As Microsoft prepares for a future without the leadership of Bill Gates, many people are wondering what lies ahead for the software behemoth. In an interview held this week at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, Microsoft's new chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, revealed some of his plans for the future.
Ozzie took over the role of Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates last June. The duties of this job are very broad, but essentially boil down to what Bill Gates used to love to do: looking at long-term trends in the computer industry and analyzing where Microsoft could best spend its massive resources in adapting to and profiting from these trends.
The most significant trend in the industry today is the transition from desktop to web-based software—this is no surprise to anyone, but it's nice to see the leadership at Microsoft actually acknowledge it. "Since I came to Microsoft, actually before I came to Microsoft, I began to have a fairly passionate reaction to the fact that there is kind of a sea change going on in the industry," Ozzie explained. "I've been fortunate that in my career, I've lived through a mainframe to mini transition that was driven by certain changes in technology, mini to PC, PC to kind of LAN-based PC, client-server, that world to the Web."
So we live in a Web-based world, but how does that affect Microsoft's future, considering that the company still makes most of its money from desktop applications? Ozzie feels that in this transitionary period, as was the case in the other transitions in the past, there is the opportunity to create new types of markets that haven't yet been imagined. Ozzie describes these new markets as falling under the umbrellas of "connected entertainment," "connected business," and "connected productivity." The idea is to figure out how people's existing needs and activities—gaming, communication, and data management—can be enhanced by adding Internet connectivity features, and connecting them across multiple devices. Ozzie sees this sort of software becoming more ubiquitous in the future, because of "the availability of a services platform that's enabled by cheap computation, storage, and communication." As devices such as mobile phones get faster, cheaper, and more powerful, it starts to make sense to want to allow access to the same information one has at a desktop computer available on these tiny devices.
Again, this isn't anything especially new or different. Google has been actively staking out territory on existing phones, and Apple hopes to try their hand at the smartphone market with the iPhone. Ozzie thinks that Microsoft's role in all this is to "use our breadth and our expertise at software design to bring some of these scenarios to the masses, to weave together software, services, and in some cases hardware to bring some of these connected entertainment visions out very, very, very broadly." He pointed to products such as the XBox, XBox Live, Microsoft CRM Live, Office Live, and Windows Live as examples of this sort of weaving. He described how CRM Live works through a browser, through Outlook, or through an internal server, giving employees the ability to access customer data no matter where they are.
Of course, any discussion of Microsoft moving to Internet-connected services has to acknowledge the presence of Google. Unlike Bill Gates, Ozzie considers Google to be a viable competitor, placing them in the same category as previous strong competitors to Microsoft. He gives Google credit for proving that an advertising-driven model for "free" software delivered over the web can be a bit hit with consumers. However, he feels that Microsoft has a chance to redefine the web services industry. He gave the examples of how strong competition from Sony's PlayStation 2 resulted in Microsoft changing the nature of the industry by creating XBox Live, and how the challenge of competing with Linux actually helped the Server and Tools division create new types of applications that expanded the market. With Google, Ozzie sees Microsoft doing the same thing, although he declined to give any details.
One especially salient question was asked near the end of the interview: why does Microsoft seem to take so long to respond to competitive challenges such as Netscape, Linux, Notes, and so on? The answer was honest: Ozzie said that the "company DNA" was simply not wired to answer every new product or market with a quick carbon copy, but to sit back and see where the market went before coming up with their own solution. While this behavior has seen competitors charge Microsoft with not being "innovative," obviously the strategy has worked well for the company in the long run. In the end, most successful products (including many produced by Microsoft's competitors) have not been the first or second to market, but came much later after a careful observation of how the pioneers fared with their efforts.
There is much more to the interview, but overall it was an illuminating look into the mind of Bill Gates' successor. It is clear why he was chosen for such a daunting task: he seems simultaneously capable of looking towards the future while still staying true to the essence of what made Microsoft what it is today.
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