Addressing the audience at the Gartner Symposium earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that one of the company’s biggest strengths is the fact that it supports both consumers and business users.

Though Ballmer strongly pushed Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system in his speech, a large part of his all-embracing conversation also focused mostly on phones, tablets, and the cloud.

Noting that Microsoft will “consciously, quickly, and deliberately” attract all the challenges pertaining to the making phones as well as tablets, Ballmer also strongly suggested that he would remain the company’s CEO for a long time.

Terming any ideas of splitting Microsoft in two parts - focused on consumer and business products respectively – as “nutty”, Ballmer said that Microsoft shipped 350 million copies of Windows, which was both the biggest consumer and the biggest enterprise product of the company.

Further adding that the notion of sharing technology across both consumer and business users is a crucial part of the future of technology, Ballmer said that Linux serves both markets equally well.

Saying that Windows on tablets and Windows Phone on tablets were both Windows and it was difficult to draw a line between the two, Ballmer added: “People will use the exciting, interesting devices that help you get the job done.” Elaborating further, he said that while people will use devices they like from their personal devices, companies will still want to manage these devices and ensure security and compliance.