My company has been a Microsoft partner since 2001, when they joined the ERP business systems market. This year I picked up a 10 year pin with my conference badge at the World Wide Partner Conference (WPC). Microsoft has a number of events each year – some geared to developers or specific product categories – but this is the one for their entire partner community, focused on how we can work together and how partner businesses can succeed.
These events are not all fun and games. Often there is significant channel pain as announcements are made and partners understand changes that are coming, or when the partnership experiences challenges and conflicts. In this regard, I don’t see Microsoft as a problem – chats with companies in other partner programs generally indicate Microsoft partner’s as well or better than most large tech companies. As a partner, you hope for open and credible communication, for clear direction, and you even dare to hope to be inspired.
I haven’t been inspired at these events in the last few years. It hasn’t been the
In fact, to reduce my personal frustration level at the past few Microsoft WPC conferences, I switched up how I attended. I skipped live attendance of the keynotes – and watched the live stream from my hotel room instead, while I handle email and other business. I attended only a few select conference sessions and focused on opportunities to meet people and network instead. This gave me a minimally satisfying conference experience, but certainly not inspiration.
This year has been different for me, even – dare I say it? - Inspirational. The first difference that I noticed was in a change of attitude to the market and competitors. In the first day’s keynotes and sessions, competitors were embraced and mentioned from the highest to the lowest levels. Keynotes referenced new relationships with Microsoft rivals like Salesforce.com, Oracle, and Apple devices. We all compete, but – in the real world - we all need to operate in the way that customers want us to operate as well. Maybe Microsoft gets that? Product sessions demonstrated applications running on iPad and Samsung Android tablets. This seemed different enough that I sought out speakers to ask them about this. The answer that I got was that this messaging was coming down to the troops directly from their new CEO, Satya Nadella. Imagine that. Coming from Silicon Valley, I well know that there is more technology in the world than Microsoft. It’s really heartening to me to see that Microsoft is now acknowledging this as well.
Wednesday’s keynotes continued and expanded upon this new tone. Voice mobile application support was demonstrated for Sage products. Azure was mentioned – by the CEO directly – as an open platform where 15% of the applications are running Linux. Beyond this hard evidence of a new worldview towards former rivals, there were a number of hints at other attitudinal shifts that seemed hopeful. For instance, the examples that Nadella used in his keynote emphasized actual human value provided to customers and partners, not the dollars that Microsoft made from a transaction. Attention was paid to what Microsoft is and is not – that they can’t be everything to everyone and must have some consistent guiding identity – that Microsoft is about the enterprise. Gone was the old “you will be assimilated into the borg” feel that emphasized homogeneity and conformity and that denied or minimized all competitors. After all, Microsoft does some things very well and some things not so well. Until now, who knew that they knew this too?
To me, some of the most telling components of Nadella’s address were his tone, manner, and – at least what appeared to be - improvisation. I could see that he actually understands what their products can do and where they can add value. In the past, it always seemed to me that Ballmer had a shallow understanding of Microsoft’s products at best. And, of course, there was Ballmer’s hyper- aggressive, bombastic style. Now, in Nadella, we have a relaxed, natural, and thoughtful cadence. You could tell that the demonstration support team is still getting used to Satya – when he went unscripted the speech translation application demonstrator got a laugh by mentioning there were off script comments. He also was adapting to a more human face and cadence.
Nothing changes over night. Big organizations of all types are prone to the inefficiencies and messiness that goes along with being big. At the same time, this year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference – starting with their new CEO – was credible, believable, and even at times inspiring to me.
Bob Scarborough is the CEO and co-founder of Tensoft, Inc, a Silicon Valley-based software developer and Microsoft Dynamics re-seller..