In terms of volume of news, Frank Clegg, president of Microsoft Canada should rank No. 1 on the Top 25 Newsmakers list. The head man for Microsoft in Canada was everywhere this year. He cut the ribbon on a state of the art home office in Mississauga, Ont., he introduced trustworthy computing, Microsoft
CRM, Small Business Server and a new Office System.
During his time at Microsoft, (Clegg began in 1991) he has seen the Canadian subsidiary grow to become a $16.3 billion force in the economy. This is more than some other traditional Canadian industries such as logging and forestry. In his spare time, he volunteers at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and has helped develop a digital library for its members.
While all those announcements and accomplishments are significant, he places 7th for his diligent work in building and evolving the subsidiary’s channel partners.
Clegg estimates that there are 80,000 people in Canada who earn their living with Microsoft.
“”We believe the best way to provide a great solution to our customers is with partners being involved. They provide the great expertise with our technology. If we tried to do this on our own we would need to hire 80,000 people,”” Clegg said.
Over the years, along with his channel team currently headed by David Willis, Microsoft Canada has managed to attract several high profile resellers such as the No. 2 overall solution provider in Canada, Xwave Solutions, which has 170 of its 2,300 employees trained on Microsoft products. Clegg has also managed to attract several smaller resellers such as Cactus, Navantis, and TGO to become predominantly Microsoft solution providers.
“”These are all independent business people and they look at all the options in the marketplace. We spend a significant amount of time with them to show them our vision and our value proposition to them as an independent business,”” Clegg said.
What he finds is smaller partners can’t afford to support more than one technology in a major way. “”So they really have bet their business (on Microsoft),”” he added.
One thing Clegg did was invest money and resources on developing Canadian specific return on investment references (completed by an independent auditor) for partners so that they can have meaningful ROI discussions with customers.
“”My goal is that I will give you every piece of information that I have available. I treat partners as if they are my own direct senior sales team,”” he said.
When Clegg started 12 years ago, Microsoft did not have the marketshare lead in word processing, spreadsheets, file and print, and development tools. He credits the partners for helping Microsoft become a leader in desktop productivity tools, Windows NT, SQL and now with .Net.
Another major initiative for Clegg this year was establishing trustworthy computing with the release of Windows Server 2003.
“”Over my dozen years there has been about four of major initiatives that Bill (Gates) has come out with. Internet wave was one, .Net being another one, information at your fingertips was the first back when I started, and, the fourth one is trustworthy computing,”” he said.
Trustworthy computing originated from an e-mail from Gates, which Clegg said, was a defining moment with security that the industry, and security firms can rally around.
Even with trustworthy computing in hand, Microsoft Canada had a major security breach this year with Blaster.
Microsoft Canada was inundated with phone calls for help and more information. Almost every Microsoft Canada employee based in Quebec, Clegg said, volunteered their free time to make sure all French Canadian callers got what they needed. Another team based in Ontario did the same thing for their customer base. The subsidiary received two customer service awards from Microsoft’s head office because of its work after the Blaster crisis, he said.
But Clegg understands that the partner community needs more and he and the channel team spend a lot of time and resources investing in training instead of rebates, for example.
“”There is no doubt the industry is in tough shape. We are working very hard to have a balance and making sure we are fiscally responsible. Similarly with our partners, we need to be smart about making the investments we are making. One thing we are not cutting back on is our investment in the channel,”” Clegg said.
