RIYADH: When Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates came to town in November 2006, his visit was front page news and security officers had to restrain the curious from joining him on his bathroom breaks. The visit of B. Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer was a bit quieter. The company did introduce him to the community in style though, hosting a flashy event, Microsoft's Innovation Day, at the Four Seasons Hotel. Before 1,700 invited guests and government officials, Turner shed light on Microsoft’s vision of how to utilize technology in optimizing creativity and productivity in today’s challenging business environment. He also introduced a major new initiative aimed at encouraging university students to download free professional-level Microsoft developer tools to advance their learning and skills through technical design, technology, math, science and engineering activities. In an exclusive conversation with Arab News, Turner discussed his management style, the struggle with Vista adoption, IT in tough economic times, and the potential of DreamSpark.
Turner has only been at Microsoft for about three years. He joined the company's senior leadership team after spending all his working life as part of the Wal-Mart organization. With a BS in Management, Turner isn’t the typical techie, but then he doesn’t have to be. As COO he’s responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Microsoft's worldwide sales, marketing and services organization — not product development. Turner leads a global organization of over 46,000 employees, including field sales and marketing professionals who delivered over $53 billion in revenue during fiscal 2008. In addition to driving sales and marketing programs, Turner manages corporate support organizations, including product and customer support services, branding, advertising, public relations, marketing research, relationship marketing. He also oversees corporate operations and internal Information Technology that support the work of Microsoft's over 90,000 plus employees around the world.
With that sort of high profile job, one would think that the Internet would be overflowing with stories about the man, but this isn't the case at all. Except for the most basic resume details and a note in one article that he comes from a working class family, in cyberspace Turner's personal life is hidden. This is quite strange for the COO of a company which advocates online sharing and collaboration, and even borderline obsessive when the iconic status of certain Microsoft executives is considered.
“I pride myself on facilitating and being a part of a high performance team. I prefer that in any success that I'm associated with, that the credit goes to the team,” replied Turner in regards to the dearth of personal tidbits about him on the Net. “I think that obviously as a leader, any failure comes to me. I like to put our people, our teams and our subsidiaries front and center. That's the most important thing for me. I travel a great deal. I visit between 30 and 35 countries a year and I spend my time with our people getting feedback and suggestions on things we can improve. I spend my time with customers and partners and I pride myself on having an outside-in influence. I think that that's part of the diversity of Microsoft. We have some very public figures and we have some very private figures in the personal space. In the work space everything we do is very public. Externally, I’m out there probably more than anyone at the current time in Microsoft. I like it that when I'm in town it’s about Microsoft, not about Kevin Turner. I pride myself on representing the 96,000 people that we have and the work that they do in the best possible way. That's sort of how my management style works and what I'm about."
In the workplace, Turner is currently all about steering Microsoft through the turbulence of the global recession. He has had some difficult times lately as he fights against the creeping influence of Linux, various competitors to Microsoft's Office productivity suite and movement away from the PC platform. Microsoft stock is trading near a 52 week low and the company continues to be beset by problems with Vista adoption and security issues. Turner is bullish on Microsoft's future however, and in discussing enterprise licensing he said:
“I think that regardless of the economic turmoil or economic uncertainty we have to be good enough to demonstrate the value proposition with our customers day in and day out or we don't deserve the ability for them to renew. I think that pressure isn't different regardless of the economic uncertainty that pretty much has hit the globe as it relates to what is going on out there. I will tell you that after our first fiscal quarter our renewal rate on our enterprise agreements, to which you are specifically referencing, is at an all time high and that is a good thing. It’s one that we cannot take for granted. We have to get in there and show them the value of the technology and the solution. This is the time where I basically asked our field sales, services and marketing employees around the world to really have proactive discussions with customers about how we can help them save money and create value. We believe that during tough times the more visible we are, the more proactive we are, the better the customer satisfaction that we try to derive with customers, it will serve us well during these times. Particularly, people won't forget that when the momentum changes. and nothing lasts forever.”
He added, “At some point we'll all pull out of the sort of turbulence that we're in right now economically from a financial market standpoint. I will say that the customers I have met in Saudi Arabia, both in the public sector as well as some of the large enterprises, and the Microsoft partners have been as bullish on the ability for IT to create value of any customers I've talked to worldwide in the last two to three months. Again, that's exciting but it's also an awesome responsibility that we have put on ourselves to ensure that we're getting in there and helping them to create that value and derive that value from their investment.”
In considering the realities of the corporate environment at present, Turner believes that there’s less disparity than usual between CEOs and CIOs when it comes to IT and the allocation of corporate resources.
“Those conversations between top management actually have been narrowed greatly. There's a very real focus on ‘How do I become more efficient;’ ‘How do I save money;’ and ‘How do I help drive value.’ I would say during this time of turbulence from an economy standpoint, the CEO and the CIO agendas are very aligned as a general rule. We still have exceptions that we bump into, but as a general rule they are probably more aligned than I've seen them in my time in IT,” Turner commented
Switching his focus to addressing the disappointment with Vista adoption, the Microsoft COO asserted that the operating system is finally making progress. He advised that there are now about 180 million copies of Vista in the marketplace and that since the release of Service Pack 1, the device compatibility problems and application compatibility problems have largely been overcome.
“Post Service Pack 1, we've really been able to improve and take care of about 98 to 99 percent of the device compatibility problems and opportunities and about 96 percent of the application compatibility problems. Now it’s down to working through the different line of business applications that enterprises may have or small businesses may have,” Turner said. “There are significant savings when Vista is deployed over XP. We love XP. XP is seven years old in the marketplace. It was designed three years prior to that so it’s really a ten-year-old operating system. There’s been very good total cost of ownership, if you will, derived from that particular OS and we'll continue to support it. But what we’re working through now from a transition standpoint with customers is to say Vista is the safest, most secure and reliable operating system we've ever released. There’s good TCO and there’s good savings post Service Pack 1 and it's getting that story out that we're really working hard on. I did meet with a few customers here in the local market who are actively deploying Vista and we've done a pretty good job of explaining this TCO proposition, but we still have work to do to get the facts out about Vista. Really, it's a different release post Service Pack 1 than it was pre.”
Whatever feelings one may have about Microsoft and its products, it cannot be denied that the company has made positive contributions toward helping build the knowledge economy in the Arab World. Whether it’s the Arabization of its software, moves to encourage local developers or support for the introduction of IT to the classroom, Microsoft is a rare international company that has taken its corporate social responsibility efforts global. During his visit, the Microsoft COO announced that Microsoft would be including students at Saudi universities in one of its latest education initiatives called DreamSpark.
“I actually love the name DreamSpark. It sort of sparks the imagination of what’s possible. Through DreamSpark, Microsoft is giving away a suite of developer and designer tools to college students and allowing them the capability to explore,” Turner said. “I actually think DreamSpark is great for a lot of reasons. It’s great because the easier we can make it for people to take an interest in computer science, the better it is for our partner ecosystem. We have about 4,000 partners here that we've been able to nurture and help get established over the last decade. It’s also good because we can’t hire enough computer science engineers in the world today. We need to continue to get more and more young people interested in math and science. This initiative is one that we're very proud to participate in and we think it will serve us well in the future.”
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