CRN Interview: Microsoft COO Kevin Turner

Turner, who joined the software giant nearly a year ago after 20 years with Wal-Mart, talked about the company's "People Ready" campaign, how it applies to partners, and other topics. Edited excerpts follow.

CRN: What's your take on Microsoft's partner relationships and ecosystem?

Turner: Steve [Ballmer, Microsoft CEO] has done a good job indoctrinating me into the fact that it's partners, the great partnerships we have with our partners, [that] built Microsoft in the early years. Being an enterprise customer, I had a lot of different partners in my tenure as CIO [at Wal-Mart].

It's great to visit with partners around what are their issues and what we can improve.

CRN: What's going to happen at the Worldwide Partner Conference?

Turner: The agenda is we set the table for FY 07. The enablement of a People-Ready channel through our People-Ready business strategy, which I'm very excited about. Something we're putting a lot of time and energy in. This is really the core way of how we're trying to run Microsoft, extending into our customer and partner space. Because it's about putting people at the center, which I'm very supportive of and a big proponent and driver of being able to enable our partners and our customers to create business value. We believe that's the competitive advantage that we're driving

CRN: Beyond the marketing how will this message change the process?

Turner: One thing is it's about our ability to get into a couple of things. It's about how we're lining ourselves up to run Microsoft in a people-centric way, which I think is fundamental. I don't know of many companies with external campaigns which also become the premise of how they're running the company. How it shakes out and defines in reality it says we're pushing that flexibility out on the edge where the people who actually do the work are empowered by things like SharePoint collaboration and our software connecting.

You'll see a series of campaigns coming behind the People-Ready launch that connect multiple solutions from us and tell a story. Something we've not done in the past. We've' done it more product-centric, one-at-a-time things, and I'm a proponent of connecting all the solutions.

Another investment we're making is in services. We're a business that's been in and out of the services business and our partners and customers tell us, you need to step up into the services arena and make more of a presence in that to help us, equip us, to take our services to the next level.

Third, it relates to investing in education. The $2 billion we're spending on training and education in the partner program -- I'm very proud of that. That's a significant thing for us as a company to make that investment.

Fourth thing, it's innovation. How do we bring it out? We invest $6.2 billion annually into our R&D budget, which is more than any other technology and software company in the world. The biggest milestone is fiscal year 07. This is the year that we bring about $20 billion of prior-year R&D spend into the marketplace. It positions us in very unique way, an opportunity to turn the vision, the investment into reality.

The reality is to sell to and through partnersas well as customers. That reality falls to the sales force, the field and services group to pick that baton up in FY 07 and really drive revenue and programs.

NEXT: About That Services Push