Dave Winer has published a leaked email from Bill Gates and memo from Ray Ozzie. This comes from a source within Microsoft, who Dave Winer won’t name.
Bill:
We will build our strategies around Internet services and we will provide a broad set of service APIs and use them in all of our key applications.
This coming “services wave” will be very disruptive. We have competitors who will seize on these approaches and challenge us – still, the opportunity for us to lead is very clear. More than any other company, we have the vision, assets, experience, and aspirations to deliver experiences and solutions across the entire range of digital workstyle & digital lifestyle scenarios, and to do so at scale, reaching users, developers and businesses across all markets.
Ray:
And while we continue to make good progress on these many fronts, a set of very strong and determined competitors is laser-focused on internet services and service-enabled software. Google is obviously the most visible here, although given the hype level it is difficult to ascertain which of their myriad initiatives are simply adjuncts intended to drive scale for their advertising business, or which might ultimately grow to substantively challenge our offerings. Although Yahoo also has significant communications assets that combine software and services, they are more of a media company and – with the notable exception of their advertising platform – they seem to be utilizing their platform capabilities largely as an internal asset. The same is true of Apple, which has done an enviable job integrating hardware, software and services into a seamless experience with dotMac, iPod and iTunes, but seems less focused on enabling developers to build substantial products and businesses.
Shall we join this internal discussion?
Boy, does this sound like two bureaucrats sending meaningless drivel to each other, or what?
Its bad enough when they spout this stuff in a prepared speech, but scary to think they talk like this amongst themselves.
Was this a pep-talk/vision email, intended for the troops?
Dear Bill and Ray,
Unless your products significantly improve, we think your toast.
The Market.
.
No one can deny that Microsoft has put out excellent technology — but their brainpower seems to be limited when it comes to turning that technology into a useful, desired, viable product. Is it their lack of vision, singular vision? Lack of social innovation?
Web technologies alone, Microsoft sculpted so many of them — yet they’re no where near a leader in this arena — in fact, mostly scorned. I am appalled to think they create such forward thinking ideas, then drop them them for other people to plant.
When I see companies faulter in this way, I usually think that the problems are at the top, not the bottom. They have the talent and the genius, but their closed management policies, office politics, and all around red tape kill good ideas from happening. All companies have a little, but bad companies have it more — how many failures because the leaders of a company ignored their geniuses?
Microsoft has much talent it seems, or it used to seem.
As a designer, I compare it to branding. Starbucks is a brand — it envokes feelings and ideals to their products — a lifestyle, not a thing. Coka-Cola has lost it’s branding identity over the past few years, and moved to alternative products, they’re not a large identity in the US as they used to be. Apple creates things that people are inspired to use, not just to work… what is the Microsoft brand? A hacked together group of products with little singular vision (Live is a great example of a poorly cobbled brand) but their company owners. There’s no microsoft experience, only genius that gets used by someone else who improves and nurtures the experience.
So, in a nutshell, I see many things lost…
Probably deliberately leaked.
It sounds to me like a mini-strategy session. It sounds like Microsoft recently completed a SWOT analysis and determined that their strategy will be to remove the shrink-wrap from applications and make them all API-Web based.
It wouldn’t surprise me (after reading this) to see MS Office come as an annual subscription and be completely web-based. I will be able to click on a button and bring up Word (web-based), save my document onto my hard drive. Click on another button and bring up PowerPoint (also web-based) import my notes and what ever images I need to create my slide show. I would then save the two of them on my MSN storage space (also for an annual fee). When I get to the place where I am giving my presentation, I could open Word (which isn’t installed on the computer because my license travels with me via my web-based logon) print my documents, present my PowerPoint presentation, use HotMail (tied into my Outlook calendar…web-based) make appointments, then update my sales database via web-based Access.
All of this would come at a reasonable price…say $150 per year for a business license (per person, of course). This is cheaper than buying MS Office every 3 years ($499 for Office Professional), includes less headaches since the software isn’t installed on my system, and is guaranteed to have all of the security updates installed immediately since Microsoft is the one supplying the application from their servers.
“…they’re more machine than men now”:)
I think Brady has the right idea here. Microsoft’s new platform is very compelling, yet there is little to show for it. (at least, there isn’t anything attention grabbing) Hopefully, this Office Live service will demonstrate what can be accomplished with their platform and inspire developers to raise the bar even further… I suppose that is analogous to what the original versions of Office were to the rest of the Windows world.
It’s really difficult to convert software to a Web services environment when your best products are operating systems and applications designed to run on a single computer (or server), as MS, Apple, Sun, IBM and the rest of them license their apps.
I’m not totally convinced that Web services are the way to go for most people. The only Websites I currently subscribe to are Consumer Reports and Weather Underground, and these are both information services, not really Web services.
On reflection, I actually prefer that my applications be installed on the disk of my PC, and be available whether or not I can connect to the Web, because an Internet connection isn’t necessarily always available and active for my laptop that isn’t always connected to the Web.
About the only web based software I use is Basecamp, and i use it much like a group MS Project, or Merlin — that fits. If I had a web based app that allowed real time code interaction (much like subthaedit on the mac), then I see the benefits.
As far as MS Office for web, I don’t see myself paying for that when I can just go OpenOffice for free. Sure, it’d be nice to log into my version of MS office from anywhere… but, it’s MS office, why do I need to log it anywhere I go? Multiple in house computers that no one owns, I can see that — working remotely from home… but I’m not going to use a library computer or a coffee shop… besides, those are based on the model that your content is being saved on a server somewhere.
It might be just me, but I won’t cough up 150 annually… maybe a monthly fee might be open so I can cancel it as I choose.
But I agree with Floyd, it’ll be for internet people — or for in house servers so the whole company can interact… atleast, for some time.
Surprisingly, I’d go for an internal web based web app of MS office that allowed us to collaborate — then again, it’s still MS office, I don’t care that much about it.
I think Good Morning Silicon Valley said it best: “…. For evidence, there’s the “confidential” memo from Bill Gates that’s being widely circulated in the press today. Penned on October 30, and apparently distributed to Microsoft’s top executives over Business Wire…”
Floyd: I have to agree with you there but in my case, it’s more that I don’t trust anything unless I can keep a complete copy of all required components on a CD-R. If you factor in my recently-acquired distrust of all things closed-source, my views get even stronger.
Besides, native apps run rings around web-based apps any day so I’d assume that there would be some sort of native runtime file.
Brady J. Frey: Try Gobby. It’s not free, but it’s cross platform.
Correction: Gobby is free, open-source, and cross-platform, but not web-based. (I need more sleep.)
If any of you want to look at how well distributed apps can run, look at Google Earth. yes, you install a run-time on your local system, but the back-end resides on Google’s servers.
As far as logging on to Microsoft to use the software, my thought there was that this is the best way for Microsoft to ensure that you had a valid license to sue the software. This isn’t to say that somebody else could logon and let you use their license, but either way, Microsoft would get their license fee regardless of who paid for it.
And as far as fees go…Maybe $150 per year is too much. I went with Microsoft’s current retail price of $500, and their current release schedule which is about every 3 years and factored in a price-break for users over that period of $50. If you ask me Microsoft’s software is way over priced, but, that’s just my 2-cents worth.
A monthly fee? I would be willing to pay that, but, again, this is MS we’re talking about. Would they be willing to license you software for 2 months then lose that revenue stream? I doubt it, but who knows.
Anyway, this is all conjecture. Like I said, it looks to me like the “leaked memo” is part of a strategy session on a possible future direction.
Microsoft customer service is dead and any forays the company does into live web-based services will also die.
I know the company’s customer service is dead due to problems with ocget.dll.
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