Microsoft COO Trash-Talks Himself Hoarse During Fiery Address To Partners

"Save your customers from Salesforce.com. Save them! They need to be rescued," Turner said during one particularly intense burst of rhetoric, sending snickers through a gathering of around 10,000 partners.

Microsoft, which is planning to release mobile Dynamics CRM apps for the iPad and Windows 8 tablets this fall, feels pretty good about how it stacks up to Salesforce.com CRM these days, Turner said.

[Related: Microsoft's Massive Re-Org: A Closer Look At The Big Exec Moves ]

Turner even spoke of finding "common ground" with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who has characterized Salesforce.com as the "roach motel of the cloud," a reference to how customers get locked into its platform.

"I think Larry said that very well," Turner quipped.

Microsoft and Oracle just inked a big cloud computing deal, so Turner skipped his usual bit about how SQL Server is eating away Oracle's database market share.

Turner also showed a Microsoft graphic that replaced Salesforce's "no software" logo with one that read "no profit."

"Why would a customer want to bet on a company that continues to lose money?" Turner said of Salesforce.com. "At some point, they're going to have to change that."

A Salesforce.com spokesperson declined to comment.

Microsoft and Apple have been working together lately, and Apple is planning to make Bing the default search engine for Siri in iOS 7. But that didn't stop Turner from taking a shot at Apple for being difficult to work with.

OAO Mobile TeleSystems, Russia's largest carrier, stopped selling the iPhone at the end of last year, Turner said. "Apple was demanding too much from them, demanding subsidies and promotions," Turner said. "Windows Phone has shown them they don't need to do that."

Google, naturally, was another big focus for Turner. Microsoft in the past year has won back more than 250 former customers who ditched Office in favor of Google Apps, he said.

Bing hasn't put much of a dent in Google's search business, but it's now leading Google when it comes to the relevance of search results, Turner said.

Turner also banged the fear drum over privacy, claiming that Google "goes through your emails and uses that content to serve ads, touching on the well-worn theme of Microsoft's "Scroogled" marketing campaign. Microsoft, in marked contrast, "respects people's privacy," he said.

Microsoft has surpassed VMware in virtualization, both in terms of pricing and in product quality, according to Turner. "Windows Server 2012 is a total and absolute domination of VMware," he said. "We now have a better product."

Trash-talking is part of Turner's speech at WPC every year, but this year he really seemed to outdo himself. On two occasions, Turner lost his voice but continued talking in hoarse tones for several seconds until it returned.

PUBLISHED JULY 11, 2013