During his opening remarks at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that despite a base revenue of 650 billion, Microsoft’s Partner Network still managed to grow 6.5% over the past year.
“We have a total of 750,000 partners around the world, but about 90 percent of the revenue that we do is actually represented in some way, shape or form with the partners who are here today: systems integration partners, resale partners, hardware partners, development partners, software partners, cloud partners, framing partners, distribution partners,” says Ballmer. “The range in breadth of the activities in which you engage are amazing.
This year, our partners in aggregate had really quite a good year. Growth in the businesses from our partners was about 6.5 percent year over year, but on a base of $650 billion. That’s the total revenue of our partner network, $650 billion, and you still manage to grow at 6.5 percent.”
Steve Ballmer credits the uptick in sales to providing one of the best stable of new products in some time, ranging from Office 365, Windows 8, and Windows Server.
According to my math, that puts Microsoft a few billion shy of being able to buy every partner in its network a million dollar yacht. It does however, allow them to purchase an ample supply of sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.
Here’s a nice shot of Steve from the event. He’s really not Dr. Evil, in case you think I’m serious.
