An exuberant Steve Ballmer ran out into a crowd of thousands gathered at the Colorado Convention Center on Tuesday, slapping hands with the vendors who sell Microsoft products and services.
“You guys energize me,” the Microsoft chief executive yelled at the start of his keynote address. “My favorite thing to do is meet with partners. They have the same dedication and excitement as our employees.”
They should. Microsoft’s vendors – or “partners,” as they are called – contribute 96 percent of the company’s revenues. For 2006, Microsoft reported revenues of $44.3 billion, up 11.3 percent from 2005. About 13,000 partners are in Denver this week for the Microsoft 2007 Worldwide Partner Conference.
Ballmer talked about how Microsoft would position itself in terms of reaching consumers, software developers, business decision makers and other information workers.
“IT (information technology) is a grand enabler,” he said. “Software may be our core skill. We want to motivate the customer to enable them to realize their full potential.”
Ballmer stressed that Microsoft would not leave behind its core competency of building software applications that run on desktop computers but said it would integrate its applications with various types of Microsoft services, many of which are Web-based.
Businesses that manage Microsoft software and services and are certified by Microsoft are considered official vendors. Ballmer implored the vendors to “knock the ball out of the park,” and help bring in good returns for the remainder of the year.
John Proctor, president of Paragon Support, an IT hosting company in Dallas, said Ballmer’s remarks were in line with what he’s experiencing. Paragon is moving away from hosting servers and services for small business to managing IT networks for companies.
“It’s nice to see Microsoft confirm the trend that the market is moving in that direction,” Proctor said. “It helps me with my vision (for Paragon).”
In addition, Ballmer and other Microsoft officials showed off new ways to utilize and make money from some of the software and services it offers.
Microsoft Silverlight is a relatively new Web-browser plug-in – a small computer program that works in tandem with a Web browser – that enables fast and smooth delivery of high-end video footage and animation on Web pages. It is used by developers in conjunction with other Web programming languages.
Silverlight, which is being used by, the official website of Major League Baseball, also enables a variety of Web video interactivity such as picture-in-picture and the ability to send instant-replay clips to others online. It can also be integrated into video advertising so that companies can offer better online displays.
Phil Aldrich, Microsoft service director for Atlanta-based Dimension Data, said he was impressed with the Silverlight demo.
“We’re looking for more ways to offer more robust Web content,” he said.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at kjohnson@denverpost.com or 303-954-1088.
