Microsoft Announces Bill Gonzalez's Election to the National Retail Federation Board of Directors Associate Member Advisory Council

NEW YORK, Jan. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that Bill Gonzalez, general manager of its Worldwide Distribution and Services Sector, has been elected to the associate member advisory council for the board of directors of the National Retail Federation. The announcement was made at the NRF Annual Convention & EXPO in New York.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)

"I'm honored to have been elected to the NRF board of directors advisory council on its 100th anniversary and look forward to supporting this organization in its continuing efforts to pioneer solutions and services for the global retail industry," Gonzalez said. "Microsoft is deeply involved in supporting and advancing the state of the art in technology to fundamentally transform people's lives and society as a whole. Our increasing involvement with NRF and our commitment to the retail industry help us to achieve this goal."

As the general manager for the Worldwide Distribution and Services Sector at Microsoft, Gonzalez is responsible for all aspects of strategy and execution plans for the retail, hospitality and consumer goods industries. He has more than 20 years of experience in the distribution and services industries including retail and hospitality. His experience spans software development and business process, as well as all aspects of IT and sales. Before joining Microsoft in August 2007, Gonzalez held executive positions in the IT organization at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for 11 years. Before joining Wal-Mart, he held executive sales and marketing positions at NCR Corp. for 10 years.

An example of Microsoft's continuing commitment to the retail industry, Gonzalez's election to the NRF board of directors follows the election last year of David Gruehn, Microsoft's industry solutions director for Retail, to the NRF Foundation board of directors associate member advisory council.

Microsoft at NRF 2011

At NRF 2011, Microsoft and its community of partners will showcase how they are delivering exceptional business value in enabling customers to deploy and manage mission-critical solutions on the Windows platform. Microsoft brings together a wide breadth of consumer and enterprise cloud capabilities in conjunction with a familiar technology and productivity platform and a broad developer ecosystem to provide retail enterprises with the IT flexibility and choice they need to run their businesses and compete in today's global economy.

New product offerings such as Kinect for Xbox 360, speech recognition features in Windows Phone 7, and Windows 7 touch capabilities, and the Natural User Interface that is taking the retail customer experience beyond today's mouse and keyboard and offering a much richer natural interaction are evidence of Microsoft's strength in natural computing.

Microsoft in Retail

Microsoft is the leading provider of global retail information technology solutions. Microsoft is No. 1 in store systems, in terms of retail point-of-service operating systems. Microsoft also is the leader in business intelligence with the vast majority of retailers using Excel as a decision support tool.

Microsoft also leads in digital marketing with the most comprehensive end-to-end solutions. Its digital marketing solutions range from the stack (Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET, Visual Studio) to online (Commerce Server) to mobile (Windows Mobile), and from digital advertising (Bing, AdCenter) to entertainment (Xbox, Xbox LIVE, Zune, Silverlight).Microsoft delivers connected experiences for stores, commerce and the enterprise via the "three screens" (PC, browser, mobile) for easy access across your digital world.

Microsoft's Retail Group provides software that helps retailers thrive in today's competitive global marketplace by meeting the demand for a highly personalized and connected shopper experience. Microsoft helps retailers deliver a consistent shopping experience through seamless multichannel integration and via innovative technologies and mobile and new social networking channels. Through a combination of Microsoft- and partner-based solutions, retailers can turn data into insight, ideas into action and change into opportunity. More information about Microsoft's Retail Group can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/retail.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.