NEW YORK — Microsoft launched on Thursday a new "people-ready" campaign for its existing and future products that are aimed at business users.

CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at the "ImpactPeople" business-user conference here, introduced the software maker's latest tagline: "Microsoft: Software for the people-ready business."

Microsoft is planning to spend $500 million this year on the people-ready sales and marketing campaign, Ballmer said. Microsoft is using this week's National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament week to kick off the campaign.

Microsoft has been using the slogan "helping people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential" as the company's mission statement for some time now. The new "people-ready" emphasis is an outgrowth of that vision statement, but is more specific to the Windows and Office family of products.

"Successful businesses succeed based on the quality and performance of their people," Ballmer told the hundreds of business users attending the ImpactPeople conference here.

Ballmer's pitch: Microsoft's business software, including the forthcoming Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, Office 2007 Enterprise Edition, Exchange 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 and other related products will enable companies to improve their team-productivity capabilities.

"We think this is a pretty unique vision," Ballmer said. "We don't think it's shared widely by ….people serving IT needs."

In a question-and-answer session with press and analysts following his remarks, Ballmer singled out IBM as the primary target of the new people-ready campaign.

"We're staking out a position quite different than our leading competitor. That's IBM," Ballmer said. "We are talking about making the people in the business making more productive. IBM is talking about a project. We're talking about software….IBM increasingly is a services company. At the end of the day, we're a software company.

"There's a prevalent view that IBM is a technology company…And yet, I think in large measure, we're talking about apples and oranges," Ballmer said.

Ballmer beat the innovation drum repeatedly, noting that over the past three years, the company has spent $20 billion on research and development over the past three years. He also noted this week marks the 20th anniversary of the date Microsoft went public.

Microsoft is focusing its people-ready theme around a few key marketing messages. Windows/Office's appeal comes from its status as an integrated platform that is familiar and easy to use; widely used and supported; easier to integrate and connect with what you have; innovative and continually evolves to meet your needs, according to Ballmer.

Chris Capossela, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of the company's Business Division, performed a variety of demonstrations of next-gen capabilities that Microsoft is readying with its Office 2007 family of products, which are due to ship by the end of 2006. Capossela showed off the speech integration and presence capabilities that Microsoft is building into Exchange 2007 product, its next version of Business Scorecard, its Outlook-CRM integration and next-generation SharePoint and search functionality.

Microsoft also launched on Thursday a new Web site dedicated to its "people-ready" push. The site features case studies and white papers explaining the technology and business-value propositions for current and future Windows and Office products.