Jeff Raikes Microsoft Quotations

With Microsoft Office Live, we are making online services available for small businesses to create an enterprise-like IT infrastructure for them without the management requirements. Our goal is to make it easy and affordable for small businesses to have a more customizable Internet-based solution.

What Microsoft has done over the years is bring technology to mass markets, and we think the time has come to do that with business intelligence software. And we're building it into the Office tools that are familiar to everyone.

That combination of focus is very, very important, it's very powerful, and I think it really uniquely positions Microsoft to be the best company to be able to meet your needs.

Partners play a critical role in delivering solutions and applications to customers with the Microsoft Office System. The value of Solutions Competencies is that they enable Microsoft to deliver resources and training to partners that are meeting their customer needs. And for partners, the opportunity to highlight their expertise to customers is tremendous in the growing IW solution market.

Over the past year, we've reaffirmed our commitment to delivering breakthrough innovation by aligning our development efforts with customers' needs and their current technology environment. Convergence 2006 is certain to provide tremendous opportunity for Microsoft Business Solutions' customers and partners to share ideas and knowledge. Together, we are building a new approach to supporting information workers in the 21st century with integrated, adaptable business management solutions to enable better decision-making, improve productivity and help increase the efficiency of business processes.

The software business was dominated by hardware companies, and everybody thought they would just come in and wipe us out. People forget that Microsoft took a huge bet to think that an independent operating system and programming language would be successful.

Activities such as the BAM Minority Student Day are part of a larger Microsoft effort to provide urban high school students with exposure to the real-life experience of working in the high technology industry. Through the event, we also hope to inspire young minority students to become the information technology leaders of tomorrow.

The Internet is crucial to running a successful business today, and companies that don't have at least an online presence risk missing out. With Microsoft Office Live, we are making online services available for small businesses to create an enterprise-like IT infrastructure for them without the management requirements. Our goal is to make it easy and affordable for small businesses to have a more customizable Internet-based solution.

A combination of Microsoft technologies will always have more impact.