Leisa This is The BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. It's guest time and my guest today is Jennifer Heard, Vice President of Microsoft. Welcome back, Jennifer. You've been with us before. How are you doing?
Jennifer I'm doing great and it's really nice to be back at The BusinessMakers Show. I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with you again.
Leisa Thank you. We're glad to have you and we're really interested in hearing about what Microsoft has been up to. I understand there's an exciting contest going on.
Jennifer There is a contest that's going on across the nation. In fact it's called the U.S. Imagine Cup and the opportunity for the students in universities to showcase their capability around developing solutions like games and actually addressing concerns that are going on in the world. Whether it's things like critical issues such as sustainability of ecological environments to disease monitoring and other really important business issues and issues for the communities to be solved by these students. And we actually, the thing that's the most exciting is there's 22 finalists that have entered their projects to the Imagine Cup. And four of those teams are right here from the University of Houston.
Leisa Oh, my goodness. That's fabulous. How did they get so successful in the contest?
Jennifer They submitted their applications and they were able to submit those and be nominated and recognized. And right now there's some voting opportunities for everyone to go do and it's called the People's Choice Award. And if you go out to facebook.com and look for the Microsoft Tech student, there's all the 22 teams are listed and you would see the four from the University of Houston. And you can actually vote on them. And on April 8th the winning teams of the finalists will go up to our headquarters campus in Redmond and they'll actually showcase these products and their solutions and they'll be entered into the finalists. And the winners will be announced in New York this summer and the opportunity for them to take the winnings. There's a financial recognition. There's also a recognition for the university and the fact that these students will be showcased in front of 14,000 of our top partners around the world to look at them as top candidates to be recruited.
Leisa That is an incredible opportunity. On a personal question, how's the voting going?
Jennifer Well, right now when I first looked at it this morning it looked like one of the teams from U of H is number 10 out of the 22. So I want to encourage your listeners to go out and really think about voting for those teams in the University of Houston or University of San Antonio so we get the Texas representation in New York.
Leisa Okay, so remind us one more time where they go on Facebook?
Jennifer Facebook.com and it's called Microsoft Tech student.
Leisa Wow. We're going to get out there and vote for you. I am sure.
Jennifer Excellent.
Leisa Interestingly enough, I feel that in the last few months and probably the last year I've been just been barraged with information about Apple or Google or Facebook. What's Microsoft been up to?
Jennifer Well, you know it's interesting. It seems that while we do a lot of marketing a lot of times it's not connecting on the end user for the consumer side and what we're doing actually on the business side. So I'll just tell you a couple of things that we're up to and the things that I'm really proud about. You know a lot of people don't realize that we've sold over 350 million copies of Windows 7 since its launch and fastest growing operating system in the history of the world. We actually have sold ten million Kinect, the Xbox Kinect devices in a period of about six weeks. It's actually now being recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest device ever selling in the history of the world. We have grown our Office, our information productivity. Most people know Microsoft Office. People think that the product has probably run its course. Well, the reality is we grew that business 24 percent over the last year and that's a 20 billion plus product. So we are in the game. We are very, very excited about the innovation we're bringing to market and being as one of the, taking share, it's one of the fastest browsers out there that's growing market share. Windows Phone 7 launched and its iteration of the applications are coming to play. Over 100 apps being developed a day for that device. The opportunity for us to get the word out has never been greater and we're super excited about the innovation that we're bringing to the market.
Leisa I can't say that I blame you about your excitement here, but tell me about your territory, your personal territory and what you're responsible for and how business is growing in this region.
Jennifer Well, we're really, really excited about what we see in the marketplace. Not just for Microsoft, but the whole ecosystem. Customers this year seem to be very focused on their opportunity to do more with technology. And they're actually making bigger investments than they ever have before. And we're seeing a lot of that being invested on the Microsoft solutions. My responsibility is 18 states in the U.S. and I have about a billion dollars accountability to the Microsoft business. And the opportunity is primarily around the enterprise and corporate account space. And so the fact that we have so much innovation coming to market and customers are looking at Microsoft as the solution provider for that space. The opportunity is very, very exciting.
Leisa Jennifer, thank you so much. There you have it. You're listening to another edition of The BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.
