Microsoft's shift from a devices and services company to one focused on productivity and platforms is the message at WPC 2014

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At Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference, company officials give tens of thousands of reseller partners their marching orders for the next fiscal year.

On July 14, the opening day of the 2014 show, those marching orders included some differentiators from the directives of previous years. Specifically, Microsoft's brass is telling partners that "productivity is our strength," in the words of Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.

 

 

The focus on productivity -- and "platforms" -- is the newest focus for Satya Nadella's Microsoft. Just last week, Nadella outlined Microsoft's shift from a devices and services company to one focused on productivity and platforms. Turner elaborated on this message during his part of the three-hour opening day WPC 2014 keynote in Washington, DC.

 

For Microsoft, productivity starts with the company's core Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Lync and OneNote. But it goes beyond that to include OneDrive, Bing, Outlook.com, Xbox Music, Skype, Skype Wi-Fi, and Office Mobile, Turner explained. He talked about Microsoft targeting dual users: Ones that have work and home lives that are intertwined.

 

Turner said Microsoft's goal is to continue to offer the "best experience" on Windows. But now it's part of the company's -- and, by extension, its partner salesforce -- to extend those productivity experiences to other platforms, including Mac, iOS and Android. Microsoft wants to offer a "complete suite of Microsoft experiences preinstalled on any device, on any platform," Turner said. And that's a far different mission which centered around "attach and license," he said.

 

read more @ ZDnet > http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-differentiation-plan-a-suite-of-experiences-on-any-device-7000031569/