Microsoft to partners: It's time to change
C|Net | at | by Mike
Aiming to rally its partners around the reality of hosted software, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told them it was a matter of financial life and death.
"We have to change faster internally than the world is changing externally or we will be obsolete," Turner said, as part of his speech, which kicked off Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference here.
While change is hard, Turner said Microsoft's partners need to be ready to offer customers the choice of running software on their own servers or subscribing to hosted services. "It doesn't mean locally based software is going away, but customers want the choice."