Kevin Peesker: Inside Microsoft’s $100B Partner-Led Growth Strategy

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Hey everyone, welcome back to ultimate partner live in Dallas. I'm Chip Rodgers, Chief partner Officer at workspan, and I, gosh, couldn't be more excited to be joined by Kevin pisker. Kevin,

Kevin Peesker  0:13  
yeah, thank you so much chip. It's great to be here and appreciate you joining us at this amazing event that brings together so many amazing organizations.

Chip Rodgers  0:21  
Really, really is amazing. And just, you know, we've, we've had a drought of getting together,

Kevin Peesker  0:27  
haven't we, just, huh? You know, I sent out a video to my team of I said, Hey, let's make sure we're all gathered in Dallas, real humans. And it started to trend as hashtag, real humans. Yeah, we're all we're all in for it. So we wish you were here if you weren't here, fantastic.

Chip Rodgers  0:44  
Yeah, you should be here in Dallas, right? This is, this is, this is the place. So Kevin peaceker, if you for anyone that doesn't know, is president of SMC at Microsoft. Gosh, about a 6000 person organization, big, big organization, managing all of the from corporate SMB parts of the market which are That's right, massive, right? Almost 200,000 companies, right? Well,

Kevin Peesker  1:07  
yeah, it's 36,000 corporate customers around the world that, think of it, at that top end of the mid market of the economic space. And it's literally millions and millions of SMB customers that we engage with. The total revenue from this business is over 60 billion US dollars. So it's a pretty sizable part of Microsoft, and a very important and the fastest growing part of Microsoft.

Chip Rodgers  1:30  
Yeah, you, you threw out a number growth number you, I'll let you tell it. I don't want to No,

Kevin Peesker  1:36  
well, we as a business, we see the trend line for us to become the next $100 billion business for Microsoft. And the fantastic part about that is our entire go to market. It is all about engagement with the partner ecosystem. So the movement and participation in the growth, it is everyone who's participating in the partner ecosystem with Microsoft. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  1:59  
yeah. Tremendous. So, Kevin, you, you're, we just came out of your keynote, which is fantastic. Congratulations, right? It was packed. A packed house wrapped attention. I didn't see anybody walk out of the room.

Kevin Peesker  2:11  
The whole credible Q and A, two people were so into it. I loved it, yeah.

Chip Rodgers  2:15  
So you showed some just amazing mind blowing. You know, examples of, I think your focus is around AI Yes, and the opportunity for partners in the AI space. I mean, you showed, like the Carmax example is So, you know, incredible, the teams integration into teams, and summarizing meetings as they're happening, and with action items. And, you know, have you covered all the all of that just sort of coming out automatically, yes, that's incredible. I mean, first of all, the technology is incredible. But what is the opportunity for

Kevin Peesker  2:49  
partners? There's a few elements here. And if we look at first, maybe zoom out and step out and say, what is actually happening within our industry. And through the decades, we've seen these pretty seismic shifts. We went from PCs on every desk, remember that, to client server, the connection of the devices, through to what we know now as the internet and the availability of information through to the mobile era, and then into the cloud era about 1010, years ago. Of all of that, and across my 33 years in the industry chip, what I fundamentally believe with AI is that this is the most foundational moment, the ability and the speed by which we can apply technology to equal outcomes through generative AI is phenomenal and, frankly, unprecedented. So as an industry, I think this is one of these reset moments for the entirety of the industry, for us to think about the way in which we engage with customers, not just being with the technology group, super important. Love our technology friends in the CISO suite, the CIO, but it's so much more than that. It literally is a foundational way in which we engage with the chief executive officers, connecting strategy to the technology itself for outcomes. Coos, CMOs, CROs, individuals. On the finance side, it's literally every sector, every line of business, every line of business. And what's super cool chip is it's not just one industry. It is every industry in the economic ecosystem. And last, yeah, and last, I think what we've proven through cloud itself is you don't have to build a billion dollar data center like a strategic 500 account or customer in the world. If you're a small medium business, you can have the same access to the power of compute and the intellectual property and services that are on that power of computer. Do, and importantly, that involves everything to do with how we're applying artificial intelligence. Yeah, incredible, amazing. It found a foundation, foundational moment. So I think

Chip Rodgers  5:10  
your message to partners is like, get on board. Like, get it like, like, you know, understand, yes, understand the opportunity. And what you just talked about, is every line of business, so all the functional areas, every industry, so all of the industry verticals, if you specialize there, you need to get understand AI and understand how to adopt it and turn it into your business. Absolutely

Kevin Peesker  5:34  
chip. No, you're so right. And I think the framework for this is, regardless of the way in which you are engaged your market. So as a partner, you may look at an industry sector, or you may look at a regional coverage. The opportunity here is that you can be as narrow as you would like, meaning narrow on industry, narrow on solution area, or you can be as broad as you like. The way in which we're applying artificial intelligence is that it cuts across and it's infused in each area that customers will utilize for either operationally driving productivity and efficiency or engaging with their customers different an example, when I talk about solution areas, maybe that's a little too Microsoft inside speak, it is Azure cloud, hyperscale cloud. It is the application development within Azure Cloud. It is modern work environment. What we know is the Office Suite. It is business applications, low code, no code, application development through to full business application suite in the way customers think about marketing, customer engagement or operational activities, including financial and operations sectors. So covering the basis underpinned by security, we're literally applying AI and infusing it through each of those areas, it's foundational, and that a partner can engage where they want, when they want, but the opportunity is effectively theirs to determine where will you be more most successful in adding value to your customers? Yeah, it's all about That's amazing,

Chip Rodgers  7:18  
that's amazing. And so often partners are so deeply embedded in the use cases and the and the and the industry that they really they can, they can then apply, they take the technology, understand how, and then apply it, and then and build some, build a business out of

Kevin Peesker  7:33  
it. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the examples are really starting to resonate and come out now, as we let's face it, march 15 was when Microsoft announced the formalization of our partnership and alignment with open AI with chat GPT, of embedding chat GPT open AI within Azure in a highly secure way of taking that Technology and then building co pilots around it. November 1, we went alive, like think of the time frame to go live. Fortunately, behind the scenes, we were working for about a year and a half on it, but we went live, and we've also now deployed security for co pilot, et cetera. So this technology is moving at a pace than in my 33 years. Chip I've never seen before. And so the partner, the opportunity for the partner is, well, where do I start, I think. And in that regard, my response is, please, just start. Jump in. Just jump in. Yeah, yeah. This is, this is not one of these moments where you, you know, wait for somebody else to go do it. Wait for somebody besides you to go do it. The demand that we are seeing from customers, not only in the United States, but literally around the world, it is unprecedented. And we, as Microsoft, we the way we go to market is with our partner ecosystem. So there's no way Microsoft can manage that demand. We absolutely need all of our partners to engage on unsatisfying it and putting us in a position together where we can serve our customers with

Chip Rodgers  9:13  
excellence. Incredible. Thank you, Kevin, fantastic. Really appreciate you. Sharing a few moments and Keynote and such a tremendous message for Microsoft partners and the

Kevin Peesker  9:27  
ecosystem. Thank you so much. If there's one closing comment, if I may please chip it is, I do think the time is now. And in regards to the time being now, the first thing that every one of us in our amazing industry has the capacity to do it is to take the step with ourselves, to do have that look in the mirror moment, take some time out of every day to just learn an incremental amount about what actually hap is happening with generative AI. How do we think? About the utilization of that tool. How do we learn about prompting for the utilization of generative AI? How will it apply to the way in which we engage with our customers, the way in which we think about the nature of our own work each and every day? So to me, this significant shift that will impact the world that is unlike anything we've seen. It actually, at its core, starts with each and every one of us in this ecosystem. And so thank you for just spending some time talking about it. That's a great first step to us moving forward and helping the world to empower them to do more understand, yeah, you bet. Thank you so much.

Chip Rodgers  10:43  
Fantastic. Really appreciate Kevin. Thank you, yeah, appreciate it. Thank you, thanks so much. Wish you were here, be here next time, next time you.

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