Commentary

John Foley
Editor, InformationWeek  

Microsoft's Ginormous Software Business

At Microsoft's annual partners conference Tuesday, attendees were barraged with numbers meant to impress them about the sheer size of Microsoft's business and the market opportunities its scale represents for them. Merriam-Webster just added "ginormous," a combination of gigantic and enormous, to its dictionary. It's a word befitting the world of Microsoft.

At Microsoft's annual partners conference Tuesday, attendees were barraged with numbers meant to impress them about the sheer size of Microsoft's business and the market opportunities its scale represents for them. Merriam-Webster just added "ginormous," a combination of gigantic and enormous, to its dictionary. It's a word befitting the world of Microsoft.Tuesday's keynote presentations featured Microsoft execs Allison Watson, Kevin Turner, Chris Caposella, Mike Sievert, and Steve Ballmer, and the statistics were flying. Here's some of what they shared:

8,000 partners from 130 countries attended Microsoft's Partners conference this year 10,000 people in total attended the conference, which was sold out 600,000 - Microsoft partners around the world 160 million - Microsoft customers around the world 40 million Windows Vista licenses sold since launch on January 30, 2007 $300 billion - the "opportunity" available to the Windows Vista partner ecosystem in 2008 10,000 devices have been Windows Vista certified 1,900 applications have been Windows Vista certified 2 million devices are supported by Windows Vista 96% of devices are supported by Windows Vista 85 million - Sharepoint users worldwide 2.5 million Lotus Notes users have switched to Microsoft Exchange in 2007 4 million - Microsoft's goal for switching Lotus Notes users to Exchange in 2008 $7 billion - Microsoft's R&D budget in fiscal 2007 $7 billion plus - Microsoft's R&D budget in fiscal 2008 $44 - monthly per user fee for Microsoft's Dynamics CRM Web app, Professional edition $59 - monthly per user fee for Microsoft's Dynamics CRM Web app, Enterprise edition $150 million - partner opportunity around Microsoft's Office Live online software 6 million - number of Office 2007 downloads 5,300 - number of Microsoft's "Information Worker competent" partners 2,200 - Information Worker competent partners who work with Sharepoint Server 20,000 partners trained on Microsoft exchange $5 million - funds set aside by Microsoft for "skills accelerator" program for Information Worker partners 2,640 - billable hours in a typical Office 2007 partner engagement with a large company $596,000 - the contract value of those billable hours $22 - partner opportunity for each dollar Microsoft makes on Windows Vista $33 billion - partner deployment opportunity around Office 2007 $4,000 to $5,000 - annual cost to manage one PC 600,000 laptops lost or stolen in the United States in 2005 $39 billion - annual commercial losses to software piracy 70 - emerging technologies/innovations identified as future business opportunities by Microsoft $100 million - average Microsoft investment in future opportunities based on annual R&D budget of $7 billion $228 billion - size of commercial software market in 2007 $305 billion - size of commercial software market in 2010 $32.5 billion -- Microsoft revenue through three quarters of fiscal 07 (fourth quarter and full-year results are due next week) $9.8 billion -- Microsoft net income through three quarters of fiscal 07


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These are just some of the numbers shared during the above mentioned keynotes. (See Richard Martin's news report here.) I took notes furiously, but couldn't keep up, as Microsoft's speakers clicked through more than a million PowerPoint slides. Or so it seemed.


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