WPC 2013 Discussion Focuses on Emerging Opportunities

By Jay Atkinson
AIS Network CEO

Yesterday was Day 2 of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 (WPC 2013) in Houston and time for My Big Speaking Role!  I was delighted to join an elite panel of three other multinational companies in an interactive discussion focused on how hosting service providers can use effective marketing to win customers.  It was a privilege to participate in such a vibrant dialogue, and I really enjoyed the experience.  Thanks, Microsoft! 

As for the focus of the larger WPC 2013 conversation of the day, well, that was all about the emergence of enterprise social technologies and the cloud integration of the Microsoft Partner Network.

Without a doubt, enterprise social plays a key role in the modern business ecosystem. On Monday, Microsoft touted over 17,631 social media mentions of WPC 13, the partner channel, Microsoft and Surface. And, they reported that an estimated 49.6 million impressions resulted from 13,659 mentions on Twitter!

Yesterday, Microsoft also released a global survey of nearly 10,000 employees .  What was so interesting was that it revealed the differences in how large companies and SMBs purchase and adopt social tools, resulting in unique partner opportunities. Despite the differences, nearly half of those employees surveyed, who use enterprise social tools, indicate that enterprise social has enhanced their productivity.  They said they’d even use their own money to pay for these technologies! Tools like SharePoint, Yammer and Dynamics CRM demonstrate how Microsoft is blazing the path toward the enterprise social revolution.

We also talked about what’s to come for the Microsoft Partner Network — Microsoft’s new cloud vision. how application innovation and device selling is increasingly focused on user experience design, how unifying Microsoft’s infrastructure go-to-market approach and amplifying its Cloud OS vision “will win the data center,” and how Business Analytics/Big Data unlock insight from any data—structured or unstructured—via Microsoft’s data platform.  Interesting stuff!

Microsoft has 430,000 partners worldwide, and they’re definitely on their way toward capitalizing on all the customer opportunity ahead!

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