Vertical and solution sales experts will join Microsoft's field offices as part of a 10% enlargement of its U.S. enterprise sales force. The planned changes will help Microsoft make larger, more complex sales of specialized solutions, which are increasingly important for the company and its partners as they try to move mature products such as Office 2003 and Windows XP into enterprises.

Microsoft plans to add two main types of personnel to U.S. field offices. First, it will hire enough salespeople with specific industry expertise (e.g., in healthcare or finance) to cover all of its managed accounts, rather than the smaller set of strategic accounts that vertical teams cover today. Second, it will add technical specialists for sales of particular solutions such as portals, networking infrastructure, and security management. Both changes have reportedly been piloted in specific U.S. regions, such as Northern California. By selling larger and more complete solutions based around Windows and Office, Microsoft hopes to offset the increased personnel costs resulting from the changes.

The new people will be in place July 1, 2005. The changes will not affect regions outside the United States and do not apply to the global vertical sales strategy and marketing teams that report to General Manager Marty Paradise in the company's Enterprise and Partner Group.

For an overview of Microsoft's vertical sales strategy, see "Vertical Sales Teams Consolidated, Expanded" on page 24 of the Nov. 2002 Update.