Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business division, revealed the sales figures during the company's annual Financial Analysts Meeting today. There have been "120 million licenses sold since the launch of Office 2007," he asserted.
Microsoft also uses "sold" to refer to Vista "shipments." But sold might better describe Office 2007. New PCs ship with Vista, whereas Office 2007 must be separately acquired. One is a choice, the other is not. And many enterprise are choosing to strip off Vista for Windows XP.
Stephen said that 90 percent of enterprises will have deployed Office 2007 by mid 2009. Whoa, that's impressive. Analysts projections put Vista enterprise adoption more like 10 percent to as much as 15 percent in the same time frame.
Stephen also briefly spoke about Office 14, the productivity suite's next version. Microsoft demoed part of the suite for its sales and marketing staff last week. For a moment, a pause made it seem like he might give some indication when the software would release. Instead, he said that Office 14 would follow the "same general wavelength of releases."
My guess: Microsoft will try to align Office 14 and Windows 7 releases, as was done with Office 2007 and Vista. Who knows, maybe there will be some real synergy between the products, something lacking in the last release cycle.
Stephen rattled off some pretty convincing statistics for the health of the Business division, which grew 15 percent in fiscal 2008 and posted a compound annual growth rate of 12 percent for the four years ended June 30. Stephen forecast revenue growth of 14 percent to 15 percent in fiscal 2009.
Perhaps pushed by Office 2007, "our enterprise renewal rate was well over 90 percent in Q4," he said about volume-licensing contracts.
Other stats for fiscal 2008:
- 81 of Fortune 100 companies primarily using Exchange
- 17,000 SharePoint customers, which have purchased more than 100 million licenses
- 285,000 ERP customers
- More than 15,000 CRM customers
Stephen reflected on his six months at Microsoft. "I have spent much of my career competing against Microsoft." Stephen worked at Lotus, Macromedia and Adobe.
"I have been incredibly impressed with the Microsoft ecosystem." As a former competitor, Stephen said he could appreciate Microsoft's "tenacity." Stephen also said that he is impressed with "Microsoft's intellectual integrity."
Source: Microsoft Watch
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