Microsoft Bolsters Sales Team To Serve Enterprise

A company executive insisted the planned 10 percent boost in sales staff and resources will not impinge on partner-led sales efforts. Instead, the company wants to better align its resources with partner efforts in enterprise accounts, said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president for North American sales and marketing at Microsoft. The changes will kick off the new fiscal year starting July 1.

But the addition of more direct-sales staff always raises the specter of channel conflict, observers said.

"Microsoft is trying to be IBM as far as account management," said one mid-Atlantic solution provider. "I will be curious to see if they continue to walk the partner walk in the enterprise space. My money says no."

Dallas-based ePartner Solutions endorsed the move. "Added vertical expertise and focus on enterprise business allows partners and Microsoft to become more strategically relevant to our clients. When that happens, all boats rise," said Cody Aufricht, senior vice president of marketing at ePartner.

Some partners see this change as another attempt to boost Microsoft's profile in large IT shops and compete better there with IBM and Oracle, both of which field large service organizations.

Microsoft also is turning up the volume on its long-running vertical push, perhaps in response to IBM's own vertical thrust in the SMB space.

Plans include the addition of industry and technical specialists in major markets nationwide. Target markets are financial services, health care, manufacturing, retail and professional services. There will be related efforts in the public sector and communications sector, but they will be managed somewhat differently, the company said.

Microsoft wants to go after opportunities more consistently across geographies and customer types, Veghte told CRN. The goal is to knit together internal and partner resources in horizontal technology areas, such as infrastructure or databases, with expertise in vertically-oriented business processes, he said.

The impetus is that Microsoft's product portfolio has gained a bigger footprint in enterprises, and the company aims to help customers get the most out of their investment, Veghte said.

"We need a good way to go into accounts and talk about how Office, SharePoint and .Net can foster collaboration for a health-care provider, for example," Veghte said. "We want a consistent way for our team to focus on a set of customers not only across geographies, but also across accounts," he said.

The goal is to build stronger strategic links between internal salespeople, partner account managers and partner staff dealing with customers, Veghte said.