14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Thrive is a campaign addressing IT professionals, which Microsoft debuted earlier this week. Designed to lend a helping hand to IT pros, especially in the context of the global economic downturn, Microsoft Thrive offers three pillars focused on career care, technical competence and Business & IT alignment. Julie-Anne Arsenault, working in BMO, Technical Audience Marketing team, and leader of the Thrive campaign, indicated that the Redmond company, as an industry leader, had a responsibility to help out IT pros keep afloat the economic tsunami.
“I wanted to share with you our thrive program, which I think is especially appealing. As an IT pro, during these challenging times, we're all faced with any number of challenges. Whether it's our careers, whether it's technology, or whether it’s aligning with our businesses, this is probably one of the most challenging times that we'll face in our professional careers. So what we've done is put together some resources that I'm personally excited about, and i hope that you'll find helpful, as you struggle or begin to address, some of these areas. I'm pretty excited about it, and we wanted to share our best practices, and also get into even an opportunity to have a dialog across our broader IT pro community on these subjects,” revealed Tony Scott, Microsoft CIO.
Keith Combs, Microsoft evangelist, was among the Microsoft employees affected by the company's new commitment to cut back costs, an integral part of which involves the disappearance of a few thousand jobs. Combs now has what he referred to as essentially a new job, after his former organization was disbanded. In the second half of January 2009, the software giant announced that it was letting 1,400 people go on the spot, with another 3,600 to follow in the upcoming 18 months. The move proved that no company is immune to the global financial crisis, and as more and more jobs will get cut, Thrive might just offer the breath of fresh air necessary for some IT pros to remain employed.
“What you see is essentially the first phase. It’s the launch and I’m certain it isn’t all things to all people. We all know any v1.0 project is like that. The business unit that developed this has some creative ideas I think you’ll like coming for the next phase, and that’s only a few weeks away. I was pretty surprised to hear that today,” Combs added. “I know it’s hard out there and some of you are not really Thriving and are in survival mode. I totally get that. That’s why it’s especially important to me to get your thoughts conveyed to the people that produced this. If I can help, I will.”