation 100th Annual Convention & Expo, provides retail and hospitality businesses with enhanced transaction processing that increases customer satisfaction, loyalty and staff productivity while reducing in-store operational costs. In addition, Windows Embedded POSReady 7 delivers the power of the Windows 7 platform to specialized POS devices, providing rich immersive user experiences that attract and engage customers with eye-catching graphics and a familiar interface.

Furthermore, devices running on Windows Embedded POSReady 7 will be fully supported by Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011, the recently launched solution that extends the capabilities of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to help control and organize enterprise devices running on Windows Embedded POSReady 7, among others. With this capability, enterprise IT professionals are provided with one simple system that can make simultaneous updates across the enterprise.

Windows Embedded POSReady 7 launches with support from many global partners, including IBM, NEC Infrontia, Touch Dynamic, Fujitsu, NCR and HP. Key features of Windows Embedded POSReady 7 include the following:

Support for Windows Touch multigesture touch interfaces to provide users with intuitive graphics

Windows Media Player 12 for a seamless multimedia experience on POS devices

AppLocker, a simple and flexible mechanism that allows administrators to specify exactly what is allowed to run on their POS devices

Enhanced security features through BitLocker, BitLocker To Go and Encrypting File System for increased encryption of internal hard disks, local folders, and external thumb drives and hard disks, giving IT administrators greater protection of highly important data from unauthorized users or external attackers

To learn more about the GA of Windows Embedded POSReady 7 and other Windows Embedded news check out the Windows Embedded POSReady 7 and Windows Embedded retail and hospitality Web pages, as well as Twitter.


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Kirill Tatarinov: Worldwide Partner Conference 2011

KIRILL TATARINOV: Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I'm truly excited to be here with you today. What a great event. And what a great time to be with Microsoft Business Solutions.

As you heard from Steve yesterday, with Microsoft Dynamics we are on a tear. And I want to start by saying a huge thank you to all of our partners, to all of you who work with Microsoft Dynamics, many thousands of you here in the room, for doing amazing work helping our customers worldwide. Let's hear it for our Dynamics partners here.

(Cheers and applause.)

With Business Solutions, not only do we work with our partners, we deliberately depend on our partners, and for that we have the richest and the best partner programs, that are coveted by the industry. And with the latest announcements that were made yesterday on adding referral programs to Microsoft Partner Network. Everybody here, everybody who works with business customers, can share in Microsoft Dynamics success, because Dynamics essentially brings everything that we do for our business customers together. And the value of Microsoft, the value of Office, the value of Azure, the value of everything that we do in our server platform manifests itself, in many cases, through Dynamics in front of business customers.

Together, we have seen amazing success. And today we have many brand names, and many customers running their businesses, running their mission-critical applications, powered by Microsoft Dynamics. Customers of all sizes are ready to modernize their applications and move into the future with Microsoft Dynamics.

There is one name, there is one brand, that is not on this slide, but it is all over this event, and that is actually one of the best, and also the most demanding, Dynamics customers that I have. And obviously that name is Microsoft.

Tony Scott, our CIO, is here, and Microsoft, for historic reasons, used to run Diebold. And many of our sales people passionately hated the tool that we asked them to use everyday. And today I'm really proud to report to you that this year Microsoft is Diebold-free. (Applause.) And every single one of you here are actually beneficiaries of this change, because people from Microsoft who help you every day use Microsoft Dynamics. And I hope you have seen this positive change in productivity of people in Microsoft who support you in the last year. Well, in fact, I know you have seen this change, as we've seen in the report and survey results that you've produced in the last year. So, thank you for that. (Applause.)

Together we're changing the game in business applications. We have this very ambitious vision for what the business of the future ought to look like. We call that Dynamic Business. The only constant in the world is change. And we're setting up the future where every business can be dynamic, business that does not stand still, business that anticipates change, business that moves ahead of the pace of the economy and the environment that surrounds it. And we build tools, systems, and methodologies that empowers and enables Dynamic Business.

Our job, and our mission, is to make every business in to a Dynamic Business. And our job is to empower every single one of you here to become Dynamic Businesses through the usage of Microsoft Dynamics solutions. We have the solution that is the easiest and the most intuitive to use. We deliver true value with unrivaled return on investments, and reduced total cost of ownership compared to any other tool that's available out there, and we're proud to be the tool that is the most agile, which is the easiest to deploy, the quickest to roll out, and the easiest to implement in any customer size, in any type of organization.

The momentum in this business has been phenomenal. With CRM, we passed another very important milestone this year: Two million users worldwide run Microsoft Dynamics CRM every day to manage their sales, customer care processes, and to run a broad range of line of business applications enabled by xRM platform. Amazing success, amazing growth. I know many of Dynamics CRM partners are out here in the room. Thank you for working with us on enabling the success. (Applause.)

With Dynamics ERP, we celebrated a very important milestone, ten years in the ERP business for Microsoft. And during those ten years, every year we've been adding approximately 15,000 customers. No other vendor in this space can tell you that they have been adding 15,000 customers consistently year-over-year-over-year. And we're seeing growth across portfolio of our products. We have a product portfolio that is designed to serve the needs of customers of all sizes, customers in all industries, customers in all geographies — and every single product in this portfolio has been growing.

And, as reported by Gartner, Forrester, and many other analysts who are watching this industry, Dynamics ERP and CRM today are the unrivaled leader in all the workloads that we cover. And we're very proud, and we're very excited to be in this position when we're absolutely ready to serve the needs of our customers worldwide.

Now, WPC is somewhat of a special event. It's an opportunity for us to come once a year and to report to our partners on our progress, and report on what we're doing, and what are we delivering, and are we meeting our commitments. And this WPC, I'm really proud to report to you that our engineering team has executed on all cylinders, and we met every single commitment, and every single product in the Microsoft Dynamics portfolio was updated, modernized, and delivers even more value than it did in the past though innovations on public clouds, private clouds, and deployments that our partners do out of their own datacenters. Very exciting momentum, very exciting progress that we see with Microsoft Dynamics.

Earlier this year we announced the beta version — Steve did it at Convergence — of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. We talked about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 as the game changer in the ERP industry. And today we have this product released to manufacturing and we're ready for a global launch in early September, and it's evident by many customers who are already deploying this product in production, this is the game changer. This is the product that sets the new era for what ERP and business applications ought to be.

It delivers ERP for everybody, and every single person in the organization can benefit from Microsoft Dynamics, and from the powerful simplicity that the products bring to our customers. Now, the question is often being asked in relation to ERP in cloud, what are you, Microsoft, going to do and are you ever going to put your ERP product and your ERP investment in public cloud?

Earlier this year at our Convergence event in April, we announced that every new release of Microsoft Dynamics ERP product will be available on Windows Azure platform in the public cloud. So, the timer is on and the race is on, but actually what is happening with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, which is available on on-premises deployment and private cloud, or partner cloud today, we're taking the first very significant step towards the cloud with Microsoft Dynamics AX.

And today I'm real excited to announce a very important tool for those of you who work with business applications certainly appreciate it, a tool that we'll call Rapid Start for Dynamics ERP, a tool that dramatically reduces time to deploy, configure and customize ERP systems, tools that run on Windows Azure, tools that truly help our partners deploy the solution quicker. I know many of you will benefit from this tool. Many of you have been able to achieve even bigger results with Microsoft Dynamics once the tool becomes available later this fall.

Also today, at WPC 2011, I'm very excited to announce the latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, a great service that is running in the cloud since January, available in 40 countries, and all of those languages. We essentially transformed the way we build the product with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. We made the commitment that we will issue a service update twice a year. In January we made the service available, in Q4 we will issue an update. It is a very important, significant update for a number of reasons.

First, it makes CRM an add-on to Office 365. So, every single customer who signs up to use Office 365, and there will be millions of them out there, will have an option to add Dynamics CRM Online on the same bill, on the same provisioning engine. We're also making very significant enhancements, as many of you requested, in our enterprise capabilities, improving disaster recovery, improving federated identity, improving some security and privacy aspects of the tool.

We're adding a wealth of social capabilities. People want to interact in different ways. The CRM enables those social capabilities, and we're adding those capabilities in a way that actually improves productivity. It is not useless chat that we're adding to the product. It's actually something that helps people be more productive. And finally, as many of you requested, we're adding capabilities for specific industries that make Dynamics CRM more industry-focused.

So, I thought the best way to show you the power of that solution, and the power of that service, and the power of bringing it all together for our business customers, would be to show you Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and the way it works with Office 365 and the Windows Azure platform.

So, let me have Varun here join me on stage and Varun will actually play a role, as many of you play every day. Varun will play a role of the sales representative who works for one of our partners and he sells Dynamics CRM every day, but he also uses Dynamics CRM to sell the product and to serve his customers. So, Varun take it away.

VARUN: Thank you, Kirill. (Applause.)

So, today I'm playing the role of a sales account manager at ProsWare, a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner. I start my day on my Windows Phone. And I'm using an app delivered by Microsoft that connects me to Dynamics CRM in the cloud. Through this app I have access to real-time social feeds that deliver activities and events that I subscribe to here on the device. My people feed shows me updates from people on the side of my organization that I follow. My record feed surfaces information from Dynamics CRM, so I can follow opportunities that I'm interested in as they move through my sales pipeline.

Now, over here I see a post from Eric on my marketing team. He's announced that his organization has shipped a set of material to empower our sales force and help them go compete. I also see that my manager responded to a post that I sent out about the fact that I'm going to be here in LA. He's asked me to follow up on a key opportunity here in LA for a competitive prospect.

And so what I'm going to do is let him know that I'm on it, go ahead and post that. I'm going to combine these two pieces of information to work on this opportunity. But, because I'm a sales guy I'm on the road a lot, so what I'm actually going to do is head over to Starbucks, grab some coffee and flip open my laptop where Office 365 follows me wherever I go.

What I'm looking at here is a real-time dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM embedded natively inside of the Outlook application. This dashboard provides me with a 360-degree view of all of my key sales information. Now, with one click I'm going to drill into the account record for this particular customer. So, here we are inside of the account record for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Now, I see we have some basic information here about this customer. What I'm going to do is harness the power of cloud services to learn as much as I can about this particular customer before I engage them.

The first thing I'm going to do is connect to the Windows Azure data market, a service delivered by Microsoft in the cloud, that's automatically enriching this account with information about this particular customer. So, you'll see here we now have address information that's been surfaced in the record, as well as any other information that's out there in the public cloud for me to be able to consume.

I'm also going to use cloud services to bring in social information from Twitter, location-based information from Bing, all designed in order to make me as intelligent as I can possibly be about this particular customer.

Now, the awesome thing about Office 365 is that it provides federated authentication across organizational boundaries. So, what that means is that I can see here that David, my customer, is an Office 365 user. And even though he's in a separate organization, I get presence information from Lync embedded inside of the CRM application, and I can just reach out to David and give him a quick heads-up that I'll be following up with him.

Hello, David. Got a sec, Varun from ProsWare sending over to you shortly.

So, with that I've done the smart thing and notified this particular customer that I'm going to be communicating with him. I love you, Rubin.

So, now that I've qualified this customer I'm going to add them to my sales pipeline, and what that means is I'm simply going to create an opportunity inside of Dynamics CRM. I'm going to call this opportunity Contoso Key Compete Account. Go ahead and click save. Now, the really great thing about our organization is outside of Lync we're also using SharePoint Online for document management and collaboration across our organization.

So, because of that, CRM is automatically provisioned a SharePoint Online workspace, and pre-populated it with all of the key information from that marketing bomb, so that I can actually work on it inside of this opportunity and have a great head start, all of the competitive materials I'm looking for, all of the document templates, really accelerate my productivity.

Now, ProsWare has also equipped me with this Windows 7 slate device. This is running a custom application that they've build that's designed to further empower their mobile sales organization. This application is hosted in Windows Azure and it's built using HTML 5, which means that it will work on any browser, any platform, and any device. You'll see here that I have access to the same social information here that you saw in the device and on the PC. I can interact with that. But, I also have deeper analytics and business intelligence.

So, for example, I can see here that there's a chart that's tracking my sales performance year-over-year. This chart is showing me some healthy trends. My service level agreements are being met. My seats are rising, and my customers are rising, which is great. And I can also interact with this application using a natural user experience, bring up analytics. I can keep interacting with this application and bring up more intelligence. So, in this particular case I'm looking at the results of a survey that we did for a limited set of customers that we engage with to learn what cloud services that they're using, so that we can see whether we're improving and taking share from the competition and driving our business forward.

So, what I've shown you over the course of this demonstration is really the power of the cloud, and how an organization like ProsWare is harnessing that power in order to drive value for their joint customers.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

KIRILL TATARINOV: Thank you, Varun. What a great example of how we are changing the game in business applications. In just a few minutes he won the customer. He had them at hello. He is in the process of converting them from Salesforce.com to Dynamics CRM like many thousands of customers are doing today, and he had it all in the cloud with Office 365, Windows Azure and Dynamics CRM.

Now, what we're finding in the cloud as we work with many of our customers is that partners play an even more significant role as we deliver solutions from the cloud. Customers are really helping us making sure that more customers move from initial clicks to buying, and we see much higher conversion rates when our partners are engaged.

We see bigger deals when our partners are engaged, and we see greater loyalty, resulting in ongoing renewals, which is very important in the world of cloud services.

We continue to support our partners as we transition into the cloud. Earlier this year we published a very important white paper that we call “Partner Flexibility Cloud Guide,” which really guides our partners who have been working with us for many years in business applications on how to move into the cloud, pricing, intellectual property, how do they work, how do they engage, how do you continue to stay practical. I encourage you to take a look at this document. This will help you as you go through that transition. There are also many, many partners here in the room who made this transition, and who work with us in the cloud. And WPC is one such event where those connections, and in reaching each other by sharing experiences, is very helpful.

One of those partners I want to highlight is an organization called PowerObjects, and I had the pleasure of visiting PowerObjects last year in Minneapolis. They've been in the cloud for many, many years. In fact, they started providing hosting solutions in the late '90s, and they made the transition to Dynamics CRM Online and SharePoint Online and Office 365 in recent time. And as they did this transition, they saw almost a 50 percent increase in their customer ad rates, which is quite significant and quite exciting. And they also see that their selling cycle got dramatically reduced. In the last year, they sold two Fortune 500 organizations in under 30 days, which is quite phenomenal, and quite astounding, for those of you who understand traditional selling cycles in organizations of that size. So, PowerObjects, and many others, zero to ten, many other partners who work with us in the cloud, are here ready to engage and talk to you, and help you learn.

As we move to the cloud, and as we transition into the future, it is really important for us to grasp the idea that Microsoft Dynamics is what brings the power of innovation from Microsoft to our business customers, and our mission here is to help organizations become dynamic in the cloud with the wealth of investments coming from Microsoft. That is what we stand for, and together we can absolutely do that. And we're counting on your success, and continued profitable relationships as we move our investments into the cloud.

There are a couple of things I would like you to do. Number one, if you're not using Dynamics CRM Online today, and if, god forbid, you're on Salesforce.com, it is time for you to switch. (Applause.) If you're Gold Certified, or Silver Certified, you have Dynamics CRM Online for your people. It is available and you don't have to pay for it. So, it's a crime for your business if you don't use the service. (Applause.)

Michael Park will speak later today, and he will go much deeper in his value keynote on Dynamics and what we're doing, the product roadmap. If you're interested, I encourage your to attend. Be thinking of Microsoft Dynamics if you work with our business customers, every single business organization is ready for Microsoft Dynamics. Think about competitive opportunities. We talked about Microsoft being Diebold-free. There are approximately 5,000 organizations out there running Diebold as their CRM for customer care. It's that product and those people who need to move, and you can help them, if you work with them, move to Dynamics CRM Online.

And, finally, lead referral programs. Every single one of you here in the room can share in the success of Dynamics as we change the game of business applications and make every business to be the Dynamic Business.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)


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Tami Reller: Worldwide Partner Conference 2011

TAMI RELLER: Thank you.

Well, thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. I'm so thrilled to be here. I always deeply value the opportunity to come here and talk to our partners about my favorite subject, Windows.

So, given our limited time together this morning, I want to focus on two things. First, I'll share with you the sizeable opportunity we have with Windows 7 in the coming year. I also do want to provide a brief recap on the “Windows 8” news that we have shared to date.

So, let me start with the momentum and the opportunity right now with Windows 7. So, last year I shared with you that, at a rate of seven copies per second, 150 million Windows licenses had been sold in the first seven months. That's the fastest, strongest start in the history of any OS. So, let me put the 400 million copies of Windows 7 that Steve mentioned earlier into context. That is three times the pace of Windows XP. Today, 27 percent of the Internet runs Windows 7.

And, at the center of all of this success, all of this momentum is you, our partners, partners across the hardware ecosystem, our retail partners who delight consumers every day, ISVs and developers, solution partners, distributors, and resellers. Thank you. We are so grateful for the strong partnership that we have forged, first through the successful launch of Windows 7, and now as we continue on the path of helping our customers deploy Windows 7 across their enterprises.

That partnership will be the key to continuing to deliver the value of the Windows 7 PC experience to even more customers and even more desktops in this coming year. So, let me share some of the impact you've had on customers with your efforts on helping them deploy. Through your work, nearly 90 percent of customers are committed to Windows 7. Already a quarter, a full quarter of all desktops are fully deployed on Windows 7. And there are companies like General Motors who are just inches away from 100 percent deployment across all of their users. That's almost 80,000 desktops.

For CIOs and IT professionals, upgrading to Windows 7 means several things. First, and perhaps foremost, it means lowering costs. Customers have consistently reported to us and to you that upgrading to Windows 7 has resulted in material cost savings, especially in the areas of PC management and application deployment. Security has been another important benefit and something that companies worry a lot about, especially as workers become more mobile, and as workers become more mobile, more devices are lost. Windows 7 reduces this risk.

Another Windows 7 capability that our customers often talk about — and I know they talk about this with you, and they prioritize it — is virtualization. When I talked to the team at Ford Motors recently, Eric Carson there, who is the senior management working on the deployment at Ford, made sure to emphasize the importance of virtualization in the actual migration process at Ford. And, for Ford, virtualization was the deciding factor for moving to Windows 7. That's for IT professionals and CIOs.

At the same time, Windows 7 end users are the happiest because they are no longer forced to use a decade-old operating system, old, uninspired hardware, and a dated browser to get their work done. The experience that they know, the experience that they love at home, is now what they have at work.

Recently, I had an opportunity to meet with the team at the Dow Chemical Company. And that was their observation. They shared with me that their end users were particularly excited to get brand new PCs as part of the global migration to Windows 7. They were even more excited when they really started to experience the productivity improvement with their new Windows 7 PCs. And this was something that Dow specifically measured and cared a lot about.

And it's really the core Windows 7 features, like the ability to pin your favorite apps, and your sites, using taskbar preview to move between windows and tasks easier and faster, jumplists for a quick view and navigation of all the activities that you're working on, Snap for multitasking, BitLocker for security, and Remote Desktop for that mobile work, all of this making the everyday computing experience simple, modern and secure.

One thing that's interesting is, we know we have very detailed information, and from our usage data, we know that Windows 7 is making a difference in how businesses and how consumers are working, how they're communicating, and really using the software to innovate.

Some examples, 86 percent of Windows 7 users are using taskbar preview to easily preview files, which often includes websites and videos; 71 percent of customers, users, pin their apps and files to the taskbar so they can easily access them when they need them; 62 percent of users use Snap to organize their desktop environment around how they work, how they communicate or how they consume entertainment.

Customers on Windows 7 like the Ford Motor Company, Royal Caribbean, Feeding America, the Italian Ministry of Defense and so many others, including many in education and nonprofit, are using a Windows 7 infrastructure to do both the ordinary and the extraordinary to grow their businesses, to innovate and to educate the next generation.

So, together we're now 20 months into this Windows 7 journey, and the adoption is the highest of any OS in history. I'd like to share with you a few more examples of what this means to some of our customers and how you're making this come to life. Here's one, when the economy turned down in 2008, the City of Miami had to come up with ways to trim expenses so that they could keep providing essential services to the residents of the city.

They decided that one of the ways they could do this was to drive efficiency in their desktop experience for the city's almost 4,000 employees. The whole idea and the goal was to help employees do their jobs with less effort and in less time, which would reduce operating expenses, including energy consumption. What they found in 2009 when they began migrating their client-based computing infrastructure to Windows 7 is that they save in power alone $90 per PC per year for each of their 2,500 PCs, money they could then put right back into helping the citizens.

Another great example is San Diego Unified School District, who just this year brought online 33,000 Windows 7 netbooks for students and nearly 2,000 tablet PCs for teachers. Over the next several years, the school district plans to deploy Windows 7 Enterprise across the entire school district. That will be 140,000 PCs. The district so far is confident that Windows 7 will directly tie to better learning for its students and better experiences for the teachers. We are very pleased that Windows 7 is supporting the important mission of preparing the next generation of leaders and innovators.

So, these types of success stories and so many others would not have been possible without your engagement. In fact, what we're finding is half of our business customers are working with partners as they deploy Windows 7.

One example, in the case of the San Diego Unified School District, which I just talked about, it was Microsoft Certified Partner Arey Jones, who created a gold image, with Windows 7, Office 2010 and critical education applications for this customer. Arey Jones has been a leader in providing educational technologies for over 40 years, really focused on the education space across the U.S. And one thing that I found terrific is that since the launch of Windows 7 Arey Jones has already migrated 90 percent of their customers to Windows 7. So, thank you.

There are so many great examples of the work you're doing to embrace Windows 7 for your customers, yet we really are only getting started. Today, as we look across the business community, two thirds of business PCs, two thirds are still on Windows XP. Moving these users to Windows 7, it's important and it's urgent work for us to get after together. And as we talk to our customers and talk to you, we see there are four key underlying motivators for businesses to make the move now.

First — and it should be first — it's the value. The ROI that Windows 7 brings to IT pros, to end users and to the business holistically is proven. Whether it's driving down costs, having a more secure mobile work experience, or increasing the efficiency and productivity for the end user. The Windows ROI has been tangible and it's been immediate in most cases for customers.

Second, XP end of life is not that far off — a thousand days to be exact. What end of life means is that ongoing standard support and software maintenance will not be a part of the Windows XP experience. And that can introduce material risk to a business. Together we must help our customers migrate more than 300 million desktops to a modern experience. You most certainly will play a critical role. And in fact, numerically, we believe that well over 40 billion of services will be purchased by customers over the next several years as part of this move.

Third is the cloud. Windows 7 is the best foundation for the cloud and for consuming cloud services. For so many of you and your customers that are betting on this strategy for competitiveness into the future, a modern desktop is an important step.

Earlier this year, we released a new cloud service for PC management and more, and that's Windows Intune. Today we are announcing the beta for the next release of Windows Intune. The beta includes new features that you and customers have been asking for, including software distribution and remote management of critical tasks. As of today, the public beta of our next release of Windows Intune is available out on TechNet. Please check it out. (Applause.)

And finally, Windows 7 is the path to the future. This leads me to the second topic that I wanted to take some time on today. How are we thinking about Windows 8 and what does this mean for you and what does this mean for your customers? We are, of course, still in the midst of the development process for Windows 8. The two updates we have provided on Windows 8 so far have been focused. They've been focused on readying our hardware ecosystem to deliver Windows 8 devices. And with our most recent update in early June that Steve referenced, we also provided partners and customers a first glance at the new Windows 8 UI.

The next update we will do on Windows 8 will come at our Build event this September in Anaheim. So, at the heart of Windows, at the heart of our ability to deliver Windows 8 is the flexibility that Windows has consistently shown. For 20 years now, Windows has defined the computing landscape for well over a billion customers around the world. It has continuously adapted to an always-changing technology landscape, and it's this ability to adapt over time is what ensures Windows will continue to be highly relevant in the future.

So, the technology landscape of today would include immersive Internet computing, touch screens for sure, and ultra-portable devices more and more. The rapid evolution of technology in these last several years has really brought so much incredible change to so many aspects of our lives, and the Web is driving much of this. The Web is driving changes in the way we work, certainly the way we play and the way we connect with others.

You can connect to the cloud to share data instantaneously and securely with virtually anyone in the world. Use natural user interface to interact with information in new and intuitive ways, develop rich applications that deliver these immersive end-user experiences. And of course, the kinds of devices that people are using today to connect to the Web are different, too. They're lighter. They're thinner. They resume from sleep immediately. Some of them have batteries that can last for weeks at a time.

Developers and partners want to be able to build apps that take advantage of the changes in the way that people interact with the applications and run on these devices.

All of these trends, all of these trends that I've just talked about help inform the development of Windows 8.

So, earlier this year we provided a technical preview of Windows 8. It was for our hardware ecosystem, and it was the first time that we talked publicly about the next version of Windows. There we announced that Windows 8 supports a new kind of hardware, system-on-a-chip or SOC architectures that will power the next generation of devices.

We specifically demonstrated Windows running on systems from NVIDIA, from Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, and they were all based on our marketecture. And we also demonstrated Windows 8 on low-power SOC Intel and AMD systems, also showing the great innovation coming on X-86 in the device space. This is a technical preview. We're still fairly early in the cycle. You saw motherboards and development systems, yet much progress has been made.

The demonstration that we did itself highlighted the work we had done on the architecture to enable the richness of Windows to run natively on the ARM platform. There we showed support across a full range of scenarios, like hardware-accelerated Web browsing on IE, device support and other features customers have come to expect, including Office apps.

Then building on this technical preview on June 1st in California, we unveiled the Windows UI for the first time. And on June 2nd, in Taipei, we held another partner preview, where we again demonstrated the UI and then provided our hardware ecosystem the latest updates on Windows 8 systems across ARM, Intel and AMD. As Steve noted, Windows 8 is a true re-imagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface. And our demonstrations in June showed just some of the ways that we've re-imagined the user interface for a new generation of touch-centric hardware. We designed Windows 8 from the ground up to be excellent for touch-only tablets and to work well with the keyboard and mouse.

So, over the last month, many of you have reached out to us to express your interest in knowing more about what we announced and how it might impact you. Let me take a moment now to give a quick visual tour through what we previewed in June. What you'll be seeing on the screen is a video that we made available on the Web for everyone to get a sense for the Windows 8 experience. The video is posted after Julie Larson-Green's demo at the AllThingsD Conference on June.

The first thing you're going to see is the start screen. The start screen is a personal mosaic of tiles and every app on your system is represented as a tile. Tiles are better than icons because each of the apps has a little more space to show a bit of its personality. The tiles are live. For example, the weather app can show you the current weather without you opening the app itself. You can arrange, you can group and name them however you like. It puts you at the center and makes the experience personal.

Apps are certainly an important part of the Windows 8 plan. And when Windows 8 ships, developers will already know how to build great apps. The Windows 8 UI is chromeless, and it's clean, and apps can take up the entire screen. Every single pixel on the screen is there to represent your information. As an app comes to life, Windows quickly fades to the background. The apps are beautiful; they're designed for touch and work well with a mouse and keyboard, too.

One of the great things about a PC is that you can multitask and work on two things at once. Snap allows you to easily view two apps at once. So, with one simple gesture you can snap one app next to another. You can choose to change which app is big and which one is small. And because we designed Windows 8 to be fast, to be fluid, you can easily get to apps and then move between the apps. The edge UI you're seeing allows you to just take your finger and swipe from the side to move through your running list of apps.

Controls are also easy to get to, and then they quickly get out of your way. What you're seeing now, one of the most important apps is the browser, IE10 and Windows 8 will deliver fully touch-optimized browsing with all the power of hardware acceleration. And although this new user interface is designed and optimized for touch, it works equally well with a mouse and keyboard. What you're seeing now, we've even designed a new ergonomic keyboard that puts all of the keys right under your thumb.

Windows 8 also runs the existing Windows apps that you use and love. They are just as easy to switch to, and you can use them alongside your new Windows 8 apps. Here's Microsoft Office in a Windows 8 environment as we demonstrated in both January and June.

Because it is a PC, it has a file system. The file system has your documents and photos, your videos and music. You can get to your photos from your existing Windows programs, as well as your new Windows 8 apps. And Windows apps can share information with one another, adding new capabilities to other apps. For example, your pictures will be available on your existing file system, as well as a photo service. No copying, no pasting or trying to save things. Just select the pictures, or unselect them. The apps will just talk with each other. And so, as you have more apps, the system just keeps getting more powerful.

Windows 8, it's an upgrade for an entire ecosystem of PCs. It's for the hundreds of millions of modern PCs that exist today and for the devices of tomorrow. Our hardware partners have a great opportunity to create the next generation of devices that together with Windows 8 will meet the needs of the modern consumer and the modern workforce. The breadth of hardware choice is unique to Windows and is central to how we see Windows evolving. In both of our Windows 8 previews, we talked about continuing on with the important trend that we started with Windows 7, keeping system requirements either flat or reducing them over time. Windows 8 will be able to run on a wide range of machines because it will have the same requirements or lower. And, we've also built intelligence into Windows 8 so that it can adapt to the user experience based on the hardware of the user. So, whether you're upgrading an existing PC, or buying a new one, Windows will adapt to make the most of that hardware.

For our business customers, your customers, this is an important element because the ability of Windows 8 to run on Windows 7 devices ensures that the hardware investments that these customers are making today will be able to take advantage of Windows 8 in the future. And there's beautiful hardware in the market today. And, in fact, in tomorrow's device keynote, you'll be able to see and get a sense for both what's out there today and the pipeline to come.

We see a future with a heterogeneous environment of Windows 8 devices and apps running alongside Windows 7 PCs and applications. So, customers can move forward with their Windows 7 rollouts more confidently and with more motivation than ever. And not only will Windows 7 hardware be compatible with Windows 8, so will software investment. There is no doubt that the best way to get to the future is to embrace the present.

Earlier, I briefly mentioned Build. Build is a new event that will show modern hardware and software developers how to take advantage of the future of Windows. It is the first place to dive deep into the future of Windows. Hardware partners and developers who attend Build will be able to work hands-on with Windows 8 touch-centric user interface and learn how to create apps that leverage the power and the flexibility of Windows.

We also welcome corporate developers to Build to really begin to learn, to plan for how they will build Web-connected and Web-powered apps for their enterprise.

So, let me leave you with one key takeaway, which I think really defines the opportunity I talked about earlier. And that is that the path to Windows 8 starts with Windows 7. It's the perfect time for customers to update their environment, modern hardware, a modern OS, modern applications and a modern browser. Together, we can add measureable value to customers by helping them get to Windows 7, Office 2010, IE9, all on the latest server infrastructure. The time is right now to lay the foundation for the future.

Thank you so much. (Applause.)

END


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Make the Journey Part of the Vacation With Microsoft Streets & Trips

REDMOND, Wash. —June 27, 2011 —With summer vacation season upon us, many Americans are searching for vacations that will excite the imagination but won’t max out the credit card. Answer? Road trip! Microsoft Streets & Trips and Jamie Jensen, author of “Road Trip USA,” are encouraging everyone to hop on board, turn the key and visit some of the country’s great national parks. Yellowstone, Yosemite and Glacier are some of the names that come to mind when people think about national parks — yet dozens more offer rich wildlife and stunning scenery. More than 280 million people visited national parks last year and, best of all, many parks are within a day’s drive of most metropolitan areas. Planning a road trip to a nearby national park is a great way to stretch the summer vacation budget and create a one-of-a-kind adventure that the entire family will enjoy and remember.

“Being open to the unexpected, serendipitous encounter is what makes a road trip a memorable experience, instead of just another long drive,” Jensen said. “Visiting a national park in your own backyard this summer is not only a budget-friendly way to vacation, but the national parks are packed with the unexpected, and they make for a great destination that will please everyone in the car.”

It’s Not Just a Drive, It’s an Adventure

To generate excitement among vacationers and help them prepare for their own adventures to the national parks, Microsoft Streets & Trips is hosting Cruisin’ the National Parks Trivia Sweepstakes. All questions will be based on the national parks, and participants will have a chance to win Visa gift cards. The contest starts June 27, 2011, and runs through Labor Day with a new trivia question posted every Tuesday. Those interested can visit http://www.microsoft.com/streets/explore to review full Official Rules and join in on the fun. From there, travelers can go to the Streets & Trips Facebook page to share their stories and photos from the road. For every person who likes the Streets & Trips Facebook page, Microsoft Corp. will donate $1 to the National Park Foundation.1

Best Tips for Hitting the Road

After traveling more than 400,000 miles, Jensen has volumes of road trip tips to help travelers make the most of their time at some of America’s most beautiful attractions. Before hitting the road, Jensen recommends using trip-planning software, such as Microsoft Streets & Trips, to plan the trip. Before even leaving home, the whole family can take part in planning the trip to help provide an enjoyable ride for everyone involved. Travelers can calculate mileage, fuel costs and arrival times — a perfect way for families to stay on top of expenses this summer. Once on the road, travelers can use Streets & Trips on their laptop — without an Internet connection — for stops such as ATMs, gas stations, casinos and wineries.

Jensen also recommends the following cost-saving tips to help travelers keep their vacation budgets in check this summer:

Slow down and save. The slower you drive, the safer you are. Besides giving you more time to appreciate your surroundings, obeying speed limits and taking it easy on the accelerator can also help stretch those precious gallons of gas in your fuel tank.

Close the windows, crank the air conditioning. It makes sense that driving slowly and steadily will improve your gas mileage, but it may surprise you to know that driving with the air conditioner on is more economical than rolling down the windows to keep cool. Open windows increase drag, making your engine work harder and burning more fuel.

Be safe. Before you hit the road, give your car a full safety check — oil, brakes, washer fluids, spare tires, everything. Even little things are worth fixing. Also, remember to pull together an emergency kit, with first-aid supplies, plastic jugs of drinking water, a blanket, a flashlight and maybe an extra, fully charged cellphone, just in case.

Consider camping. There’s no easier and cheaper way to get away from it all than to go camping. Well-maintained campgrounds in beautiful settings in the national parks cost only a few dollars a night. Besides saving hundreds of dollars on hotels, you can save even more because you usually cook your own food when camping.

Share the ride. You can cut your driving costs in half, or better, by sharing the expenses with another driver. Traveling with a friend or extended family member may also increase your fun. Inviting a grandparent or older friend along can have many advantages, including an unexpected one: People older than 62 or anyone with a disability, plus as many as three adults traveling with them, are admitted for free to all the national parks.

Availability

Microsoft Streets & Trips is available for an estimated retail price of $39.95.2 Consumers can give Streets & Trips a test drive by downloading a free 60-day trial version at http://www.microsoft.com/streets/explore.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

1 Up to $5,000.

2 Estimated retail price. Actual retail price may vary.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.


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Microsoft Awards Top Performing Partners at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

LOS ANGELES — July 13, 2011 — Today, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2011 in Los Angeles, Microsoft Corp. honored the strongest performing Microsoft Dynamics partners for demonstrating significant customer impact by developing and delivering innovation solutions that help customers drive their businesses forward.

“This is the time of year when we get together to recognize and celebrate the achievements of the top Dynamics partners,” said Doug Kennedy, vice president, Microsoft Dynamics Partners. “As a partner-centric business, the success of Microsoft Dynamics is directly dependent upon the expertise, commitment and performance of our partners. The quality and depth of the our channel is envied in the marketplace; therefore, the annual Microsoft Dynamics award winners are clearly an elite set of partners — the best of the best. On behalf of Microsoft, I thank our award winners and congratulate them for their achievements this past year and for their dedication and support of Microsoft Dynamics applications.”

At WPC 2011, 12 Microsoft Dynamics partners were recognized with the Microsoft WPC 2011 Awards. More than 397 partners worldwide submitted nominations for their solutions, and award winners and finalists were selected from this group based on their innovative use of Microsoft Dynamics to deliver strategic and valuable solutions that meet diverse customer needs. The Microsoft WPC 2011 award recipients are as follows:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solution of the Year: proMX GmbH

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year: Hitachi Consulting

Microsoft Dynamics Cloud Business Excellence: Zero2Ten Inc.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence: InsideView Inc.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP ISV: Schouw Informatisering BV

Microsoft Dynamics ERP Partner of the Year: XAPT

Microsoft Dynamics Manufacturing Partner of the Year: Scalable Data Systems Pty Ltd.

Microsoft Dynamics Distribution Partner of the Year: Accenture | Avanade

Microsoft Dynamics Retail Partner of the Year: IGNIFY

Microsoft Dynamics Professional Services Partner of the Year: Client Profiles

Microsoft Dynamics Financial Services Partner of the Year: VeriPark

Microsoft Dynamics Public Sector Partner of the Year: Rock Solid Technologies Inc.

Out of thousands of partners, Microsoft also honored 12 resellers with the 2011 Microsoft Dynamics Regional Reseller of the Year award, and 8 independent software vendors (ISVs) were awarded the 2011 Microsoft Dynamics Regional ISV of the Year award. In addition, select top performers were honored from the Microsoft Dynamics channel, including Logica Sverige AB, named the Microsoft Dynamics Outstanding Reseller of the Year, and Veripark, named the Microsoft Dynamics Outstanding ISV of the Year. Several key criteria were considered when selecting Microsoft Dynamics Certified Partners for this special recognition, including outstanding sales performance, thorough technological expertise on Microsoft Dynamics products and services, a consistently high level of customer satisfaction, and feedback from Microsoft team members. The performance-based Microsoft Dynamics Regional Partner of the Year award recipients are as follows:

Reseller Awards

Microsoft Dynamics Outstanding Reseller of the Year: Logica Sverige AB

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Asia Pacific: Avanade Asia Pte Ltd

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Canada: BDO Dunwoody LLP

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Central and Eastern Europe: GMCS Verex

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for France: Absys Cyborg SA

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Germany: COSMO CONSULT GmbH

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for India: Godrej Infotech Limited

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Japan: Yokogawa Solutions Corporation

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Latin America: MSBS Business Solutions LTDA

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Middle East and Africa: Columbus IT (Middle East) FC-LLC

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for United Kingdom: 2e2 UK Limited

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for United States: Sonoma Partners, LLC

Microsoft Dynamics Reseller of the Year for Western Europe: Columbus IT Partner A/S

ISV Awards

Microsoft Dynamics Outstanding ISV of the Year: Veripark

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for Asia Pacific: Sable Systems Pty Ltd

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for Canada: Second Foundation Consulting Inc.

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for Central and Eastern Europe: Bonair S.A.

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for France: 3LI Business Solutions

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for Germany: Modus Consult AG

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for Latin America: Mekano Consulting S.A.

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for United States: Demand Management, Inc.

Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the Year for Western Europe: Dynamics Software B.V.

During the recognition ceremony, a select group of Microsoft Dynamics partners were named to the Inner Circle for Microsoft Dynamics and the Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club. Inner Circle for Microsoft Dynamics represents an elite group of the most strategic Microsoft Dynamics partners from around the globe with sales achievement that ranks them in the highest echelon of the Microsoft Dynamics global network of partners. These partners are recognized for their exceptional overall company performance in delivering valuable solutions to Microsoft Dynamics customers. Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club honors high-performing Microsoft Dynamics partners with a commitment to customers reflected in their business success and growth.

A list of the Microsoft WPC 2011 and Regional Partner award winners and finalists can be found online at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wpc/docs/DynamicsPartnerAwards.docx.

A list of the 2011 Inner Circle for Microsoft Dynamics award winners can be found online at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wpc/docs/DynamicsInnerCircle.docx.

A list of the 2011 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club award winners can be found online at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wpc/docs/DynamicsPresidentsClub.docx.

About Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference

Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference provides Microsoft’s partner community with access to key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and information regarding specific customer solutions designed to help partners succeed in the marketplace. Along with informative learning opportunities covering sales, marketing, services and technology, the Worldwide Partner Conference is an ideal setting for partners to garner valuable knowledge from their peers and from Microsoft. More information can be found at http://www.digitalwpc.com and on the Partner Network home page at http://microsoftpartnernetwork.com.

About Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP solutions empower your people to be more productive and your systems to last longer and scale as your business grows, while enabling you to derive the insights necessary to respond quickly in an ever-changing world of business.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.


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Microsoft Dynamics Partners Fuel Business Growth by Embracing Change

LOS ANGELES — July 12, 2011 — More than 15,000 partners at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 (WPC), currently taking place in Los Angeles, have gathered to discuss business innovation and change — and, more precisely, the change that fuels progress. Much of what’s being discussed this year comes in the form of cloud computing.

Learn more about CRM While businesses consider the implications and benefits of the cloud, many partners, including value-added resellers and independent software vendors (ISVs), must evolve and transform their business models to thrive among this change.

Over the past 18 years, the Minneapolis-based consulting firm PowerObjects has grown from a humble, two-person operation to a multimillion-dollar company. PowerObjects’ chief operating officer, Jim Sheehan, attributes the company’s prosperity to a number of factors, but one stands out in particular: “The key to our success was that we stopped being everything for everybody and focused on becoming the best at one thing,” says Sheehan. “And that one thing is Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”

While PowerObjects originally began working with the on-premises version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the company has been able to successfully transition its business to reselling Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, the cloud-based solution. “By partnering with Microsoft, we have access to a flexible computing model that lets us ramp up applications that we could never have supported in our own datacenter. Our cloud practice has become a standalone business for us. Because everything happens faster in the cloud, we’re able accelerate the sales process and deliver solutions at a much more rapid pace, while also having more options to solve problems for our customers,” says Sheehan.

PowerObjects is one of many Microsoft partners embracing the cloud. Since the global launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in January 2011, nearly 50 percent of Microsoft Dynamics CRM partners have committed to selling the online solution, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers are now choosing the online version instead of the on-premises option more than 50 percent of the time.

“Making sure the transition to the cloud is smooth for partners is a big priority for Microsoft,” says Doug Kennedy, vice president, Microsoft Dynamics Partners. Recently, executives released the Microsoft Dynamics Cloud Partner Profitability Guide, which gives partners a 36-month roadmap for transitioning to a cloud-based business model. At WPC, an addendum will be incorporated for ISVs, which covers the considerations an ISV should make when transitioning to the cloud and includes sample pricing and licensing models to show the financial impact over a five-year period.

Jim Sheehan, chief operating officer for PowerObjects, says the secret to his company’s success has been narrowing its focus. The company works exclusively in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.Jim Sheehan, chief operating officer for PowerObjects, says the secret to his company’s success has been narrowing its focus. The company works exclusively in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.The cloud isn’t the only change partners are embracing. In 2009, the Microsoft Business Solutions group announced changes would be made to its partner network to encourage partners to take full advantage of a steady growth in demand for vertically specific enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solutions. These changes included new, more robust requirements for partners to achieve Gold and Silver certification and updated Microsoft Dynamics-specific training focused on marketing, sales, project management and solution delivery, in addition to existing technical training. The training is offered through the Microsoft Dynamics Partner Academy and, since July 2010, more than 3,000 partners have been trained at Partner Development Centers located around the world, with an average satisfaction score of 8.02 out of 9.

These adjustments are designed to provide partners with a sustainable model for delivering repeatable solutions to specific industries by increasing their ability to scale and helping them to be more productive.

Kennedy says the dialogue at WPC is centering on these strategies and incentives, as well as on educating partners about what’s yet to be rolled out. For example, beginning Jan. 1, 2012, partners will have the opportunity to receive greater compensation for focusing on vertical specialization — they will be directly rewarded for growth, in addition to total revenue. “By helping our partners transition to a model of delivering vertical solutions, we can help them drive more demand, be more profitable and, ultimately, grow their business,” Kennedy says.

Partners who have started implementing these changes are already reaping the rewards. “The more stringent requirements for Gold certification will help us differentiate ourselves in the marketplace,” says Jeff Geisler, CEO of InterDyn Socius. Socius provides highly customized business management software solutions for the distribution, manufacturing, not-for-profit, professional services, and healthcare and human services industries, with locations in Ohio, Kansas City and California. “Specializing in specific industries means we’re serving the client in a deeper way,” says Geisler. “We now have knowledge not just of the software, but of the clients’ business and messaging process. We’re much more familiar with their industry as a whole.” This approach has resulted in a higher win rate and a more efficient sales process.

“The new Microsoft Partner Network is about refining what Microsoft offers partners, and its program exceeds the offerings of most other vendors,” says Geisler. “We believe that the Microsoft Dynamics partner program will help us continue to improve as our company grows into new areas, such as the cloud. We anticipate the cloud will be a bigger part of our business, and we’re doing a lot of planning around what the cloud will mean for our clients.”

For Microsoft Dynamics partners, these changes amount to new ways of looking at their business and how they’re moving forward. Partners such as PowerObjects and Socius, who have embraced these changes as opportunities, are successfully growing their businesses. “When partners are growing, customers are growing and Microsoft Dynamics is growing,” says Kennedy. “We’re committed to fueling that growth with the right products and resources to ensure our partners are optimized for the future.”


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