WPC16: Day 3 Keynote - the Pace of Change and Partner Transformation
To wrap up the third day of keynotes, WPC16 Day 3 homed in on how we are helping you, our partners, take action to be more successful in the coming year. We highlighted the new programmes, tools and resources available to enable your success.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, discussed how the world is changing, and we are looking at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution. Each of the industrial revolutions in the past, have been fundamentally fuelled by one or two enabling inventions, from the steam engine to the age of personal computing. Today we are looking at 3 big sets of world changing technologies, the Physical, Biological, and Digital, the amazing thing about all of these technologies, are that they are enabled by the same thing, the Cloud. This is the world’s new infrastructure; it will open the door to a world of new possibilities.
Do Good Things
We heard about the importance of positive social impact form Toni Townes-Whitley, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector. It is important to understand that while there is huge economic opportunity, we remain aware of the social impact we can have. Building a Cloud for Good revolves around four principles of trust; security, privacy, transparency and compliance. This is a huge opportunity to not only do good things for the world, but to grow our businesses respectively.
The Pace of Change
Our Corporate Vice President for the Worldwide Partner Group, Gavriella Schuster, shared her thoughts on the changing industry. “The only constant in life is change.” It is the driving factor behind our society; our customers are driving our change. Digital transformation is setting the pace of change, and the need to look ahead for technology of tomorrow. The Cloud opportunity continues to explode IDC predicts the cloud opportunity will top$500 billion by 2020. 80%o business buyers are deployed or fully embracing the cloud. Thanks to your partners we have stronger cloud momentum than ever before.
Out partner momentum has never been stronger. With the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme, we already have 17000 partners transacting and over 3 million seats sold through CSP. We are continuing to invest in new opportunities for you, you have heard about the 100s of new cloud services this year, each an opportunity for you. To help support the partners selling through CSP, we are happy to offer a click-to-deploy webstore to reduce time-to-market for partners with Partner Center Software Development Kit (SDK). Our partners who have already embraced the cloud are seeing the pay off. Find out more about the CSP programme.
The opportunity for partners with more than 50% of their revenue in the cloud sees on average $5.87 for every $1 of Microsoft services sold. Their revenue 40% higher than peers who are less invested in the cloud.
We are asking you what are you doing to seize this opportunity?
Gavriella talked passionately about partner to partner opportunities as part of the modern partner approach. She said “We are a partner lead organisation; we are invested in your success.”
We have identified 4 key attributes of our most successful partners:
We want to help you to build your recipe for success. One of the most important things we can do to help your success, is to connect you with more customers. Earlier this year we announced the MPN Evolution to simplify the message to customers, helping them understand which partner is the best partner is to help them with their unique challenges. The second step in the journey to help customers find a partner, is the new competency Logo builder, we are competency badges and gold partners will be able to download new ones with the Microsoft logo as an endorsement. We have also simplified the application certification process to enable more partners to get certified and take advantage of the program resources that come along with that.
We are doubling our investment in free software, cloud services and platforms over the next year, and giving you double the amount of internal use rights for cloud productivity.
Lastly, we have reimagined the customer referral engine, by connecting that engine to all of our web properties and our marketplaces, with a single place to upload your profile, services and applications.
We have a huge opportunity, less than 10% of our business buyers have achieved maturity, in the next 2 years 50% of these believe they will. “Now is the time to invest in new ways of doing business and accelerate your cloud growth, and build a business with us seize tomorrows opportunities today.” Read more on these new resources here.
ISV and developer transformation
Steve Guggenheimer, Corporate VP and Chief Evangelist, talked about how Microsoft connects software with the sales force and partners to support the digital transformation. We have seen a huge focus on transformation, the other side of the transformation road is disruption. The best conversation is we can have is to bring transformers and disrupters together, software can build a bridge between all of these. Developers and ISVs have never been more important to facilitate this. When Technologies converge, industries collide.
How do we create a richer ecosystem to help the ISV opportunity to continue to grow? 
We want to connect the software builders and our traditional sales force and partner force to help you work together mutually. We have the opportunity to connect a broader set off customers to a broader set of partners and ISVs than ever before.
The pace of change is increasing. We are also happy to announce the Microsoft Professional Degree, mixing together all forms of learning: self-learning, online, testing, help from mentors and others. This will bridge specific expertise such as data science to help take advantage of these industry trends and drive forward businesses.
As we work together, lest both transform and disrupt together, help our mutual customers and drive the 4th industrial revolution forward. 
Lastly Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President Worldwide commercial business, outlined Microsoft's priorities for the coming fiscal year, and how we can transform together. 
Digital transformation, how to marry Intellectual Property to add value to business outcomes and drive new opportunities. 
He identified a two-sided account plan, to win the hearts and minds of the technical audience the interconnected ambitions become their agenda, to truly allow business to achieve more we need to align digital transformation with their outcomes.
You can differentiate yourself through the lens of the customer and identify their priorities. Rethink your own customer engagement and marketing efforts and truly engage customers, from interactions through social media, through to creating fans and advocates of the solutions you deliver and on-going management of these solutions. Optimise your own operations, focus on customers and embrace the cloud and move forward with technologies. And finally focus on customer life time value to truly transform the products you delver to market.
"We have never had an opportunity like his before, now is the time to be amazing!" Judson Althoff.
Other Day 3 News
Watch the WPC vision Keynotes on demand Seize your Opportunity Today Transforming Together in a Digital World ISV and Developer Transformation