We're adding this third piece, which is the integration of the online community and online services.
Microsoft always succeeds in markets where we allow others to build on us as a platform. What we don't know is the kinds of composites that customers and partners will build on top of us.
XML by itself is not a solution -- it's a key ingredient to enable a richer type of solution, ... What you need is an architecture where you can take XML data and integrate it with various applications -- and that's what we're offering with BizTalk.
We've identified about 50 of these and we're going to start shipping them in our ERP products starting this fall.
First of all, this is a very large market that is largely underserved.
Companies are going to use data formatted the way they want in integrating and working with suppliers, ... That's the way it's worked for 20 years, and it's not that big of a deal.
This AMR Research report validates what we're hearing from our customers, that businesses prefer integrated and adaptable solutions over higher-priced products from companies such as SAP.
They have all of the problems of the big guys and the resources of the little guys,
This is the year we're going to turn the corner on MBS,
It's our view that companies in this segment are poorly served.
It's not a question of whether or not you're going to need XML -- you're going to choose to use XML in the same way companies five years ago chose to use HTML and HTTP,
They were the first really big, complicated acquisitions Microsoft has ever done. It took us longer to consume the acquisitions than we thought, and certainly longer than we indicated.
In a sense, there is no news at this conference. We've delivered what we said we'd deliver.
These are downloadable by partners directly and the source code is available to partners.
The goal for what we're doing with this event is to talk to our customers about Microsoft's vision for delivering solutions in the mid-market.