Steve Ballmer

That's part of what it means to be an enterprise. I want to make sure everything's secure. I want to make sure that everything is well managed. I want to make sure everything is well paid for. I want to make sure there's somebody to call if things go wrong. I want to make sure I bought everything. I don't want to look bad because either I paid too much or I have holes in what I bought for people.

So I view this, and I probably evolved my view to this over time. When you sell the enterprise, you have to provide peace of mind, which is kind of like an insurance policy. So buying more than you might be using or some users are using. It's an insurance policy.

So I view this, and I probably evolved my view to this over time. When you sell the enterprise, you have to provide peace of mind, which is kind of like an insurance policy. So buying more than you might be using or some users are using. It's an insurance policy.

But we weren't even mailing disks by then because we had the enterprise agreement in place.

But we weren't even mailing disks by then because we had the enterprise agreement in place.

Okay, so that really comes with email boom. And email boom... It was late 90s slash beginning of 2000s.

Okay, so that really comes with email boom. And email boom... It was late 90s slash beginning of 2000s.

No, it's the locomotive. Enterprises wanted email. Yeah. When Accenture became a company, we started a joint venture called Avanade to help do, essentially, the Holy Trinity.

No, it's the locomotive. Enterprises wanted email. Yeah. When Accenture became a company, we started a joint venture called Avanade to help do, essentially, the Holy Trinity.

help install because you had we needed support infrastructure and partners who knew how to set up the servers provision email put all that in we needed partners and we didn't have enough capacity uh and that's why we started this thing avanad with uh which is a big big company at this stage with accenture and that was in the 2000s i went on the board of accenture

help install because you had we needed support infrastructure and partners who knew how to set up the servers provision email put all that in we needed partners and we didn't have enough capacity uh and that's why we started this thing avanad with uh which is a big big company at this stage with accenture and that was in the 2000s i went on the board of accenture

And everything was nicely integrated. Because remember, you needed Active Directory to manage email. you know, file shares to manage printers. I mean, it was used for a lot of different things. So it really did all kind of come together as part of the integrated proposition, like you say.

And everything was nicely integrated. Because remember, you needed Active Directory to manage email. you know, file shares to manage printers. I mean, it was used for a lot of different things. So it really did all kind of come together as part of the integrated proposition, like you say.

You guys sort of made fun of the notion that we called all that stuff the back office, as if that was diminutive.

You guys sort of made fun of the notion that we called all that stuff the back office, as if that was diminutive.

We took that as a signal that Bill just didn't care about this stuff. Oh, completely not right. I wanted to call it the back office because you needed to buy the office in the back office. And the user, the consumer, saw the office and the back office was the things that were in kind of the server rooms slash data centers, but a lot of them were server rooms.

We took that as a signal that Bill just didn't care about this stuff. Oh, completely not right. I wanted to call it the back office because you needed to buy the office in the back office. And the user, the consumer, saw the office and the back office was the things that were in kind of the server rooms slash data centers, but a lot of them were server rooms.

It's the same thing these days, but cloudized.

It's the same thing these days, but cloudized.

Well, remember, by this time... We're not through our IBM competition. And we got Linux competition now on the docket because Linux is competing with Windows Server. Linux is competing with Windows. And there's a thing called OpenOffice. Open source software for Office is competing with Office. So we have all these things going on. We haven't beat Lotus Notes yet.