M$ COO is a chip off the Ballmer block

[Alpine]

Volish rising star wows the crowds

MICROSOFT'S CHIEF operating Vole and rising star Kevin Turner seems to be following his mentor Steve Ballmer's lead when it comes to crowd control.


Speaking as the keynote closing keynote at Microsoft's partner conference Thursday in Boston he bounded on stage to whip up some enthusiasm among the Vole's friends.

Unlike Ballmer's famous "developers, developers, developers" comments, Turner seemed opt for the 'childish tantrum' approach.

This included saying words to the effect of Google and Linux vendors who were trying to get their products into Microsoft's enterprise space would not be allowed to, so there.

The Enterprise was apparently Microsoft's house and its market space and Google was not going to be allowed to bring its ball in there, so ner!

It is one of the first times that we have heard from Turner who took over Vole's worldwide sales, marketing and services organisation last August. It seems that he belongs to the Steve Ballmer school of shy speech making. This is not surprising, as Ballmer is supposed to have recruited him and is said to share a similar world view.

The rant was greeted with the applause and cheers of hundreds of Volish partners, so he must have tapped into their collective mind.

It also looks like Turner is going to try and dust off the old cost of ownership argument against Linux again as he chanted that that Vole had a "better solution, better total cost of ownership"

Despite having a home crowd of appreciative Vole partners cheering his every word, he actually failed to say how he was going to deliver on his hyperbole. He said that Microsoft was a "very revenue focused company" and its "revenue focus is elevated". Loosely translated it means that he is more optimistic rather than having misty optics and he can see the dollar signs on the bottom of the optometrist's eye chart.

Still he has a hell of a job before him. His first major task will be to flog Vista, and he thinks that the "premier" versions, and push customers to adopt the new premier client-access license, Enterprise CAL, will be the way forward. In fluent Volespeak he said that the outfit had a "comprehensive joint execution strategy" with partners. We hope this does not mean that he will be executing people who disagree with him. Steve only lobbed chairs at them. The full speech can be found here.