Microsoft Corp Deutsche Bank Technology Conference 2026
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Zelnick, Software Equity Research at Deutsche Bank. Truly delighted to be hosting this session with Microsoft. The format of the session will be a fireside chat. Got a number of topics to go over with Mr. Bill Duff, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer- Not true.
of Microsoft's Global Commercial Sales and Marketing business. So Bill, really appreciate you coming here. It's great to have you. It's always good to see you, but even better here- Thanks, Brad.
in Dana Point at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference.
Fantastic. Thanks, Brad. Appreciate the promotion.
My pleasure. Anytime. You can have Amy or Sachi, whoever it is, they can call me. If you just don't mind, to level set for everybody in the room that may not know exactly who you are, can you just take a minute to explain your role at Microsoft and what exactly your mandate is?
Yeah. I lead finance for our commercial sales and marketing organization. You can think about it as the Microsoft commercial business and supporting all of our global sales organization and our marketing investments for the company.
Awesome. You may remember that the last time we got together and had a proper sit-down was about a year ago up in Redmond, things are moving pretty fast since then. I would be curious to hear your perspective, perhaps to level set on a few things that are top of mind for customers today versus where they were a year ago.
Yeah. It seems like forever ago, a year ago. A lot has changed, both in terms of the technology that is being delivered into the marketplace, but also how customers are really adopting this technology. I would say a year ago, there was a lot of interest, there was a lot of experimentation, there was a lot of how should I think about this, how should I think about how it would help my business overall, but not necessarily clarity on how they were going to deploy, what the business outcomes were going to be. Over the past year, particularly as we got into the first half of this calendar year, it is really about getting more comfortable with technology. How do we scale? How do we govern it?
This is really new technology, there is a lot of foundational infrastructure that needs to be in place in order to govern it. Then making sure we are driving the right business outcomes with this. It feels like it is getting to a more concrete discussion than we had a year ago, it is really people are starting to see, customers are starting to see the value, so they are looking at more opportunities more broadly across their operations.
That makes sense. For us personally, it is reflected in the technology and how far it has come so quickly.
Yeah. I mean, Copilot is a part of our workflows Yep every single day in what we do.
Yeah. We see it firsthand.
But as customers go from pilots and where they were maybe a year ago into production, what do you see that distinguishes companies achieving scaled adoption and measurable returns from those that remain in the experimentation phase?
Yeah, there's a few things. Certainly, I mentioned the foundational layer, so making sure that you have the right data structures in place. The models and agentic solutions are only as good as the data that they're reasoning against, so you need to make sure you have good data integrity. These models are reasoning against the right inputs overall. So foundational technologies, not only on the data side, but also the governance side, the security side, making sure you have the right compliance in place. This is critically important for customers. As they think about deploying this technology, they need to have that foundational infrastructure in place. Then it's around how do I change my operations? So really the thought process of thinking about I have employees plus agents. How do I redesign processes around thinking about leveraging agentic technologies in the overall process?
A lot of times this requires taking a step back and actually looking at the fundamental operational aspects of the business and saying, "Hey, look, if we can use agentic technologies in a certain place, how would we restructure our operations around that?" That is a really, really important change management piece. Companies that are successful are really thinking about not necessarily just replacing existing ways of getting stuff done, but how do we re-architect processes. Then finally, you mentioned it a little bit in your question, which is how do I measure results? There is a real focus, and certainly from a finance perspective and the CFOs I talk to, they want to see measurable outcomes. This is not about new KPIs. This is not about creating a new KPI for how do I measure agentic performance.
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