Entering the ring

CRN: You mentioned that earlier from the stage, and I’m wondering, what does that mean for your partners such as Mitel or Nortel, who have those IP-PBXes in their portfolios?

Gates: Well, Nortel is a good example as is Mitel. Their skillsets include working with people in different industries, so they’re willing to take their software and put it up on top of our horizontal platform. Now that’s a big restructuring for them; it’s a big leap to organise themselves for this new, more horizontal, software-focused structure, but they’re taking that leap. They see that as a good opportunity, so their assets carry over into this world. Sometimes when you get an industry structure change such as this, like we did in computing with the personal computer, now 30 years ago, the traditional vendors have a tough time making the transition. Sometimes you have changes such as this and people realise what they have that’s unique that they should double down on.

CRN: Can Microsoft get VoIP right the first time? With this move, Microsoft will be setting itself up to face some new competitors, say Cisco, for example. Is your channel ready to take on these new rivals?

Gates: I sure hope so. Our channel has done a fantastic job with not just Office but also with SharePoint and Exchange, and the skillsets you build up helping customers install SharePoint and Exchange in terms of the directory and the investment that needs to be made there to get that right, the network itself to make sure that you have a high-quality network and the right management tools to measure how well your network is working. People expect, basically, perfection in email systems. Your work for productivity depends on it. And their SharePoint websites, people expect those to work every time.

So our channel has gotten a lot more sophisticated at these high-demand, managed applications. In fact, they’ve become a great source of feedback for us in terms of how we prioritise our R&D work. There’re some new skills here, but this is not a paradigm change.

Our channel has been doing key, high-performance, well-managed business infrastructure for some time. This is bringing them into the realtime piece, the telephony piece, in a big way. Now some of them have been doing telephony with other products and some of them we’ll be bringing into the telephony space for the first time. Both of those are great with us.

CRN: Some of your detractors might say that Microsoft isn’t necessarily known for getting its software right the first time, but particularly when you talk about VoIP, quality
and reliability are essential. What’s your response to those detractors?

Gates: Well, with enterprise software, we do a very careful rollout, even as part of the beta process. So at Microsoft, you have thousands of people that this is what they use every day. We have a huge number of customers that have been working with us, giving us feedback, some great channel partners who, of course, are themselves users of the technology and have it out in some of their customers, and so I think people should simply talk to people who have done similar installations of the software and hear about their experience. The kind of testing we’ve done here, the kind of logging infrastructure that it has, it’s ready for prime-time telephony usage.

collaboration entering networking ring the