Following the signing of a three year partnership, Microsoft and HP revealed that they plan to make available in excess of 30 new products and services to a market formed by over 20,000 customers in 2007.

"We have over 20,000 shared customers that we were able to parse today," explained Microsoft COO Kevin Martin, "which is an unbelievable number. We think there's 20,000 more out there that we could extend this opportunity into. So it is literally going to come from all different directions, but having that way of doing business and a way to go to market and a muscle that we will leverage through this 'People-Ready Business' initiative, is going to be very strategic for us being able to assimilate all the right resources at the right time, to deliver the right value for customers."

But while the two companies made public their investment plans pointing to a sum of $300 million for the three years of the alliance, they left it to IDC to revenue estimates associated with the Microsoft and HP powered People-Ready Business strategy, and translate the marketing alliance into numbers for potential customers.

"This agreement means that the two companies and their combined ecosystems have an opportunity to bring complete solutions to their customers," said John Gantz, chief research officer with IDC. "Just the software markets alone in business intelligence, collaboration, content management and infrastructure software running on Windows will be a $49 billion market in 2007. Add in communications, hardware, and services, it is easily over $100 billion."

Microsoft and HP promised to expand their joint solutions portfolio, to build a Microsoft Solutions Practice with over 30,000 employees over the next year, to increase their collaboration on development and to create a Solutions for a People-Ready Business Training Program that will bring 3,000 Microsoft consultants to Hewlett Packard.

"HP consultants provided a great deal of education to ensure that our people quickly became familiar and well-versed in Exchange administration," said Brian Shield, executive vice president and chief information officer at The Weather Channel. "Everything was exceptionally well-aligned as we implemented our HP & Microsoft Solutions for the People-Ready Business, like 'the perfect storm' with the many different elements coming together to produce a successful outcome. We were extremely pleased with the HP team consultants' high level of commitment to success and their ability to guide a smooth implementation."