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Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com. It's guest time on the show, and I'm very pleased to have back with me Jennifer Heard, vice president with Microsoft. Jennifer, welcome back to the Businessmaker Show.
Jennifer: Thanks, Russ. It's great to be back.
Russ: You bet. So I think we're going to talk today about Office 2010. Why don't we just start by you giving us an overview of Office 2010?
Jennifer: Okay. Excellent. So Office 2010 is Microsoft's latest version of our suite of products that enable our business users and consumers and students and the like that know Word, Excel, PowerPoint in a pretty familiar way, it enables them to do even more. You know, with the evolution of so much technology available today, whether you're using technologies on the phone, you're using it through your browser, or you're using your power PC or your desktop at home, we want people to be able to access this information anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
Russ: Okay.
Jennifer: So you'll hear more about that today. But really, it's our next version that takes productivity to the next level.
Russ: Well, I've always been an Officer user for sure, and Office 2010, just the versions of Word and Excel and Microsoft are all very impressive in added functionality. But I think it goes much further than that these days for sure, right?
Jennifer: It definitely does. You know, we've spent billions and billions of dollars researching how users work, how they leverage the technology, and really how they can improve the work they do every day, because it's about increasing productivity and having the ability to expose information in a way that makes sense to the user. And so while there's a lot of products out there that enable productivity, Office is the most widely used.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: And in fact, you know, a lot of people don't realize this, but there's billions and billions of documents shared today over the internet every day that a user creates a Word document and sends it over like their Hotmail account, for example.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: Over 500 million Live IDs are out there today using the internet to share information. So that's a lot of content being created and shared across, you know, individuals, whether it's personally or professionally.
Russ: Right. And now Office 2010 has been out there long enough for you to be able to see success stories, and perhaps the way Microsoft does things, to even correct a few things. Would that be accurate?
Jennifer: That's very accurate. In fact, we always look to improve the products as we make our new versions. In user labs and tests, we're showing increased productivity by very large percentages, whether you're using Word, taking advantage of some of the new smart art and the integration between Excel - let's say you create a chart that is creating some insight to your business.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: And you want to put that in Word or PowerPoint. It's so easy to bring those two things together. And then you can share it very easily through browsers or phone. And so you don't lose that effort that you've put into creating insight to your business, or even to your personal life.
Russ: Okay. It always seems to me a bit of a challenge for Microsoft. The Office line is so accepted, but to get the older users to upgrade to the newer ones. I assume you keep statistics on that, and - but it seems like, you know, people are using something that they're comfortable with, that works just fine. Is that part of the challenge here as well?
Jennifer: They are comfortable with it, and that - you know, we try to keep some things the same, but -
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: - as we've done studies, we want Office to learn how you work, and so what that means is start to blur some of those toolbars that so many people would complain about.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: Like there's too many functions that you're exposing to me.
Russ: Right. Right.
Jennifer: So the toolbars, or the ribbon is what you'll hear in Office 2010, gives you the capability of having the exposed functions that you use the most. And it watches how you work, and it will start to build the toolbar based on the things you use the most. So the button is right there for you to quickly access, whether you're using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, or any of the other Office suites that we offer.
Russ: Okay. Great. Well, now, I also know that the new family focuses a lot more on working together with work groups and stuff. Talk about that a bit.
Jennifer: Yeah. The capability around word group collaboration has really been enhanced in Office 2010. And so whether you're using SkyDrive, for example, we have hundreds of millions of users on SkyDrive today, posting their Word documents, Excel, PowerPoint, and their photos, and anything that they're creating and they want to share with their family or friends. So the fact that you can take content and manage the edited, the revised versions easily through Office 2010, and easily post it to SkyDrive, really takes it to the next level. So let's say that you and I want to collaborate on a PowerPoint.
Russ: Okay.
Jennifer: Because we have a presentation next week.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: It's going to track those changes and easily enable us to be able to at the same time make edits on that document, and it will control those revisions and share them up on SkyDrive. So now you and I don't have to worry about emailing that document back and forth, to say, "Okay, what was the latest version you changed?" You can quickly go to the version control on a tab in Office and it'll show all the edits you've made, and vice versa. In fact, if you're in an enterprise and you're sharing Office 2010 on a SharePoint site, or - that's our portal for sharing information - I can at the same time edit the same document and see multiple people inside that document in real time, seeing changes happen. This has saved my life, being an executive at Microsoft -
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: - because I'm always on the road, and I always have to have the latest information. And so not having to worry about is that the right data that I'm sharing is a lifesaver for me because I don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing.
Russ: Okay.
Jennifer: And so that is part of the Office 2010 suite, but it gets expanded even greater, whether you use SkyDrive or even an enterprise-like portal like SharePoint.
Russ: Okay. Now I know for a fact that you are a busy executive. It's always tough to get time with you. But I also know that you're a parent, too, and I think you use your products quite successfully integrating with your personal life as well as your busy business life.
Jennifer: That's right. I am a parent. I'm a proud mom of a six-year-old daughter who goes to school, and she's in first grade, and I have a husband that's also a very busy professional. And so between the three of us and our busy lives -
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: - technology has really helped us stay connected, being able to blur those lines of our family life and our work life, and really creating a way for us to share information, whether it's our calendar, so, you know, when you have a first grader, there's a lot of activities that go on in school.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: We have a calendar that we've created. I'm actually the room mom for my daughter's class, so -
Russ: Congratulations.
Jennifer: Yes. It's been great to be able to leverage technology and enable - it's about being organized, and technology helps you get organized. And so that calendar, that's my daughter's calendar. My husband sees it in his Outlook calendar, and I see it in mine, and we don't have to worry about missing any of her important events or activities that she has going on. In fact, the teacher is even using our technology, the Live sites now, to help educate all the parents about classroom agenda, things that are going on, sharing the spelling test words and things that we need to know every day as moms of our kids. And so really this technology of using Office 2010 in combination with the Live sites, the Microsoft Live sites, gives us that ability to share information much better.
Russ: Well, it all sounds real cool. In fact, the whole suite of products and all the applications you've discussed sound very productive and cool. But it also seems like a unique time technologically speaking, because you actually do have these sort of identifiable competitors now, the things that Google does and the things that Apple does, I mean, it all is sort of turning into an interesting, capitalistic, competitive venue. Do you guys pay attention to what competition is doing as well?
Jennifer: We do pay attention, and it's very important, I think, for all of us to have competition.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: And I think it keeps us more aggressive around what we bring to market. We pay attention to what our users' needs are, our customer needs are, and we're making sure that we're delivering the world-class solutions that anyone would want to take advantage of, whether you're an individual, a student, a professional, or, you know, an enterprise that's trying to deploy millions of - technology to millions of users in a secure way. So the fact that there is competition out there is going to continue to accelerate the delivery of technology in ways that we've never seen before. I've been in this industry a long time, and it's fascinating to watch the evolution of technology and how fast things come to market. And so we're excited. We're excited about that we have the choice of offers, whether people want to continue to use their technology as they've always used it at home and on their laptops, to bringing it to their smart phones. The Windows Phone 7 creates that experience for Office users, just like they would have on their PC now. And then it brings it to the browser users, that people just want to connect from anywhere from a browser.
Russ: Right.
Jennifer: And so whether that technology is in a secured infrastructure of an enterprise or leveraging technology that we bring to the cloud, it really provides more choice for our users.
Russ: Great. Well, Jennifer, I really appreciate you bringing us up to date on Office 2010.
Jennifer: Great. Thanks for the opportunity.
Russ: You bet. That's Jennifer Heard. And I think we're going to hear more from her in the future, because she's covering some bases that our audience would like to hear. And you're listening to the Businessmaker Show, heard here and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com.