Excellent Microsoft briefings available
I do a lot of Microsoft watching, and its pretty difficult to get a good overall impression of what’s going on in the company. I have just discovered that all of the briefing sessions from the Microsoft Financial Analysis meeting are now available as online webcasts, even better they also make available all of the transcripts and presentations!
These resources provide an excellent checkpoint on pretty much every significant activity that Microsoft is engaged in. The information is pretty high quality, it’s obviously got a sales feel to it, but the audience is financial analysts so Microsoft are fairly frank about their challenges and the presentations provide a lot of financial insights into both Microsoft and the industry in general.
Hint: It’s a good idea to double click the video in the webcast viewer, at the highest resolution it looks pretty good in full screen and you can just about follow the demonstrations. You might find it useful to download the slides though, as in the full screen view they are difficult to read.
The sessions are not very easy to navigate to though, so as I was watching them I created this list of shortcuts to the key information:
Colleen Healy, General Manager, Investor Relations, starts the day with a 10 minute introduction, a full transcript is provided along with a webcast and PowerPoint presentation, unless you want an overview of the day you can skip this session.
Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer , gives a good 25 minute overview, a full transcript is provided along with a longer webcast with demonstrations of Vista and Office 2007 and PowerPoint presentation this session provides a good overview of Microsoft’s strategy
Kevin Johnson, Co-President, Platforms & Services Division and Bob Muglia Senior Vice President, Server & Tools Business spend about an hour giving a fairly detailed analysis of infrastructure side of the business, there is a good discussion of how this division supports the other divisions and a good analysis by Bob Muglia of the workloads that Windows is strong in and what they are doing to improve share of workloads they are weak in (HPC, Edge and Internet facing Web), with additional contributions by Yusuf Mehdi chief advertising strategist, a full transcript is provided along with a long webcast and PowerPoint presentation this session is definitely worth watching, it’s full of facts and figures and useful insights.
Jeff Raikes, President, Business Division describes the growth opportunity of the information worker business, and expands that to discuss the Microsoft Business Division more broadly to provide a sense of they are looking at this business, a transcript is provided along with a webcast of about 40 mins and a PowerPoint presentation, I haven’t watched this yet.
Robbie Bach, President, Entertainment & Devices Division introduces his much expanded division which has grown from the Home and Entertainment Division to become the Entertainment and Devices Division, and in the process added mobile and embedded devices; Media Center; responsibility for music, TV, and video; and responsibility for games for Windows, a full transcript is provided along with a 40 minute webcast and PowerPoint presentation
Ray Ozzie,Chief Software Architect, spends about 30 minutes giving an overview of the move to services and how this will impact the relationship between Windows and Windows Live, this is an excellent presentation, it shows that Microsoft have a value proposition that’s pretty unique and gives a good overview of how Microsoft plan to capitalize on this uniqueness, a full transcript is provided along with a webcast and PowerPoint presentation
Ray, Kevin, Jeff and Robbie then field questions so their is no PowerPoint for this session, but the usual transcript and webcast are available
Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer, kicks off the afternoon session with a 30 minute presentation, a full transcript is provided along with a webcast and PowerPoint presentation
Craig Mundie Chief Research & Strategy Officer, then gets a 45 minute slot, a full transcript is provided along with a short webcast and PowerPoint presentation
Chris Liddell Chief Financial Officer gives a 30 minute presentation, a full transcript is provided along with a short webcast and PowerPoint presentation
Steve Ballmer, gives a 45 minute summary, a full transcript is provided along with a short webcast and PowerPoint presentation
Steve, Kevin, Chris and Graig then field questions so their is no PowerPoint for this session, but the usual transcript and webcast are available
