Microsoft boss tunes in to Kiwi market

Kevin Turner chief operating officer of Microsoft

As Microsoft operations chief Kevin Turner travels the world, he counts on getting an earful from customers about how the company can make life easier for them.

"I find most of them aren't very bashful about telling us some things that we can continue to improve on," says Turner, in New Zealand for the first time since joining United States-based Microsoft in 2005.

The same goes for his meetings with staff at Microsoft's roughly 90 foreign subsidiaries. Microsoft New Zealand is one of the company's fastest growing subsidiaries.

"I love to get into new geographies and learn about the teams. We've got a great business here, we've got great people."

Great customers, too, if that's measured by how law-abiding they are. Turner says Microsoft suffers a comparatively low rate of software piracy in this country.

Despite what Turner calls the "fascinating macroeconomic times", Microsoft is still spending up large on creating fresh intellectual property. It is putting US$9 billion ($16.1 billion) into research and development this year, up US$1 billion on the year before, while at the same slashing 5000 jobs in response to the global recession.

"Inflection points like this one don't come along that often so we actually talk to our people about the fact that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and we have to make the most of it," says Turner.

"We know that over the long term if we continue to invest in R&D, that's how we as a company will continue to thrive, grow market share and, more importantly, create value for customers."

Turner carries the can for the company's sales and marketing efforts and its IT infrastructure making him second only to chief executive Steve Ballmer.

It means he shares the same cost-saving preoccupations of managers everywhere.

He is looking for greater value from Microsoft's IT spending by reducing the number of software programs it uses. In an initiative begun last year at the New Zealand subsidiary, the company is dispensing with as many as 30 different customer relationship management packages and standardising on its own Microsoft CRM software.

"We're a company that believes in eating what you cook. When our people use our technology it's a whole lot easier to have a conversation with a customer or partner about why this technology works, how does it work and the way that it works."

This is also an era in which Microsoft's historically lucrative Windows and Office products are under pressure from open-source and web-based alternatives, with decade-old Google seen as a major threat.

And he says the company's failure so far to do a deal with Yahoo to put it on a firmer competitive footing with Google in the internet search market is not the end of that effort.

"In the event there is interest from Yahoo we have interest in having discussions with them around what a partnership can look like and how it might work and beyond that I wouldn't have anything to add - but that isn't our strategy. Our strategy is around becoming a world-class digital advertising company, with or without an acquisition."