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Interview with Simon Witts, Worldwide Vice President of the Corporate Segment of Microsoft




With an investment of $7 billion a year during three years, Microsoft launched its new products: Windows Vista, Office System 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. But beyond these new applications, this launching is part of a more ambitious idea called People Ready. Within Microsoft's business strategy to defuse this concept worldwide, Simon Witts, worldwide vice president of the company’s corporate segment, gave an exclusive interview to Contact.

How does Microsoft channel its products to consumers on a global scale?
We have products for three global segments: large companies, small and medium companies, and consumers. The first segment has the most important accounts, representing 35% of our income, and is directly attended to by 16,000 Microsoft employees.

To undertake this segmentation, Microsoft is structured into three divisions: the platform division, on which we develop technological products such as the new Windows Vista; the business division, which builds products for specific company uses such as the new Office System or Exchange Server; and the consumer or lifestyle division. This is how we approach the market while always fulfilling our mission, which is to help people and businesses develop their maximum potential with our software.

Do you conduct some sort of market segmentation by geographic zones?
No. Companies tend to behave similarly in different parts of the world. What we do is think of the needs of the companies and, depending on their size and/or scale of technological operations, we offer a specific solution. We have also made major efforts to translate our programs into different languages, and now we have Windows in Quechua.

How is the concept of People Ready positioned in its market segments?
The mission of the company is to help strengthen the abilities of people to do business. If we consider this goal and the legacy of Microsoft, which is basically offering software to consumers, we translate this combination into what we call People Ready.

Recognizing that people are companies’ most important asset, the proposition of People Ready seeks to bridge the gap between the promises of the brand to improve businesses and the services that are currently offered, such as Windows and Office.

What is the value of People Ready for the consumer?
While a number of companies consider that the human resource is the most valuable, there are others that place greater value on productive processes. At the end of the day, the value is in personnel and in the processes. But what is certain is that behind the business processes, we always find people who conduct them. Thus, the value of People Ready is based on creating tools that, beyond technological applications for business processes, increase the productivity of persons so they are focused on more strategic matters, not only to help the company but also their own professional growth.

But increasing people’s productivity is more than delivering new technological tools…
There is the need to increase the role of programs such as Word and Excel in order to bridge the gap between their basic use and their potentials for improving personal productivity. In this sense, People Ready seeks to join the flow of personal productivity with the flow of the work of the company in a situation that also permits people to face the real world. Companies want to change the scope and richness of software co-applications and present them in a way that better reflects how their employees work.

How, in concrete terms, would it achieve this increased productivity?
If you look at the new Office System, you can differentiate two goals: unify communications and integrate technology with business processes at a viable price. For example, the technological solutions in the companies for the areas of market intelligence have historically been used by a small group of persons inside each company, due principally to their high cost of implementation. From that, the Office System seeks to offer a common productivity foundation that facilitates communications and collaboration among an important percentage of the company’s employees. This will not cost the company more than $100 a year per user.

What changes are foreseen for your products in the medium term?
Within five years, it is very likely that we will launch products based the roles and processes of the company’s divisions. We are currently developing more than 120 software packages for different roles, taking into account how people work.

This can already be appreciated by the different types of templates or data sheets in the Office System, which opens up the possibility of going from a scheme of personal productivity to productivity based on roles.

To the extent that developing countries continue to grow, will there be more products for small and medium-size companies?
On a global scale, the large company segment is growing at a faster rate than small and medium companies. Nonetheless, in developing countries such as Peru, we see the opposite, and its growing need to be more competitive in global terms requires the greater use of technological tools.

It should be underscored that, thanks to increased prices of commodities, economic growth has favored the greater use of technology, which will be sustainable to the extent that the State continues to invest in education. Thus we just renewed our commitment to President Garcia to support technological development as well as training teachers and public employees.