The internship

I’ll take this post to describe my internship, 3 weeks in. Well, I am working for the Information Worker Product Management Group, specifically on the Office Team. We are working hard to launch Office 2007. I am specifically working on marketing a new product known as Groove that is being added to the Office suite. It’s a going to a available generally as part of the Office Enterprise suite. The software is a peer to peer like collaboration tool that allows one to create workspaces and invite users to work on it in the face of corporate firewalls, team members working offline/online- it also has some contextual features like instant messaging, discussion boards, meeting and issue tracking etc…

Groove is a tricky product to sell because it is highly experiential, most don’t understand its value until they try it. For instance, I have used it for the obscure application of collaborating with myself- I use it to synch My Documents folder on my personal laptop with the work one so I can work seamlessly between the two machines at home and in the Office.

The most fascinating aspect of the internship so far, is the insight into the effective marketing machine at Microsoft. The general public view (and the anti-trust authorities) on the success of Microsoft is predicated entirely on exploitation and tying of products with the Windows Operating System, what they don’t see the importance and scale of the partner community, particular the strength of the sales force in the field. Microsoft’s partner network is simply key.

Outside my marketing role, I am also attending the Executive speaker series arranged for MBA interns, which I treat as an extension of Stanford View GSB’s From The Top. I really appreciate these as they happen pretty regularly and provide an insight in the direction of the software giant. This week we had Head of Business Division and Kevin Johnson co-president of Platform and Services. In the next few weeks we should get to hear from Robbie Bach , president of Entertainment and Devices Division, not to mention the CEO Steve Ballmer.