At the Microsoft® Worldwide Partner Conference 2004, the company's premier annual event for business partners, Microsoft Corp. today demonstrated the significance of the concept of integrated innovation in a series of keynote addresses. A Microsoft-wide initiative, the concept of integrated innovation draws on the strength of Microsoft's strong relationships with independent software vendors (ISVs), resellers and other industry partners to deliver complete solutions that integrate across various components of an organization to solve business problems, automate processes and deliver tangible value to customers. This initiative represents a significant opportunity for partners to enable their customers to take full advantage of the benefits of the Microsoft platform and technology stack -- infrastructure, desktop and business applications -- to address real-world business issues.

"The Solution Competencies in the Microsoft Partner Program map directly to the integrated technology stack that Microsoft offers," said Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft. "The concept of integrated innovation is critical to our ability to develop solutions that solve real-world business problems. It's about providing our partners with a platform that they can build upon to offer their customers the highly integrated solutions that are required to remain competitive in today's marketplace. I am thrilled by the tremendous opportunities we have to provide our partners with tangible value and benefits, which they can in turn offer their customers."