<span style="color: #000000;">eGroup’s Director of Professional Services, Jason Webster, has been down in Houston this week attending Microsoft’s World Partner Conference.</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">In between accepting an award for <a href="https://twitter.com/eGroup_Inc/status/354578101784690688"><span style="color: #000000;">Microsoft’s Growth Partner of the Year</span></a> (US SMB East Region) and participating in the Microsoft Partner Executive Summit that included an exclusive Q&amp;A Session with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Jason managed to share his real time notes, session factoids and observations. Hit Jason up on <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonBWebster"><span style="color: #000000;">Twitter</span></a> for further explanation.</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Part II coming later today.</span>
<ul>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Products positioned to win in 2013:</span>
Lync – Utilized in 90 of the Fortune 100</li>
Azure – 1,000+ customers a day</li>
Office 365 – Fastest growing Microsoft product. Overtook SharePoint and Lync!</li>
CRM Online – 2 out of 3 new customers are going with the cloud and gaining momentum on SalesForce</li>
</ul>
</li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">20 Million Customers will be impacted by the Windows XP end-of-life in April</span>
<ul>
	<li>The time is now to leave behind the 13 year old Operating System!</li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">The “Cloud OS” – the cloud is a revolution not and evolution. The demand for increasing modern apps and many ways to access them is nothing short of a takeover of the old ways of limited delivery modelsHybrid Cloud will dominate the next 5 years – Microsoft is the only true Hybrid Cloud with the capabilities and most comprehensive set of enterprise assets to seamlessly migrate workloads from on-prem to the cloud – any cloud. No other Cloud company is working today in the Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud</span>
<ul>
	<li>Companies without a Cloud Strategy today are behind and will wake up wondering “what happened” and might not be able to catch up to their competition. New companies today are “born into the cloud” which further puts pressure on organizations to evolve their strategies to maintain agility and a competitive edge</li>
	<li>Companies need to engage with a Microsoft Partner to develop their Cloud OS/Hybrid Cloud Strategy for Public and Private Cloud</li>
	<li>Cloud OS is a strategy about a consistent enterprise ready platform across all devices.  Desktop/Laptop/Phone/Tablet</li>
</ul>
</li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Oracle bet on Microsoft for its cloud Platform</span></li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Azure Pack enables Private and Service Provider Clouds the same automation features that the Azure Public Cloud has available</span></li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Microsoft launched Power BI – The Business Intelligence Cloud Platform</span></li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Hyper-V is experiencing 4x Growth over VMware vSphere and gaining 1% market share Quarter over Quarter</span></li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Windows Intune coupled with SCCM allows you to manage your public and private cloud assets in a single location</span></li>
	<li><span style="color: #000000;">Microsoft is focused on winning in the consumer device market</span>
<ul>
	<li>Better, More Attractive, Devices</li>
	<li>The Enterprise runs on Windows</li>
	<li>Committed to a seamless device experience. Instantaneously transfer content from one device to another</li>
	<li>Closing the App Gap on the Mobile Platform. Microsoft has more Apps for Windows Tablets than any other manufacturer.</li>
	<li>Only 20% of business users with tablets use them for business purposes. Microsoft Surface is a Productivity Device. Microsoft 8” Windows 8.1 Tablets are a Consumer Device</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>