Much for not keeping pace, huh? We heard back in June of last year that Microsoft had blown through 150 million Windows 7 licenses , and a couple of months later, it had surpassed 240 million . At this year’s Worldwide Partner Conference, head honcho Steve Ballmer took great pleasure in announcing that said figure has now swollen to beyond 400 million in under two years. Not surprisingly, that makes Win7 the fastest-selling operating system in history, and Tami Reller — corporate vice chairman and chief financial officer of Windows and Windows Live — made clear that it’s “the trail to Windows 8 .” The outfit also announced that 100 million copies of Office 2010 have flown off the shelves since launch, and while nobody really came out and said it, we’re hoping on seeing a Windows 8 build on the BUILD event this autumn. Head on past the break for an entire heaping of (deserved) self-congratulations.
Microsoft’s CEO credits partners for making Windows 7 the fastest-selling operating system in history, outlines progress around the business.
La – July 11, 2011 – Kicking off Microsoft Corp.’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), a four-day event that celebrates the accomplishments of the company’s 640,000 global partners, CEO Steve Ballmer today thanked partners for helping make Windows 7 the fastest-selling operating system in history and indicated that with future versions in development, partners may be confident of their bets on Windows for phones, PCs, servers and the cloud.
Speaking before nearly 15,000 partners from all over the world, Ballmer said greater than 400 million Windows 7 licenses has been sold in not up to two years, and that tips to prepare customers and prospects for the longer term is to transport all customers to Windows 7.
Echoing that time, Tami Reller, corporate vp and chief financial officer of Windows and Windows Live, emphasized that Windows 7 is the trail to Windows 8. Noting that there are still greater than 200 million PCs running Windows XP, which was launched in 2001, Reller told partners they have got a genuine opportunity to deliver more value to customers inside the short term and “set them up for the long run.”
In providing an outline of the street ahead with Windows, Reller told partners that despite the record growth and success of Windows 7, there’s tremendous Windows 7 deployment opportunity now and well into the long run. “We see a future with a heterogeneous enterprise environment of Windows 8 devices and apps alongside Windows 7 PCs and apps,” she said.
“On the heart of our ability to deliver Windows 8 is the ability Windows has consistently shown; its ability to evolve over the years is what ensures Windows will stay highly relevant at some point,” Reller added.
Other news from Ballmer’s and Reller’s presentations included the subsequent:
· In a large-ranging keynote speech that highlighted major moments from the past year and looked ahead at what’s next, Ballmer also concerned about key accomplishments for Windows Phone, including the company’s partnership with Nokia; Xbox, including Kinect and the company’s technique to bring controller-free games and entertainment to the lounge and live TV to Xbox this autumn; progress with Bing, including a demo of Bing on Xbox (“You assert it, Xbox finds it”) and social features in Bing on account of Microsoft’s partnership with Facebook; an update at the company’s impending acquisition of Skype; and cloud services momentum.
· Reller announced the beta of a higher release of Windows Intune for cloud-based PC management and security. Windows Intune provides the right Windows experience for patrons by giving them access to the most recent, premium version of Windows plus PC management and security within the cloud. The recent Windows Intune features, including software distribution and remote tasks, strengthen the chance for partners. The limited, public beta is obtainable at http://technet.microsoft.com/windows/intune.
· American Airlines will soon update its application for Windows Phone, so that it will provide “the fastest delivery of flight information data on this planet,” in response to an American Airlines spokesperson. The update will allow real-time flight status information, including gate changes and baggage claim areas, from American’s reservation system to be pushed to a cloud-based Windows Azure system, which is able to then push the flight status notifications on to the applying’s Windows Phone Live Tiles. American Airlines customers who download the application and pin it to begin can have instant access to their most modern travel information at the top-level user interface in their phone, eliminating the will for text message, email or phone-call updates. The applying was developed along with Microsoft partner migration mobi of Austin, Texas.
· Boeing is using compelling easy methods to market its best-selling 737 with Windows Azure, the Windows operating system, and Windows Touch. The “Boeing 737 Explained” tool, developed by Boeing and twine Stone LLC, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is hosted at the Windows Azure platform.
· The la Unified School District, the second one largest within the U.s.a., will use Microsoft Dynamics CRM for its 70,000 employees, and SpaceX, a personal-industry successor to the U.S. Space Shuttle program, will use Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for its financial and project accounting.
· Below two weeks after the official launch of Office 365, greater than 50,000 organizations are trialing the service – a rate of 1 company every 25 seconds. Ballmer said that a couple of in five of the Fortune 500 uses Microsoft Online Services and massive organizations worldwide are moving to the cloud-based service, including the yank Red Cross, with the intention to move 66,000 people to Office 365 by the top of this year, and Softbank Technology Corp. in Japan, which moved to Office 365 to aid reduce its overall technology maintenance costs while driving increased productivity across its 19 subsidiary companies.
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