A Window Into Retail’s Technology Past

This is a fascinating look back into the history of retail technology at the turn of the century. In January 2000, I was the National Practice Manager of Microsoft’s first retail consulting practice. I joined Microsoft in June of 1999 as one of their first retail industry experts. The company was expanding beyond desktop computing into enterprise software solutions but had very little industry expertise and, thus, little credibility in the enterprise data center space. I was charged with building an elite team of retail industry experts with deep Microsoft technology experience which at the time was a lot harder to find than I had anticipated. But within a year I managed to hire twenty consultants who were the best of the best and they were an amazing team. Some of them still work for Microsoft today. I gave this presentation, my first at the company, to a room full of retail executives and Microsoft partners. Microsoft was on fire at the time and everyone wanted to know what cool new technology we had in the pipeline. While most of retail’s executives personally loved our products, they were extremely skeptical of using our solutions for mission-critical applications. It was my job to convince them otherwise, and to be honest I was a bit skeptical myself having been a retail CIO six years prior to joining the company. But I was on a mission, and ultimately helped Microsoft make a huge impact in the retail industry during my fourteen years at the company.

Presented by David W Gruehn