An exuberant Steve Ballmer ran out into a crowd of thousands gathered at the Colorado Convention Center today, slapping hands with the vendors that sell Microsoft products and services.
“You guys energize me,” yelled the Microsoft CEO 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 partners make up 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 moving forward 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 it would integrate its applications with various types of Microsoft services that are Web-based.
Ballmer and other Microsoft officials showed off new ways to utilize 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 – which 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.
Check out a video of Steve Ballmer’s keynote address at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference website:
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
