Guns blazing

Durban in July may be horse racing season but Durban in August is new technology season for Microsoft technical and reseller partners.

The company`s annual TechEd and Partner Summit at the Albert Luthuli conference centre kicked off in the first week of this month with announcements of new technologies that the company says will enable IT professionals and developers to help their organisations save money and improve efficiencies during difficult economic times. Two thousand Microsoft developers from around the country and over four hundred channel partners got to see demos of Windows 7, as well as play with Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2, the latter two now in their release to manufacturing builds.

"Microsoft is committed to ensuring that IT professionals and developers continue to have the platform and technologies to drive maximum value and business results. Getting the most out of IT investments is more important than ever in today`s economy," said Mteto Nyati" rel=tag>Mteto Nyati, Microsoft South Africa`s managing director, who delivered the opening keynote speech at the event. Nyati came out guns blazing at competitors in the database, virtualisation and public sector spaces.

"We`ve decided to be aggressive. Going after market share is our first priority for this year," he said during his keynote address. But he added: "You can grow share, but not revenue. The executives have decided, as Microsoft SA`s leadership team, that growing revenue is something that we need to be focusing on."

Microsoft will take aim at Oracle in the database sector, where it sees room for growth as it is currently shipping high volumes, but not garnering vast quantities of dollars, he explained.

"VMware has first mover advantage in the virtualisation space," he states. "The fact is that customers are paying so much more for something that is freely available from Microsoft. We have to get that message out. VMware is running a high-margin business. If you have big margins, it is an opportunity for people to come in. We, as Microsoft, are seeing that opportunity and coming in with a very, very different business model, which says that virtualisation cannot be the preserve of few. It must be enjoyed by every one of our customers at an affordable rate."

As for IBM, he said: "We need to make sure the customers of IBM are liberated from Lotus Notes. Just by moving across they will feel so liberated, and start enjoying things like unified communications. I would like to make SA a Lotus Notes-free country."

The company is also heavily targeting the public sector.

"Look at Novell," Nyati said. "In the public sector space it has a huge install base, and it has publically shared the fact that there is no roadmap for its product beyond 2010. We need to go share that with our customers. They need to move from that platform to something else. Instead of them moving to Lotus Notes or something else, let`s help them move to the right platform."

MUCH TO LOOK FORWARD TO

The mood of delegates at TechEd was much improved over last year where Microsoft was still struggling to come to grips with the fact that Vista was unpopular with technical and reseller partners alike. But Windows 7, due for official launch in October, has attracted a lot of interest from hardware manufacturers and software developers. Microsoft`s Fred Baumhart said the combined benefits of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 would save companies money.

"Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 include security, reliability and productivity enhancements, which, when used together, help deliver significant cost savings and productivity gains," he said.

Microsoft`s overall strategy is now described as "three screens and the cloud" with the three screens being the mobile phone, the PC and the TV and the cloud as hosted cloud services.

"Three screens and the cloud is a very simple way of articulating that there`s going to be choice," said David Ives, director of the Developer and Platform Strategy group. "You have all of these different devices and then the hosted services in the middle and we have to figure out how to deliver value to them all."

David Robinson, senior program manager on the SQL Data Services team, said that cloud is not just about where your applications are running but also about developer agility. "It`s about how quickly you can provision and deploy applications and resources," he said. Robinson demonstrated a version of SQL Server running on Microsoft`s Azure platform which took minutes to set up and provision as opposed to the lengthy traditional install on a normal server. Office users also got a look at the online future with a Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview program. Microsoft Office 2010, which will be available in South Africa in the first half of next year, will give users a familiar experience across the PC, phone and browser.

"For IT professionals, Office 2010 will offer more choice and flexibility in how they buy and manage their IT assets, helping them reduce costs. For developers, it will provide a platform for building innovative, connected Office-related applications with greater ease," said Ives.

This time next year will show whether Microsoft`s customers - and its partners - are convinced.