Microsoft will give speeches Tuesday morning about cloud computing, Office and Windows Phones at its Worldwide Partners Conference in Los Angeles.
Division presidents Satya Nadella (Server and Tools), Kurt DelBene (Business division) and Andy Lees (mobile business) will give keynote speeches beginning at 9 a.m.
You can watch the live webcast at www.digitalwpc.com and I will be live blogging it here.
9:09 a.m. I am waiting for the WPC webcast to begin.
9:12 a.m. WPC begins with Bach's Cello Suite in G major performed live on stage. (Cello Suite No. 1.)
9:13 a.m. Here are links to our coverage of Steve Ballmer's speech on Monday, new that a new version Windows Intune is available for free beta testing and a new Microsoft partnership with Yell in the UK.
9:16 a.m. Microsoft showed a video about a device that helps speech impaired people communicate. Now a woman is singing Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" with the electric cellist.
9:19 a.m. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jon Roskill on stage. He said the cellist was Tina Guo. Here is Tina Guo's website.
9:26 a.m. The mayor has proclaimed it Microsoft partner day in Los Angeles, Roskill said. Now there's a catwalk of notable partners parading across the stage.
9:27 a.m. Summer fashion report from WPC stage: grey suits, button down shirts, top button open, no ties. Women wearing flats.
9:35 a.m. Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft's Server and Tools division, now on stage. Here is an earlier story on Satya Nadella we ran when he was promoted. He replaces former division president Bob Muglia, who spoke last year.
9:42 a.m. Nadella said, "The fact that virtualization is reaching an inflection point is not lost on us."
9:43 a.m. Nadella is now talking System Center 2012. He said, "The key design pillars of this next release is to make sure it's all about the app." That sounds a lot like how Microsoft is talking about the Web browser and Internet Explorer -- it's all about the website.
9:50 a.m. Nadella says data is exploding, but 72 percent of people in a company do not have access to the business intelligence to convert the data into insight. He said next version of SQL Server is being designed with that in mind.
9:56 a.m. A community technology preview of the coming version of Server called Denali is available Tuesday. Here is where you can get the SQL Server Denali preview. It includes the data visualization demo shown Tuesday called Project Crescent.
10:02 a.m. Nadella showed video of a Boeing marketing application for the 737 built on Microsoft's cloud platform Azure.
10:03 a.m. Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft Business division is now on stage. DelBene is also new from last year, when former president Stephen Elop spoke. Elop left Microsoft to become CEO of Nokia. Here is a Seattle Times QandA with DelBene about Office and Office 365.
10:07 a.m. Office is on one billion PCs, DelBene said.
10:09 a.m. DelBene on Office in the cloud, Office 365, and a slam on Google Apps. "It's the cloud on your terms. It's not about taking a consumer oriented cloud experience and saying that's good enough for enterprise."
10:13 a.m. DelBene now talking about Microsoft's unified communications software Lync, which provides voice calling, video calling, conference calling and instant messaging. "We've got over 10 million Cisco legacy voice over IP lines that are going out of support next year," he said. "We've got 150 million legacy lines that will be converted by our customers over the next 3 years." Lync software can replaced traditional phone systems.
10:14 a.m. Now showing a demo of Lync and how it translates messages during instant messaging. Lync is the product that Skype will be integrated into if Microsoft receives regulatory approval to buy Skype.
10:18 a.m. Lync is coming to "major mobile platforms" by end of the year, which presumes Android and iPhone. Demo on Windows Phone showed instant messaging. It's not clear from demo whether it will do voice or video calls.
10:21 a.m. DelBene says 50,000 people have tried out Office 365 since June 28 launch. Lots of waffling numbers at WPC speeches. On Monday, Ballmer said 56,000 have tried it since launch.
Another waffling number at WPC: Ballmer said 350 million new PCs are on Windows 7 on Monday morning. An hour later, Windows marketing exec Tami Reller said 400 million.
10:32 a.m. DelBene off. Kirill Tatarinov, president of Microsoft's Dynamics business is on stage. Dynamics is Microsoft's customer relations management, also known as CRM, and enterprise resource planning software, also known as ERP.
10:37 a.m. Two million people are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Tatarinov said. That's how many people own Windows Phones.
10:40 a.m. It's definitely newbies day on the WPC stage. All the division presidents speaking Tuesday -- Nadella, DelBene, Tatarinov, Lees, including Roskill -- were promoted in past year.
10:48 a.m. Microsoft showed a demo of Dynamics CRM software running with Windows Azure and Office 365 in the cloud.
10:58 a.m. Tatarinov done. Andy Lees, president of the Windows Phone division, now on stage talking about devices.
11:01 a.m. The cost to make a phone has fallen dramatically. "A year ago all smartphones cost $400 when they left their manufacturer. Today they're down to $200," Lees said. "And next year a phone that can run Windows Phone 7 will cost $100 to $150."
11:02 a.m. Lees concedes the CES demo by Windows division president Steve Sinofsky of Windows running on a motherboard was "boring." He added, "We're at an inflection point in Moore's law where you can put everything you need to run a computer on a chip, a system on a chip. You can have full PC power in whatever form factor you like." Here is a link to our story on the Windows system on a chip CES demo in January.
11:05 a.m. When people ask whether Microsoft is going to put Windows Phone on a tablet, Lees said, "This is in conflict with this strategy. We view a tablet as a PC." He said people want to do PC things on a tablet like printing and networking. He also adds, "We are aiming to provide coherence and consistency between the PC, the phone and the TV through Xbox."
11:10 a.m. Microsoft is showing a demo of the Mango update for Windows Phone coming later this year. Seems like a repeat of the company's announcement in May in New York. We went to that. Here is our Seattle Times story on Mango feature breakdown.
11:19 a.m. It's not a totally verbatim repeat of the May Windows Phone news event. I think they switched out the Miley Cyrus book for a Justin Bieber book to demonstrate a Bing image search feature.
11:22 a.m. Windows Phone has 22,000 applications. Lees said it's the fastest growth for any new mobile platform, and it's more applications than RIM has for the Blackberry.
11:24 a.m. Microsoft and the wireless carriers will cut Windows Phone prices in half this year, Lees said.
11:29 a.m. Ford has made 3 million cars using Windows Embedded software in Sync.
11:34 a.m. Microsoft is showing several devices running Windows.
11:43 a.m. Keynote is over. Coming Wednesday at 9 a.m.: Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner and UK business mogul Richard Branson. We'll be live blogging here at Microsoft Pri0.
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