Raikes: Look Beyond Knowledge Workers

Raikes, in a keynote on "Realizing The Partner Potential Of Information Work," said the most important thing partners can do over the next decade is realize they have to serve a broader customer audience.

"The knowledge workers are an important part of the value chain, but as defined, it may be too elitist," said Raikes, noting that instead, it's important to deliver solutions that take into account every single person who uses digital tools and is an active participant in business information flow and business information processes. That includes every employee who touches a company's information flow, including all of the processes around authoring, accessing, and absorbing that information, as well as collaborating, deciding and communicating what to do with it.

Raikes started out his speech with a quick look backward, discussing the two major waves of growth that drove the IT industry and created value for customers in the last two decades: the explosion of personal digital tools in the 1980s and the move by corporations in the 1990s to embrace those tools as well as business processes like ERP, CRM and supply chain management. "While you create new value, there are still opportunities that are unfulfilled," says Raikes. "Growth in the value that has been created leads to new challenges."

He spoke about the importance of creating customer value through innovation and helping clients realize the business value of productivity solutions. In today's IT environment, the reality is there are still a number of obstacles to providing real value for companies, including things like disconnected business processes, inefficient collaboration processes, information and e-mail overload and fatigue as well as the existence of too many devices and interfaces. He said all of those conditions provide opportunities for smart solution providers to deliver more value for clients. (That's part of the reason why Microsoft executives estimate that the market for business productivity solutions can be as high as $3.2 billion for its business partners.)

Raikes also gave attendees their first look at the next version of SharePoint portal server, which was released last year and has quickly grown in popularity, with 600 solutions that have already been created by 300 Microsoft partners. The new release, SharePoint 2.0, will support .NET and provide enhanced collaboration services including SharePoint Team Services 2.0. It will also include Windows Media multimedia technologies and an enhanced search function.

He also spoke about features in the upcoming Windows Tablet PC Edition and announced the availability in mid-2003 of Office 11, which will include big investments in XML among other things features. "It's a major step forward in a number of areas," he said.