Q&A: Exclusive interview with Tracey Fellows MD of Microsoft A/NZ.

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Q&A: Exclusive interview with Tracey Fellows MD of Microsoft A/NZ.
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CRN: Resellers claim Vista is ‘dead in the water’ with the launch of Windows 7 are you giving up on Vista?

Fellows: No, Vista is not ‘dead in the water’. We have a significant amount of enterprise customers rolling out Vista, we certainly see this in a large number of PC sales, all of those PCs are running Vista.

As we look at customers today who are planning their desktop refresh strategy, they are still testing whether to transition their environment onto Vista. As they begin to roll out [the refresh], they will make a decision whether to run that on Vista, or depending on the release timeframe of Windows 7, to run it on Windows 7.

Customers are moving more towards how do they have a more managed desktop, how do they drive down that infrastructure cost, and how do they maintain a secure environment, and Vista still delivers all of that for them.

When Windows 7 comes up that becomes the new operating system for a period of time. We will have two on the market as we do now. As Windows 7 comes out, that becomes the new baseline, it is 100 percent compatible to Vista. Windows 7 is an evolution of Vista if you like.

Negative criticism of Vista when it came out was more to do with compatibility and drivers for hardware compatibility and that has changed dramatically because we made significant investments to make that an easier experience for customers. Certainly there was negativity around when Vista first came out but I think it’s fair to say we addressed many of those concerns.

CRN: Will resellers ‘be left out in the cold’ following an alliance with Microsoft and Telstra to offer a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite of products?

(The two companies will offer hosted business applications through Telstra’s T Suite portal where businesses can access software applications, mobile services and devices, and integrated computer and telephone services over Telstra’s Next IP and Next G networks).

Fellows: What we are addressing with the Telstra alliance is the SMB customer space.

We are trying to reach a market that I don’t think exists today in Australia. When you look at that small business market, these are not necessarily people who have any IT skills, so they will still require the channel.

Within the alliance we do maintain a position for the channel because there are other services that these customers may need, including installing PCs.

We are still making sure the channel makes money out of this too.

It’s a change. It is new but we made sure there is a role for the channel.
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