{"id":1299,"date":"2012-07-09T20:25:25","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T01:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?p=1299"},"modified":"2012-07-09T20:30:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T01:30:08","slug":"microsoft-worldwide-partner-conference-wpc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?p=1299","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am attending Microsoft&#8217;s annual Worldwide Partner Conference this week. It is being held in Toronto this year.<\/p>\n<p>Company executive, including CEO Steve Ballmer, used the forum for a number of product\u00a0announcements at the Air Canada Centre.<\/p>\n<p>As importantly, it was interesting to note what was emphasized.\u00a0Here is a synopsis of what was emphasized at the Monday morning opening keynote:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Windows 8: will RTM (Release To Manufacturing) August 1, 2012. It will see general availability, for upgrades at $40 and on PCs, in late October. It may miss back-to-school, but is in time for Christmas. The inexpensive upgrade price and the compatibility of hardware for Windows 7 and Windows 8 is meant to ease the back-to-school miss, as well as any slowness in sales of Windows between now and late October.<\/li>\n<li>Office 365: now available under Open Licensing, available in Government and Education pricing, partners can make approximately 23% margin, which is up from the current 11%.<\/li>\n<li>Azure, server, O365 (mentioned again and again), the recent purchase of Yammer and Office 15 were all mentioned.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft Surface was not demonstrated, while OEM (Acer, Asus, HP, etc.) products were.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft has picked up a company called Perceptive Pixel, which has developed a touch capability for large screens. The founder of that company, who is now Microsoft&#8217;s newest employee, immediately showed off a large screen product with Office software and touch capability. He also committed a geographic mistake and a faux-pas by uttering, &#8220;we actually do all of our manufacturing here in the US.&#8221; Apparently, the American invasion army had taken hold outside while we were being bedazzled by our own Cirque Du Soleil inside.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The executive repeatedly asserted that 2012 is the biggest year for Microsoft in over 17 fiscals clearly referring to the launch of Windows 95 in that year.<\/p>\n<p>These are good announcements for a Worldwide <em>Partner<\/em> Conference.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, for such a hi-tech show, Steve Ballmer&#8217;s wireless microphones failed several times. At the end, the stage hand, running out of wireless microphones, handed him a wired microphone with a long cable!<\/p>\n<p>Steve Ballmer even mentioned his own videos on YouTube (gulp Google) when speaking about Windows and his infamous screaming video.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1304\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-000013.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1304\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1304\" title=\"WPC line-up\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-000013-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-000013-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-000013-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1304\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">WPC line-up<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00004.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1306\" title=\"Cirque Du Soleil\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00004-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00004-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00004.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1307\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00005.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1307\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1307\" title=\"Cirque Du Soleil\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00005-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00005-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00005.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1307\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cirque Du Soleil<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1308\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00006.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1308\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1308\" title=\"Steve Ballmer WPC Toronto\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00006-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00006-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00006.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1308\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Ballmer WPC Toronto<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1309\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00007.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1309\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1309\" title=\"Steve Ballmer On The Big Screen\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00007-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00007-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00007.jpg 896w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1309\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Ballmer On The Big Screen<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1310\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00009.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1310\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1310\" title=\"Bad Food For 15,000 People\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00009-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00009-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00009-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG-20120709-00009.jpg 1792w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1310\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bad Food For 15,000 People (Fruit Is Available)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*I do work on behalf of Microsoft<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am attending Microsoft&#8217;s annual Worldwide Partner Conference this week. It is being held in Toronto this year. Company executive, including CEO Steve Ballmer, used the forum for a number of product\u00a0announcements at the Air Canada Centre. As importantly, it was interesting to note what was emphasized.\u00a0Here is a synopsis of what was emphasized at <a href='https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/?p=1299' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"modified_by":"Ali Ghaemi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alighaemi.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}