Every year, the Microsoft WPC Partner Conference helps us to understand what new products are emerging, what the trends are, what the thinking is and of course, how to apply these to help you, our clients, take the steps forward that you need to.

The statistics this year are overwhelming :

• 12,000 people at this conference
• Average Microsoft partner is 10-15 people (Kinetics is 25!)
• 150 million licenses of Windows 7 sold in the first  months, strongest start of any Operating System in history.  14% of the global PC installed base, 94% customer satisfaction. 350,000,000 windows sales this year alone.  (1.1 billion PC users worldwide)
• 9 million copies of Office2010 beta were downloaded
• Half the enterprise applications in the world are written in Microsoft tools

The theme is clearly "cloud services" - a topic we've been talking to many if not all of our clients about.  (stuff like hosted Exchange etc)

Microsoft see this as an essential change in the way IT services are bought by various business -

Moving to the cloud is inevitable, it is NOT a choice.  The benefits  are too compelling, and continuing to evolve rapidly.

Microsoft offer a range of solutions, from running applications like hosted Exchange and SharePoint, to being a way of delivering customer software.  We can expect to see Microsoft offer a virtual cloud for customers, essentially giving them a virtual datacentre -- no longer need server rooms or (as many) server investments?

Cloud computing delivers IT as a service, removing IT complexity by doing it for you.   For example, no longer will you need to do upgrades - you can have the benefits of the upgrade without the inconvenience

The cloud services offer new opportunities and new ways of working , for example cross-business collaboration.  We'll see exciting new developments on this over the next few months, the opportunity is to start now.

We're seeing Microsoft deliver all their products through the cloud, from Live and Hotmail, through Exchange, Office and Dynamics.   It means that any business regardless  size can have access to the best tools at an affordable price.

Microsoft see the future as 'smart clients' connected to smart cloud services.  They will support thin clients (e.g. VDI) but see that rich clients offers the best experience , best performance, and reduce bandwidth.  This runs from enterprise through to consumer, with the Xbox and Xbox Kinect as examples.

New Device Platforms

There will be a number of new hardware form factors - trying to drive bottom-up demand where users want Microsoft products - new Windows 7 slates, Windows Phone 7,  Slates will come in range of sizes, speeds, with/without keyboards etc.  (Probably not unlike  my own HP TouchSmart experience which I think is fantastic with Windows7). And unlike other devices, Windows7 can be works securely with the corporate IT platform.

The CEO, Steve Balmer, acknowledged that Microsoft Windows Mobile fell behind the competition  "missed a release cycle"  Windows Phone 7 addresses this

 I'll keep posting updates and thoughts and look forward to discussing these with any of our clients when I return from the conference.