Wall Street analysts descend on Redmond for annual financial meeting
Summer is traditionally a busy time for Microsoft news and this year is proving no exception.
Today, July 30, is Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), when Wall Street analysts and press are subject to treated to back-to-back presentations from Microsoft's top execs, where they outline the company's product and strategy agenda for the company months.
Speakers at this year's FAM include most of Microsoft's top honchos -- everyone from CEO Steve Ballmer, to Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, Chief Financial Software Officer Chris Liddell, Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie. Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is going to participate in an "executive discussion" panel with a handful of others at the end of the day, but isn't slated to give a separate presentation this year.
Four of the five Microsoft's presidents are on tap to speak: Robbie Bach, head of Entertainment and Devices; Qi Lu, head of Microsoft's Online Services division; Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft's Business Division; and Bob Muglia, head of Server and Tools. Steven Sinofsky, the newest of Microsoft's presidents, who heads the Windows client unit, is not part of today's line-up. Microsoft officials said Sinofsky is "out of town" a week after he and his team released Windows 7 to manufacturing.
Update: Turns out Sinofsky isn't out of town at all. He is at FAM but not speaking about the Windows business. Ballmer ended up speaking about Windows, claiming that since he (Ballmer) had run the business for most of the past fiscal year, he was going to be the one to talk about it.
Analysts will undoubtedly be asking lots of questions about the July 29 search and ad partnership outlined by Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as more on Microsoft's ongoing cost-cutting measures, which is always a favorite topic among Wall Street's Microsoft watchers.
There are always new and interesting tidbits about Microsoft's product plans that emerge during FAM. I'll be filing throughout the day about anything new and interesting I hear. FAM kicks off at 11:30 a.m. ET and runs until about 7 p.m. ET.