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2) I know that having people take public responsibility for their decisions is an important step in getting people to make the correct decisions (or getting people to understand and accept decisions that they would otherwise be against). However, if every marketer (or designer, or anyone else) had to blog about whatever they are doing this couldn't this lead to:
- Information overload
- People wasting time writing instead of working
Maybe instead have some kind of a meme-tracker that scans the internet to see what types of criticisms MS is receiving for what decisions. When any one issue achieves a critical mass of criticism, someone must give a public explanation.
3) Was your "I have a dream" speech inspired by Paul Thurrotte's part five of his February Vista Build review - Where Vista Fails (see my review)? Seems like you guys are covering similar ground.
Um, we wouldn't need to read it, but those who care would at least know why we ended up with a lame name and/or could do something about it cause we'd know where they were coming from. And, forcing things into public does have an effect of putting a spotlight on behavior systems. Translation: fewer bad decisions would get made cause someone would say "hey, I have to explain this to the world, don't screw me."
I don't know about inspired. I've been working on this one for far longer than just a week since when Paul's came out.
I don't share his angst about Vista in general, for instance, but that probably is cause I've seen later builds that are getting better.
I know you aren't talking about really shutting it down (i.e. censoring it), but you seem to be saying that you want Microsoft to turn into a company that is so cool and wonderful that noone would want to complain about it ever again - which I find a trifle naive. There will always be controversy, debate and disagreement. You don't want your company to do anything edgy or controversial ever again?
I'm actually surprised that you as Mr. blog-advocate aren't suggesting that a) Mini-Microsoft is good for microsoft, that b) Bill Gates should start a blog called Mega-Microsoft where he addresses all the issues in Mini-M, and that c) The day that Mini-Microsoft has no interesting content is the day that Microsoft becomes boring/dead in the water.
(Yes I'm aware that I'm missing the point of your post which was "how to improve things")
I said exactly that MiniMicrosoft is good for Microsoft. I disagree with your point b, Gates doesn't need to do a MegaMicrosoft blog, just needs to give us a few billion and a mandate for the moonshot, and c, that mini wouldn't be interesting after we solve all of Microsoft's problems (I'm sure Mini would change his blog to be one that's more proactive than reactive if what I suggested would happen).
I didn't say that Microsoft would want to shut down Mini. But some certainly do. It's human nature not to like your dirty laundry to be hanging out in the public square for all to see. Heck, some want to fire ME. Heheh. Probably justified, too.
I especially like your bit about names. Origami is such a cool codename, why make it into UMPC??
Most of the previous Windows codename, are pretty cool ... except for longhorn ... which became a joke about longwaits and stuffs! :p
Just compare "Microsoft Windows XP TabletPC UltraMobilePC edition" with "Microsoft Origami". ;)
I'm glad XBox was not named "Microsoft SuperFun Gaming Console HomeEdition" ... doubt it would have caught on.
Oh and while we are at the Great-wishes-for-the-world thingie, how about bringing InstantOn to all PCs? That would I feel be the next big leap for PCs, whether they are Desktops, Notebooks, UMPCs ... Origamis or otherwise! :p
As an alternative/complementary moonshot: MS could spend its resources in researching and creating a pure artificially intelligent entity. The entity would gather data (images, text, video, music, ...) from the net, consume and comprehend it. Then we could throw tasks at it, like: "design a car for the Second Life Generation" and it would generate a set of CAD models we could choose from. ;)
But it's not necessarily all about size. MS should be looking to doing something really innovative and novel that'll grab both headlines and people's attention. That's the only way to beat down Google.
A MS SecondLife with full Xbox integration would be good.
Some new social tagging service integrated with Vista would be good.
A really good subscription music/video service integrated with Media Player would be good.
Personally I think Microsoft should split, keep a corporate arm to keep those clients happy with its "stable" and “supported” product range. A mini-microsoft should grow and act more like a startup - back in the days when Microsoft started. I should think that BillG etc are at a point where they think why go though the pain of being a startup again - we have done this before. I have more money than I need. People like you are the next generation, you are the next BillG. One of the things I read about Office2007 was the name change of Frontpage! great for corps but what the heck does Expression Web Designer mean for my Mum who does her homepage. It means I have moved her over to googlepages! :-) Good luck with mini-microsoft and if you need some staff let me know. :-)
A simple vision. Yes, Mr. Gates, it'll cost billions. We'll need dozens, maybe even hundreds, of data centers around the world. All with state-of-the-art connections. All with state-of-the-art 64-bit servers. All with state-of-the-art backup systems. All with state-of-the-art power and cooling systems. All with state-of-the-art load balancing and data serving technologies. That stuff isn't cheap. But I hear we have a few bucks we can use in such a "bet the company" effort.
In this terabyte, integrate all of the new Live services into one data store. A sort of "WinFS" for our server farms. Why shouldn't Live Mail share the same data store as Live Local or Live Expo? Think about the searching, and data presenting, features our developers could build quickly if we had a common data store with a common framework and a common set of APIs!
Robert, that's preaching to a narrow swath of the converted. When you talk about Windows, you're talking about a product that initially, reached out to people who weren't customers. Microsoft has two sets of problem children: The customers who hate them, and the non-customers who hate them. The first group grows at a rather steep rate, the second, not so fast, but still has steady growth. This idea does nothing for them, and very little for Windows users.
Your idea is interesting, but only works if you trust Microsoft with your data. Not Microsoft products that you control in your own environment, but Microsoft Itself. I've yet to see anything to show me Microsoft wanting to be thought of as a trustable entity yet.
Furthermore, what good is this going to do non-broadband users? Yes, I know, in the bubble you live in, they don't exist. But if you were to ever travel outside of your bubble, you'd see tons of them. Yes, right here in the US. No need to go to other countries. They either don't have service available, (FAR more common than you think), or they don't want it. They don't see a need for the internet beyond a bit of email, and quite frankly, thanks to Microsoft's continuing problems with active malware, a broadband connection is something to be feared and avoided, for it only leads to people messing up your system. So in the middle of multiple kinds of broadband availability, they stay on dialup, because Microsoft has totally screwed the pooch on malware, and contrary to what you might hear, it's not fixed yet.
So it's a nice idea, but reeks of "Let's throw money, we have money, money fixes everything". It doesn't. And it still does nothing for people not using Windows.
That leads me to the second way of how Microsoft can shut down Mini-Microsoft: buy every employee a top-of-the-line Dell machine with dual monitors running Windows Vista. And do it now....
...And, I, and my coworkers in the Evangelism team are now running Windows Vista and finding we're more productive, even WITH the burps that come from using pre-production code. I can't stand using XP anymore after using Vista for a few weeks.
But, as I go around Microsoft there are way too many employees who aren't running Vista and who don't have two monitors.
I'm sure the people doing XP tech support and patch dev will LOVE this idea. Now they have to either have two rigs, one for "real" work, one for "the new coolness", or, they have to dual boot. I lived the dual boot life for years, it sucks.
You forget that right now, Vista is not earning you a dime. XP is. XP is making all your Windows desktop money. Your idea, while cool from a dogfooding POV, has real, serious problems from a "We still support XP" POV, and that latter one is making you a bit of cash.
How does that help out anyone who is having problems with XP? How does that help out XP - using customers? How does that help Microsoft regain trust? It doesn't, not at all. It's a grand glorious gesture, but what problem does it solve? Since there are a lot of people for whom Vista is going to be a forklift upgrade, made deliberately confusing by some jackass, (and yes, that is the precise word to describe whomever made that decision) who decided that six SKUs helps the customer, how is this going to help that? Only Microsoft would go out of their way to make buying product harder.
Let me split one thing here. I think the dual monitor thing IS brilliant, and I think you're dead on with that one Robert. I just think the Vista idea has real problems.
Change employee behavior through public compensation change logs.
...Let's have compensation changes put into public. Say I get a four percent raise. Tell everyone. Let's say my managers don't believe I'm adding value here. They could leave my compensation where it is. After four years of public embarrassment (yes, we'd explain that 0%'ers aren't good, that 2%'ers are OK, that 6%'ers are above average, and that anything above that is way above average).
Um, okay, so what you're saying is, if someone had a bad year, they should be publicly embarrassed? Because human dignity doesn't matter at Microsoft, just results?
Dear lord, I hope you don't run your people like that. "Look everyone, I'm only giving Bill a 3 this year, because Bill sucks. Sucky Bill". Come on, does Microsoft teach you anything about leadership? Not management, but leadership? About what happens to people when you crap all over their dignity like that? Oh sure, they'll leave, but it won't just be the poor performers who leave. It'll be the people with a clue that maybe working in a place that thinks of its people so callously isn't a good idea, no matter what the name on the building is.
What happens to that person you drum out via public embarrassment? What kind of job do you think they're going to get anywhere else? "No Bill, we aren't going to hire you, we saw your last set of evals from Microsoft, you're Sucky Bill". Blacklists, now there's a new idea.
Okay, so by "Public" you maybe only meant "Within Microsoft". So you embarrass and humiliate Bill until he leaves. Bill gets a new job, and in an environment that is better for him, Bill turns out to be a genius. Bill creates something dead cool and it's selling like iPods. Microsoft goes, "Oh CRAP, Bill was a friggin' genius, we need him back". Exactly how much money do you think you're going to have to throw at Bill before he stops wiping his arse with the offer letters? Does even Microsoft have enough money to buy someone back their dignity? What do you think Bill's interactions with the people who humiliated him and drove him out are going to be like? If you want ex-employees who hate Microsoft and actively evangelize against it, that's a fantastic way to do it.
Get rid of corporate speed bumps.
Just so this isn't a "Crap on Robert's ideas" day...that's a great idea. The sign of a successful company is a lack of sacred cows. All ideas, processes, traditions and rules must be not just questionable, but questioned. Traditions are great right up until the point they hold people back. Then they have to get changed, or get gone.
Just understand that what you're talking about would require reducing headcount. There's no way around that.
Force marketers to explain their decisions — in public on their blogs.
Oh dude, I think I love you for this one. I'd even PAY for those streams.
These are all big ideas, but the first three are classic Microsoft: they do a lot, but don't actually fix a problem. They're grand, glorious, but they don't DO anything but fling money at things or humiliate people.
1) Stop thinking like Microsoft. This is hard, but you have to do it. You cannot assume that money, and lots of it, will solve every problem. It hasn't done a whit to solve your image problem, in fact, there's good reason to show it's made it worse. Stop thinking like that rich kid who owns everything.
2) Make it easier to buy a Microsoft Product. Stop with this facade of choice. There's only one reason for Six Vista SKUs and that "Live Upgrade" program: To stick Microsoft's hand deeper in my pocket. Stop it. You only need one version of a client OS. Write a smart installer that looks at the hardware it's installing on, and works with that. This is a solved problem. Even the Xbox360...why the hell is Microsoft selling a crippled version? You guys push Live and all this other crap as essential to the "Xbox Experience", but then you sell a crippled version that can't really play. Screw that. One Xbox.
Office is the worst offender. Dear god, is there anything left you CAN throw into Office? Office was great when it was 4 products: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Even then, it had too many SKUs. All the rest? Not Office. They work well with Office, great! They help you do better things with Office, fantastic! But "Office" needs to be explainable without software to assist you, and right now, not even Sinofsky can explain office without a slide show and a cheat sheet. It's too unwieldy.
Buying Microsoft products sucks. Sucks ass. Sucks like a sucky thing that fell out of a sucky tree, hit every sucky branch on the way down, and landed on a black hole, and was sucked in.
People want to give you money for product. Why is Microsoft so damned allergic to making that easy? Make it easy to buy product.
3) Create a division who's mission statement is: "Playing nice with others". A division who's entire purpose is to figure out ways to make non-windows users Microsoft customers, even if they never, ever, ever buy Windows. Not Bill Hilf's lab. That's already tainted by his, and Ballmer's statements showing that it's just a data feed for getting people to not buy Linux.
A new division, not in Redmond, hell, not on the west coast. Somewhere else. You have a good model for this in the Mac BU. Even though most of their product is developed in Redmond, the fact that they are their own unit, and they have the SVC, did more for their credibility initially than you'd think possible.
All this division would do is help Microsoft play nice with others. What products do people want to use that shouldn't require Windows? How can we create Microsoft customers that aren't windows users? There's a long list of products that would work here, I've shared some with you before.
This would not only help create new Microsoft customers, it would start the process of rebuilding those bridges that BallmerGates crapped on, THEN burned for ten years.
4) regain trust No one trusts Microsoft, not anyone sane. Everyone in the IT industry knows that while you'll come out with good product, you'll still create pain, and sometimes, we can't even FATHOM the reason for it. You'll lie about release dates, bullshit about featuresets, blame everyone else for security problems. It's only when FORCED to that Microsoft acts reasonably maturely. If I have to force you to act trustworthy, you aren't trustworthy.
One big way? Don't announce crap until you have a date. You want to know why Apple is kicking ass? Because of this. They don't announce product until they have a date. No Longhorn slips, Vista resets, etc. That does a lot for trust. Contrary to popular belief, they do preview things, but it's via various programs, like the Apple Developer Connection. What they don't do is the Longhorn debacle, which is an outgrowth of what happened between NT5 and Windows 2000.
If I can't trust your product announcements, then I have a hard time believing a damned thing you say.
5) Finally, Cut some stuff loose. Microsoft is an unfocused mess, and it gets worse every year because you guys have this ADD habit of jumping after every sparkly. Figure out what your mission really is, then spin off every product that's not directly related to it. But right now, you have all the focus of an ADD kid high on sugar in a casino, and it's why Microsoft is perennially "Good Enough" but RARELY "the best". If you can't be the best in everything you do, then maybe you shouldn't be doing so much.
However, I read your article thoroughly and with the attention it deserves. It is magnificent and if I were BillG, I would certainly pay more than a little attention to what you have to say.
You might find my recent post interesting
http://simoncast.blogspot.com/2006/04/microsoft...
The Windows team had ben disbanded until a guy hired in from a debugger company knew a smart way to enable protected mode (Windows 3) and hacked away for a week at nights.
Powers that be, realized it was neat and that OS2 was taking a long time (and Microsoft already had a team developing the successor to OS2 - NT), so they may as well launch Windows 3 and see what happened.
Microsoft were so far behind in GUIs that Windows 95 was a no-brainer to anyone who'd ever used a non-Microsoft GUI.
No - the real successful big bets at Microsoft have come from the apps side. For example, Excel and Word choosing to go with Windows, rather than OS2.
Every version of Windows I know has been late by at least a year. "Windows 94". Windows ME should never have existed because Windows 2000 had the 9x compat layer cut. Win2K was late anyway. Perhaps XP was on time. 2K3 was late (due to management realizing they'd omitted the chapter titled 'security' from their original specs). And Vista has been written twice! The first version of Vista was thrown away in mid-2004 in preference to the infamous "longhorn restart".
This schedule slippage is gradually creeping into other products too. Once upon a time, the developer tools division had a fantastic record (with the exception of VB4 which was put on hold for a year). Now thought Whidbey and Yukon are getting some of the Windows juice and slipped their schedules significantly.
I don't want Microsoft to make any big bets. I want solid, reliable, incremental improvements.
Take a look at OSX - of which the 6th major release this decade will be showcased (beta?) this summer. And from Microsoft, we've had XP and Vista. How can a company that sells 1/20th the number of operating systems release 3 times as fast?
your post has given me the slap on the back that I needed to rool up my sleeves and look after a very little piece of MS that I can control.
Thanks
When I left to head to the field and get closer to customers they handed that PC over to the next person who could benefit from it and he brought it with him to Houston when he went to the local office there.
I had Clarify open in one window, email in another and the main work area was front and center - it was a HUGE time saver.
But, MS won't ever do that wholesale. Used to be it felt like I was helping change the world - I feel like that again, but I work elsewhere. Now at MS, it feels like you need to duck under Ballmer's GE inspired cost cutting - only he doesn't have the brain to build the revenue centers like GE.
Good luck, Robert, I hope you help fix it.
And the multimonitor idea? Great - that would help get rid of the multimonitor bugs in the Visual Studio IDE...
And, then, there's Youtube and other video sites. Clearly there's a need for new kinds of services where you can store a boatload of things up in the Internet cloud.
Oh, and you should see the corporations that entrust their email to us. That's a little sung secret, but you'll hear it in a future Channel 9 video.
However, I think you're missing some of the challenges that make this mini-fying process so hard. The first problem is inertia and fiefdom building. The people I remember working with were very bright, passionate people. This means that when you go to cut things, you're inevitably screwing with someone's pet project, and for a lot of really passionate people, their definition of self. It's one of those double-edged swords. You can't have the benefits of passion without the drawbacks.
Generally speaking (not unique to MS,) it's very easy to sit at the lower levels of the company hierarchy and think that you could run it better. I've never seen a company where everyone was happy all the time. People inevitably get together over lunch and kvetch. If you accept the hypothesis that there is at least some evolutionary development of business practices, and if your company does any significant amount of promotion-from-within, then you have to be prepared to at least consider the proposition that management has evolved to this point for a reason. 'Survival of the fittest.'
I think those sorts of issues are big, oft-neglected, contributors to the difficulties you're addressing.
Nice read!
1. MANAGER'S HAVE TO STOP CODING! NO EXCEPTIONS!
2. Create an uber-coder career path.
Part of the reason you have poor middle level management is for a developer to get more money/power/influence/benefits, they have to become a Team Lead or a Mid-Level manager. While that works some time, it's not a great career path for a developer, because they are used to succeeding by their individual efforts, and management is about directing a group of people.
Good luck on getting Microsoft to change. The ideas are great, and it would truly make it a company that people would line up to work for.
Microsoft's challenges are not defined by a single 1-terrabyte moon shot. The 1-TB thing is a neat idea, but it needs to answer the question: "How does this help Microsoft foster passionate users, continue to listen to those users, and let the users/markets shape your products." I propose that you do it from the bottom-up, one product/feature/user/employee at a time.
Regarding morale: Relevant employees are happy employees. Connect your employees to the users and watch the magic happen.
Also, please don't get every employee dual monitors unless you plan to give every user dual monitors. Someone must represent my mother who still has a 17" screen running at 1024 x 768.
I've watched Microsoft do a better job every year since 1999(since the Millenium debacle). The products have gotten more stable, blogs have added some transparency, MS conferences are getting better, MSDN is shaping up, and developer licensing isn't as draconian as it was the last time the licesning stazi called me.
"I can't think of a single current MS product that sucks so bad that I would warn someone not to use it." Tthat's not a bad slogan considering the number of MS products available. Just don't put that as a cartoon thought bubble over one of the dinosaur heads.
Another reason it would be good to publicize it would be to avoid situations like the one the VFP Test team ran into a while back, as chronicled by John Koziol here.
And as for raises to managers who kill rules - I'd have given one of the managers on my team a raise out of my own pay, if he'd managed to kill some of the rules that held back the stuff I was working on. Fifteen months later, he was about halfway to getting approval for something that should have been there twelve months before... Ack!
I think it comes down to trust. Neither developers nor customers trust Microsoft. Developers like me don't trust you because of technology churn and lock-in. My business customer's don't trust you because of the price gouging and the forced update cycle (without commensurate payoff) of your flag ship Office products.
Personally I think that Mini's solution of breaking up Microsoft so they can become more customer and developer centered is the only solution, but it's nice to see that you are trying.
After more years in the business than I can count it's about time and actualy the right time for this type of change to occur.
I agree with most of your post. Like everything though, nothing is 100% but it's alright to shoot for perfection as long as you realize you'll never achieve it (hpoefully most of it though). I for one would like to be able to look up to MS again and the do need to be prepared for what the next generation will demand but they are going to have to do a huge turn around (and stick with it!) before that will occur.
Good luck with your dream.
Apart from the LOL element (substantial and mildly embarrassing in the middle of the office) this is painfully true. So the Marketing part of your impressive post is for me the biggest deal. Don't fire them, shoot them. If you can't do either, then your wimpy alternative is the next best. I really would like to read an intelligent justification for removing the "cool" from products.
A TB of storage? Nice idea, but push it down the list for a while - you need to do some of the other stuff before people will go for this. Hmmm. Actually it's the other way round - because those who are aware of it will largely not trust MS with their data, whether justified or not, you don't need billions so provided there's a better-than-half-arsed architecture you can start pretty small and scale as needed.
I'm astonished by the dual-monitor thing, btw (that not everyone at MS has it). I'm curious about how much extra can be gained from a third screen, if anything at all - curious enough that I'm considering testing the water with my boss.
I keep coming back to the marketing/branding/pricing/squeeze-em-till-they-squeak thing though. how much would it cost to have one Office, one Windows (OK, you can maybe have another one for servers), one Visual Studio? How much extra revenue do the high-end versions generate and how much do they cost to put together? How much goodwill is lost in the process?
The more I think about it, the more it's this that really annoys us out here in the "real world". The products themselves are generally pretty good - I've few complaints after a decade and a half of earning my corn from MS software.
How about a Channel 9 probe into the realm of the marketing nitwit? Start with the Office and Vista bazillion verison nonsense and see where that takes you.
Thanks for the post - one of the most thought-provoking of the year. Let's hope the thoughts get provoked in the right places.
Just look at the crowd (of "seconf life" generation people) following every development of live messenger on the live messenger blog and to a lesser extent the same happening on the live mail blog. I don't think there is more of a trust issue with any of microsoft services than with google or yahoo services.
Actually I would personnaly feel more confortable with microsoft handling my data than google and i think most people wouldn't care and go for the best service/package anyway.
The trust issue is more with Microsoft as a whole, the company, than with any of it's particular product or services.
Actually , speaking of products, how many can a consumer really buy? Windows, office, xbox... that's about it.
Microsoft is a plateform company and most of its other products are targetted at companies or developers which makes it a bit of a stretch to compare it with Apple.
But still, to come back to the trust issue, i think it breaks down on the following:
1. You can't trust Windows : it is insecure by default and you need anti spyware, anti virus , anti anything to keep it more or less working. On top of that, it "feels" insecure as you need to reboot it with every update. Looks like the problem is deep inside.
2. microsoft only works (well is compatible with) with microsoft.
3. lame desinformation campaigns against linux and/or opensource software. Why do you even think of spending money on that? Nice to see Bill Hilf lab bringing a bit of pragmatism there though
for the last 2 , the average non techy users don't care/know but the influencers (and most of the second life generation is going to be) will
Soo how to try to cure those sources:
1. Make vista unbreakable. Sell Win XP PCs with SP2 installed and fully patched
2. Give people choice. Accept that people can use other stuff than microsoft but this doens't mean they don't want to buy microsoft products.
For example Why have the (great by the way) .net framework only run on windows while it could run on all OS.
Windows can still be the best of breed platform to run .net apps offering the most features ut why not let it run on other OSes?
A lot of companies would actually choose the windows solution over the linux solution but would just like to have the choice.
Just by giving the choice, more people will trust microsoft and their investment in microsoft technology.
So for the companies who run linux, you can still sell them visual studio instead of having no sale at all.
If windows solution is so much better (and it will be) at running .net , people will choose windows, because the want it => more trust
3. Quit doing that, it's useless
Finally, keep all the great people working at microsoft and keep them blogging (Scott Guthrie (one of the best), mini, the win mobile team , etc (many other excellent ones))
I like the idea of Balmer killing a speed bump everyday -- he has to look for a way to motivate internal employees and this is a great idea.
You would be worth a lot to an entrepreneurial team. Evangelism is fundamental to most startup marketing.
Even with the web 2.0 wave, there aren't a lot of startups around that have a vision both as big as the one you thirst for, and as viable as the next version of Windows. Look for a place that's not driven by conventional wisdom. (There's a ton of conventional wisdom in webland these days.)
When you're ready to jump, see my blog for some interesting ideas...
Have you visited the Google campus? There, ALL engineers have at least dual monitors. Initially, we were running mostly dual 18" monitors. Then, one day while at lunch I noticed a bunch of guys pushing carts of 24" monitors around the halls. Turns out they upgraded everyone to dual 24" monitors that day.
It is amazing what happens when you prioritize engineers productivity. Having slogged through Microsoft for years, and then switched sides to Google, it is like night and day in this aspect alone. Its been a long time since engineers have been running engineering at Microsoft. I think it would make a huge difference in your productivity and happiness if you put some engineers back in charge.
Take a look at Ford, it was for years one of "America's companies," but I just read that they are shutting down 6 plants across the US, cutting some 43K jobs in the next 5-6 years. If a car company is forced to shut down, it shows no company is perfect. And I will say that the demand of cars greatly overruns the need of computers.
Where's my SLA that guarantees me 24x7x365 access to my data securely?
What compensation do I get when I can't?
Where's my guarantee that NO ONE who is not me, or on a list i Explicitly approve, can get to my data. This includes Microsoft staff.
What's the backup schedule for these servers?
If I need to, how do I get to my data from non-MS OSen? (by using WebDAV as a primary access, .Mac is available to all).
What's my bandwidth cost? Someone has to pay that, it's always there, and increasing. What kind of notification, in both time, and method do I get in the event of a planned outage?
these are just what occured to me in 5 minutes, and it's just the start of what would have to be answered.
If current businesses don't embrace this and drive it into their very fabric then these kids, 10 years down the line will do it themselves.. their brains are that much more in-tune with technology and their needs... most of us have grown up with technology in the background as opposed to it being an integral part of the life experience for these seconf-lifers..
Now is the time to evolve our business and perceptions otherwise it will be way too late... challenge, innovate and move forwards with our kids.. lets add value now to enrich their lives then..
Now if only they could actually DO some of that.
This is because Microsoft has been marketing to businesses for so long that it's forgotten what appeals to consumers.
I think Mini-MSFT is right that Microsoft needs to be slimmed down. There's no way that's going to happen before Vista comes out. We'll see if the hammer drops after 2007 starts, and people are trimmed. If nothing happens, then we'll all know the message didn't get through.
Wow. You think people are going to trust personal data to Microsoft with their track record? Both in terms of their general anti-competitive, file-format-lock-in, decommoditisation-of-protocols behaviour (if this is for Windows users only, I take it you're going to try to lock out MacOS and Linux users, meaning if people choose to store their data on this system, they won't be able to get it out if they move to those OSs) and in terms of their stability/security record. This'll be such a target for hackers, now they can target *everyone*s data all at once.
I think MS has a lot to fix *first*, before they can look at something like this.
That was a great post. That was a "Jerry Maguire" moment. You deserve a standing ovation.
Also, the comment from RichB above is not me. I always sign my name with my blog URL.
A whole terabyte.
A lot less than a whole week of HDTV.
Unless you want to record more than a single channel at full res.
You aren't talking about tomorrow's Microsoft, you are talking about tomorrow's TiVo.
And a terabyte won't last them very long either.
"I left my TiVo on for a two week vacation and it ran out of Microsoft Drive space at the end of the first week"
"A terabyte should be enough for anybody".
Heheh.
There are 6,000 people online continuously in Second Life, hundreds of thousands of members, and I still haven't seen a sex act in there. Maybe I'm not hanging out in the wrong (or right, depending on how you look at it) neighborhoods, though.
Storage is a whole different ball game.
Really, it's apple and oranges, comparing Hotmail to a Microsoft-powered online drive. As I said in my post, the only reason you'd get customers is because Microsoft has the power of the default, and because there's still a lot of people who haven't come up with their own personal reason not to trust you guys yet.
Richard: even if most people use Second Life for the sex, who cares? Don't 'they' say that sex drives all the new technologies? VHS, the commercialisation of the internet, e-commerce, DVDs... the porn industry played a big part in getting these things off the ground. I'm not saying that e-commerce would not exist without porn, but I am saying that it would still be a few years behind where it is now...
The thing is, though, owning a DVD player doesn't mean you use it to watch porn, does it? Everything has to start somewhere and I hate to say it, but Second Life probably needs the sex (even when it's avoidable) to reach the larger market...
The second problem is perception. As far as MS's business clients go, it doesn't look like there's much more they can do to appeal to them; they tend to buy most of the products thrown at them. However, the consumer does not have an ideal view of the Microsoft brand. They respect it to a level which ordinary companies would love to have, but for a tech company hoping to define the future and persuade people to buy into it (both through products and shares) MS needs to have a more 'modern' and forward looking image. Dare I say it, but like Google's. The Terabyte storage idea is the sort of thing which MS has to look at. I think the average consumer would trust MS with their data, and by offering the storage MS would show that they were coming up with new ideas. Whenever Google are in the mainstream news, pictures of there offices in all their multi-olour, lava lamp, spacehopper splendour show that they are different as a company, and futuristic. Microsoft needs to appear ultimately in the same way, but certainly through different means so that Ballmer and Gates continue to look like grownups - unlike Google's Brin and Page - to prevent businesses turning away.
Just my ideas from the outside, and the fact that MS insiders like Scoble are writing blog posts like this show that there is a real appreciation of the problem, and thus hope that it can be solved. Lets hope that it is, because MS is a good company, by in large producing good products.
I am a Microsoft customer that is treated like the ugly stepchild of the family. I use a Mac. Because I don't like Windows, Microsoft doesn't give me video chat, doesn't give me Access, doesn't give me a real IE and doesn't compete for my dollars. Now, consider all the other customers that MS treats with disdain - Linux, Unix. ARE MY DOLLARS WORTHLESS TO YOU?
No, the problem is that MS has no vision. The leadership is clueless and jump on every passing trend in desperate hope to not be the next IBM. Throwing away good money after bad is NOT the answer!
IT'S BEEN OVER 10 YEARS SINCE YOU TOOK OVER THE DESKTOP! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH IT? WHY IS ALL THE EXCITEMENT COMING FROM PLACES OTHER THAN MICROSOFT?
Stop following - LEAD!
Not store stuff in the cloud?
And what other pitch do we have for offering them a terabyte?
"Microsoft patents the cloud"
Evil.
But surprisingly cool.
Worthy of Apple.
Apple makes evil cool.
Today's Microsoft makes evil seem limp and pathetic.
Guess which strategy gives most market share?
Evil.
Cool.
Evool.
Evoogle.
I have a friend who works at a large consulting firm. The management there is dead flat with everyone working and billing clients while cycling themselves through proj mgmt when their strengths are involved. They set when they work, where, how etc. They know exactly what everyone else makes because they put it down on project plans (with a beefy multiplier) and such to know how much to charge the client. They make a killing and have fun and work hard.
You should not only get you multiple monitors or large monitors (I saw dell 24" for $800-something yesterday) but computers and complimentary connections from home.
It's not because no one really needs the space, it's not because most people don't even know what a terabyte is. It's because your hardware partners can't sell hard drive upgrades if you're offering a lifetime's worth of storage online. You can't marginalize your hardware partners forever (and I'd argue that's how you're in the Ipod mess).
You left for how long and all you have is an echo of Google's gmail buzz, warmed over?
btw, the X360 isn't that successful yet.
It sounds to me that a lot of Microsoft's morale troubles (both internal and external) simply derive from the fact that you guys are so big, and you try to do so much. Some of your suggestions are good, and even the ones that aren't at least have a nice poetry to them; they express good intentions even if they're not good ideas. But you devote very little attention to fixing the problems of a bloated company in the process of being swallowed by its own bueracracy and collapsing beneath endless hierarchy. Saying Microsoft should "Get rid of corporate speedbumps" is so generic and vague as to be laughable. Microsoft doesn't have speedbumps; it has mountains of middle-management rubble. It takes astonishingly good managers to run a company as large, and with its fingers in as many pies, as Microsoft. From what I can see, you guys don't have that kind of talent, regardless of the lower-level talent that actually builds your products.
John Welch put it very well: Microsoft needs to simplify. It *does* seem like Microsoft has some sort of corporate ADD, constantly whipping to and fro to catch everything that comes along. You either need to restrict Microsoft to doing a few things well, or give your major product groups the complete autonomy they need to build exactly what their customers want, to brand them how they want, to advertise and sell them how they want. The '90s are over, and the computing landscape is too big and complex for one monolithic company to preside over.
You almost lost me until you said, insert your company name here. I don't know whether to be comforted or disturbed by the fact that MS has the same issue as my little technology company has. Microsoft has been what many of us have always aspired to be like, and to hear that the big, bad beurocracy (pardon my spelling) machine is alive and well at the House that Gates built is not what I necessarily wanted to hear.
I can relate, however. I will never forget the day when I realized that the generation gap was not a crack but an expansive chasm. August 24, 1997. That's the day my then 6.5 year old son watched me unpack my albums in the living room of our new house, and he asked me how I played those "big CDs". That was the same year he told his first grade teacher he didn't need to learn to write and spell because he had a word processing program with spell-checker, and he already knew how to type.
Take a look at OSX - of which the 6th major release this decade will be showcased (beta?) this summer. And from Microsoft, we’ve had XP and Vista. How can a company that sells 1/20th the number of operating systems release 3 times as fast?
Comment by RichB — April 24, 2006 @ 5:56 am
/quote.
As an Apple user I'm continually amazed at how Microsoft's customers don't demand more innovation out of a company with 30 times the market-share of OSX. I really think that MS could take a page out of Apple's book, and redesign Windows on an open OS like Apple did with BSD.
Throwing money at problems is what Apple did in the late '80s & early '90s. That nearly killed them. Getting away from proprietary "standards" and and cheaply building on open foundations saved them. When you are part of an open community your code has to meet rigid object-oriented standards, and can be improved by any of your customers.
Switching from the Classic Mac OS to OSX was a small pain, but very worth it. I think MS can do a similar transition (even if they created the underlying open OS from scratch) with greater results as they have many times the resources.
This is the classic 'bet the farm' mentality that MS used to have when they were much smaller.
see : http://www.folknology.com/blog/1/1/2006/4/24/366
How Microsoft can re-invent itself
Disclaimer :- I do not, have not and will probably never work for Microsoft, I am expessing the opinion of a common user, developer and small business.
Regards
Al
You'll buy every employee a MacBook Pro and a 30" screen. You'll do it for the same reason Steve Jobs had a Bosendorfer Piano in the lobby of the building where the Macintosh was born. Because its cracking GREAT design. You soak up great design like you soak up culture. Just be around it. And it'll be a GREAT mindbomb to show up with a zillion apples pushing your software.
Hint - MS gets nicknamed the Borg not because they assimilate all - but because they have the same design sense - practically none.
Or you could resurrect Microsoft Bob. Your choice.
I dunno - one move honors the past you're trying to move beyond, the other embraces the future you covet. Purchases are politics.
One thing that really bugs me about MS' business practice is that they are trying too hard to be the one and only name around. Hey MS - you're over-reaching. You're doing too many things at once, and it's affecting your quality. Slow down, focus your efforts on fixing what you've got (including your reputation); maybe making a few awesome products will be better for you than making a lot of "iffy" ones.
A TB of storage? Never in a bazillion years! No, I will not trust you to keep that much of my data. Well, maybe I would. Do you wanna be a great single-point-of-backup for my MP3 and ISO collections? No personal data, nothing too important, nothing that I can't get again - but a good 4th resort. Yes, Robert, you did say that many people "trust their data" to MS, and there are 'X' number of accounts with all these different services. Didya forget that to get almost anywhere in the MS arena (support, downloads, tips, code, etc), you have to get a Passport? OOh, wait, doesn't that mean it's an automatic setup of a couple other accounts? Not gonna happen for me buddy - I don't trust MS enough to sign myself up for a Hotmail account (I just borrow one).
Robert, this post is an anthem, and I applaud you for it. I want to work for Microsoft after reading this, and will apply tomorrow! You have given Bill and Steve lots to consider here, in terms of initiatives, and culture that will take Microsoft into the next level.
Colin
Speaking of Vista, where is the Vista family pack? Most people I know now have multiple computers at home. Microsoft XP now runs on the Mac Book Pro. How long do you think it will be before Intel OSX is hacked to run on PC's, and then maybe the official version will follow. Apple offers a family pack.
As for your continued reference to Hotmail and it's 2 million users..I am one. I use it for my "junk" email account. Gmail, now with calendar, is real world useful.
That was then. This is now.
What problem is Microsoft trying to solve now? Does it even know?
Maybe that should be the first thing they figure out.
You're a GREAT guy and all... don't get me wrong - but you're beating a dead horse.
Its dead. Microsoft will have to go through a LOT of bad days before it needs to change.
Take all this energy and start your own company. You'll make WAY more wealth than you'd ever make at Microsoft and I think consumers would be happier.
Hell.... you already know what MS is bad at.
Start a startup that will end up getting BOUGHT by Microsoft.
Anyway...
1) Reward groups based on user satisfaction
2) Put marketing and design back in the product groups
3) Get rid of all the layers in between
I, too, have been around a long time and talked with a lot of really smart people in the first 3 levels at Microsoft. They really want to build stuff that solves people's problems.
Above that, the number of people who care about customers decreases considerably, with the bulk of middle management concerned about getting ahead. *That* is the main problem, and it's a huge one, as the people who could fix the problem *are* the problem.
I've heard you say this a few times, like on Steve Gillmor's podcast, and was wondering if these were active users or registered users? By active I mean people who log in to the Hotmail web site (or through Outlook, etc) and check their email regularly. As opposed to people that may have registered an account and leave it dormant.
Does this number include Microsoft Passport accounts?
Translation: "what is this junk? show me what you were hyping a few weeks ago." "oh, it's the same thing? nevermind."
Thanks for the response on my blog. I agree that Microsoft is slowly but surely bringing people in who are willing to try to move the needle. As an institutional investor, I'm certainly confident that at least some of those changes will a) be implemented and b) amount to tangible incremental success.
All the best,
Jason
How about an operating system that is totally bulletproof and requires no attention from the end-user to keep it that way? Take away all the headaches of viruses, adware, malware - whateverware. Give us an operating system that works without a hitch and stays that way.
If you say it can't be done then you'd be saying the same thing that was said about the original moon landing by all but a few with the vision who actually pulled it off.
Want to win the hearts and minds of customers forever - give 'em a bulletproof OS. Can you imagine how much money could be saved if customers didn't have to continually protect their disaster-prone operating system?
Can you feel the love that this would engender?
I can.
It can be done, but it will take vision, genius and hard work. I think MS has all three in abundance. Now, where is the will and the leadership?
The next Google will be the company that pulls this off.
When you build your house on sand you have to expect things to start falling apart before long. A strong foundation... that is what we want.
A Dell PC with 3 monitors running Vista? Again, why? The only examples you give for the advantages of Vista over OSX are the ability to write on the screen and the fact that it appears to be V2 of Media Center. What productive advantages would running Vista with 3 monitors bring over, say, continuing to run and XP machine, and a second machine with duallmonitor cards running Maxivista? (www.maxivista.com). I mean, if its simply >1 monitor that increases productivty, that would seem to be a more efficient use of shareholder money than wasting it on a shitty PC with an yet to be proven OS.
And finally, would you quit on the spot if Mini-Microsoft were fired for lack of performance for the job MS pays him to do?
Then there is the dreaded DRM and rights management stuff, if Microsofts rents out space to me, can I put anything I want in this space, even if it's violating some law somewhere?
I have to agree with the earlier posters about product SKU's. I have always thought it odd that inorder to understand Microsofts licensing, one has to attended a licensing class! It took me 3 days to figure out what version of SQL 2005 I needed for my project, then the darn per-processor licensing stuff, reminds me of another company charging for MIPS, this just has to stop.
I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft should license "PEOPLE" not machines, this is a great idea, at least for Desktop applications. I can then use any device with the knowledge that I am going to get the best experience on any machine, any device.
-Los
2. I wonder the extent to which MSFTs SAP implementation has imposed process to the detriment of the business.
3. Big business is usually about command and control. Until that's addressed in such a way as to not scare Wall Street, I find it hard to imagine how the fundamentals change.
China Law
You know, the fact that I'm reading your ideas and thinking "these are great" while being at the same time awed by the scale of the changes necessary, probably means you’ve hit nail in the head...
Now, I just can’t convince myself otherwise: Live is the future, if done correctly. I know I’ve heard it before, but lately I just don’t need to leave my browser because everything I need is online from the apps to the data. Netvibes and the rest are the companies to beat. That and the X-box are the future of MS.
I think it's the right idea at the right time. How about renaming your blog The Terabyte Idea and making this thing happen???
Of course, with things like video, a terabyte isn't enough. Also, MS would have to work with cable companies to widen the pipe for uploads. I just ran a Speakeasy speed test at home and received these results:
Download Speed: 8186 kbps
Upload Speed: 353 kbps
Anyway, great work, Robert. Welcome back.
Split the company up into profit centers and key pay to their profit.
Money talks, the rest walks.
Back when the Vista name was revealed, I wrote an editorial about the naming of things and how/why it's important. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1840...
Microsoft is TERRIBLE at naming things. It's terrible at designing boxes. It's terrible at making compelling ads. We all know it. We all complain about it. We all shake our heads and say "that SO TRUE" when we see that "what if Microsoft made the iPod box" video.
Why isn't anyone doing anything about it? How many thousands of employees, consumers, press, PEOPLE have to complain about an obvious problem before Microsoft moves to correct it?
Most of Microsoft simply doesn't understand "cool." I hate to say it. There are some people, sure. The game group gets it, as a whole. But one of the side effects of a computer on every desktop is that now you have to sell to people who aren't computer nerds. In fact, that's got to be most of your market. And people - normal people, your customers! - want to buy cool stuff.
They want iTunes. They don't want Windows Media Player. Who came up with that name, and why hasn't it been changed yet? That's like naming the Xbox "Microsoft Game Console." It's rediculous. Why not call WMP "Showtime" or "AMP" or, you know, anything but Windows Media Player? This culture of "drain the cool out of everything" permeates Microsoft.
@114: the problem I see with splitting the company in to profit centres is that (according to most reports) only Windows and Office are profitable. That is to say, they all need to be together, to keep all the other stuff afloat.
Hmm I wonder what is happening..
Good blog..
Thanks
Some of your ideas are wacky and far-out, but that's the magic of them. And some of them are just simple basic common-sense.
Even partial implementation would have huge positive impact on most companies.
(1) devs or program managers who come up with a "cute" codename and fall in love with it
(2) mid to senior level engineering execs who provide random input or feedback
(3) mid to senior level marketing execs who provide random input or feedback
(4) other mid to senior level engineering executives who secretly think of themselves as marketing or naming experts or
(4) other mid to senior level engineering executives, PM's or product managers who give marketing 2 weeks to name a product, feature or technology or
(5) did I mention mid to senior level marketing execs who don't let the people "on the ground" do their jobs?
I have been involved in many many naming projects and at least 3/4 of them are doomed from the beginning because of poor exec leadership.
And another thing...
You or someone you spoke to seem to be in love with "Sparkle." Here's the thing - opinions on names are incredibly subjective. To me, Sparkle is the most rediculous name I've ever heard. It's so...lamely Flash obsessed. "Look, they're Flashy so we better be Sparkly." Give me a break.
There's a truism in naming that is...well...true. Rarely if ever does a name resonate immediately when you first hear it. I'm sure you could list examples of names that you loved at first sight but maybe that's just because you're special. True story: when the name "Powerbook" was first suggested, Apple execs HATED it. Same with Pentium. The "braintrust" at Intel wanted 496. It was the marketers who finally made the case that Pentium was a better brand name...and history would suggest the marketers were right.
One more thing about codenames. Engineers and PM's simply LOVE to come up with cute codenames. The problem is that in many cases the codenames are trademarks owned by another company or they have absolutely nothing to do with the "value prop" of the offering. But that doesn't stop them. They print t-shirts. They create logos that they plaster all over their intranet sites and, if they're particularly dumb, on external sites. Then the marketers have to spend an unbodly amount of time convincing the product team that the code names can't be used when they could be spending their time coming up with a better (and legally available) alternative.
And another thing. Low-level product managers or PM's love to talk about how they want a name that "is cool." Tell you what. Using "cool" as a criteria isn't particularly helpful...especially when the product or technology isn't particularly cool. One man (or woman's) cool is another man's distinctly uncool. Using "cool" as a criteria for a name is lazy. A better approach is to think about (1) what the product or technology actually deliver to customers and (2) think about the characteristics you want the name to convey. "Sparkle" may convey...sparkliness but what else?
Did I mention that Sparkle is a lame name?
Just my personal two cents.
The public compensation change logs is certainly an interesting idea. If we did that at my organization, I'm sure a lot of people would take less cigarette breaks.
I'll echo some of the other comments and ask for a reduction in SKUs! Likewise, can we move to a simpler licensing arrangement? I'd love to be able to get a copy of Exchange (one SKU, please) and load it up with as many users as possible rather than continually track the number of users I have using the product and buy CALs as necessary. The whole licensing/SKU schemes are bloated and confusing.
Other than that, how about beginning to make changes in Windows that break compatibility with legacy applications in the name of security, speed, etc.?
You were a bit of a lightning rod before, now you're Ben Franklin wielding his kite before the storm! I think the Bubba move was brilliant, and your new postings are too. We are not worthy!
The open ratings and raises proposal is fascinating. As a member of the Wichita Engineering Association (WEA), an engineer's union at Boeing many years ago, I enjoyed getting charts of salary and grade versus raise percentages, split up by various skill definitions. I could literally figure out who was getting what even though the graphs were anonymous. I don't think it was a life-changing experience, and I don't see how a public version would encourage people to run to my boss and persuade him to correct the situation the next review/raise cycle.
However, I'm a strong believer in bonuses and performance citations. Some "backwards" companies still do this. When somebody tames the progressive HR beast, that may return to large corporations. It just makes sense to reward patent applications, innovative management, or great performance under trying circumstances.
Keep up the good work! And thanks, Bubba!
I'll say right here and now nothing would please me more than to be marginalized by outstanding execution by Microsoft. If the rumored revamp of our review system goes through and it's wildly positive, heck, I'll applaud enthusiastically and get back to coding more and criticizing less.
Anyway, thanks for the post Robert. I hope it inspires more Microsofties, and other people, to rise up with their ideas. And if one day black-clothed commandos repel out of the walls and surround me and escort me off campus, I'd certainly never hold you to coming with me to the land of the unemployed.
Though I'm sure we could make one heck of an unemployed blogger buddy movie out of it...
Cheers,
Mini.
I have to agree with some of the above posters, though, a "complaint-free" Microsoft would be impossible. However, I do agree on your point, Mini is doing the company a favor. It's showing a breakdown in communcation that has no way to be resolved. Personally, I like your 3 big bet ideas, but don't think they're big enough. (I sympathize with the "Quit thinking like Microsoft" post as well.) Don't forget when the vision you quoted was formulated, there was a HUGE dependency on a hardware industry evolving with the software one.
The ideas are good, but they're not big enough. What about this: Focus on "connectivity". Similar to google's focus on finding things, focus on connecting things. Focus on helping people communicate with other people, programs, corporations, departments, devices, etc. Accept that people are going to have multiple computing devices, and want files, settings, preferences, interfaces, etc. shared between them (Even if they're not running Microsoft software!)
What's happening today is the OS is being abstracted to the network. Personally, I think its a cycle that will swing back in a year or two...companies that can get in on that swing will have it made. (Think pre-caching Web 2.0 interfaces for offline use...)
A final comment, your "Second Life" generation is about 3% of the world's population. (Don't forget 97% of statistics are made up on the spot.) What I see happening is the next generation growing up with a knowledge and understanding of computers what will empower them. This has been feeding the open source movement, and I don't think there is a lot Microsoft can do about it. (Ok, after midnight local time for me...sorry if this is too ramble-y.)
Thanks!
1. Create a vision that inspires.
2. Give every employee top of the line tools to do their jobs.
3. Allow for public understanding of who's moving ahead, who's not and WHY. Or at least public discussions of which ideas are moving people ahead or holding them back.
4. Make the rules and systems serve progress. Incorporate a system that reviews and revised. Make public input (internally at least) to that system easy.
5. Explain decisions publicly (at least internally) and allow for comments.
Quite honestly, I don't care how much online storage space MS offers Windows users. What the heck would I do with a terabyte of disk space?
Pretty much the only thing MS could do at this point to win me over would be to either base Vista off UNIX (doubtful), or send me lots of free computer equipment and software. I'm not entirely sure that bribing your customers is the best long term business plan, though. ;-)
Whatever, Microsoft is unbeatable
Everyone has a PC now. Evangelizing and iterating on things for PCs isn't a moonshot.
Getting to the point where anyone can get to, manipulate and share their data, from anywhere, to anywhere... when people don't have to think about where it's stored, how it's formatted, who they're sharing with... but can trivially find out if they have to... when we have collaboration software and web authoring tools so good that our own company actually USES them... when the only printers on campus are for compatibility testing, and the conference rooms are all turned into lounges, labs and extra offices... when we're not trying to sell people on a way to live ("store your photos this way, share your photos that way, listen to your music this way, set up your home computers that way"), but rather subtly finding and enhancing the things they already do... when getting a new MSFT product is less like learning a whole new language and more like buying a new bicycle(i.e., i already _know_ how to ride it, don't make me relearn how to pedal)...
THAT is a moonshot.
Precisely. That's what makes them "hot". Unhappy employees are bad employees.
Thanks!
This wouldn't solve anything - the review process is not broken because it's not public, it's broken because it's a popularity contest. Making it public would just give the people who spend their whole day shaking hands and kissing babies for a good review something else to waste time on - arguments with other groups as to why they're so much better and deserve to be compensated more richly.
Until the words "managing perception" disappear off the face of the Microsoft campus map, the review process will stay busted, busted, busted. Hey, here's a thought - how about reviewing and compensating people based on their actual on-the-job performance?
I totally agree on the need for cool product names, but it seems there are some limitations. (and also wonder about how "fake" the public may perceive the attempts to sound/act cool: Like Gramps putting on some hip-hop bling, oversized jersey with cap backwards, making gangsta hand-signs and tring to act young.)
I HATE to start off on a negative note, but there's no other way to say this: Mr. Scoble, you are a liar.
The OS is not up to snuff right now for daily use, though it is rapidly getting there are they approach beta 2. But this claim is complete and utter crap.
I generally support your suggestion for public compensation change logs. I think just publishing the percentages is a great way to add some transparency to the review process.
"the worst person I've dealt with here at Microsoft is far better than many employees I've dealt with in past jobs "
But I also support Mini's suggestion that mass firings are needed. The statement above about the worst person you've met @ MSFT just tells me that you're only talking to the smartest folks. There are PLENTY of people throughout the company who aren't cutting it anymore (or maybe never were; many people snuck in around the time of the perma-temp lawsuit, many others were probably just hired because a team needed a warm body in a hurry...hey, it happens). Maybe we're responsible for burning them up. That's one of the many management problems we have. But that doesn't mean we need to keep the dead weight here.
As for the multi-mon suggestion, I can't remember the last time I walked into someone's office and didn't see at least 2 monitors already. So there's probably a good chunk of that $240 million that we won't even need to spend :) I believe most LCD's also use much less standby power than your typical CRT, so this could also have cost savings to Microsoft as well as making us much more eco-friendly.
Here's an idea that's no more crazy than the ones you proposed: Hold LisaB accountable for at least some of the promises that she made in her listening series discussions. For starters, get her to update her website with the list of common themes. It hasn't been *touched* in over 3 months!!! She's supposed to be fixing morale problems. Instead, she's now causing them.
But then I have a twisty mind.
And as people in our profession are so fond of saying: "Surely Nobody Would Ever Do That".
Office has been through the same trauma.
But I couldn't believe the absurdity when a friend explained he had a Vista Beta. I repeated quizzically to myself "Sex Sells"? - after we parted. After the Microsoft Windows CE/ME/NT hilarity, Microsoft could have made a better job of branding.
To put it crudely, I can't take Microsoft's Windows Vista Beta at all seriously. Can you?
To me, the obvious moonshot is one that was routinely announced every year in the 1990s: speech recognition. This is the true killer app, and requires participation from every coding group imaginable, since it is indeed much more complicated than anyone ever suspected; so much so that today, it no longer even rates a mention, being considered simply unattainable. For my part, I don't think Microsoft will ever bring that innovation to the world, because efficient, modular code is not in your genes, but never mind me: while equipping staff with dual monitors (100% guaranteed to boost productivity, and easy/cheap now with TFTs), equip them with VOIP handsets set up for sound input. Ask for their help: once a week, have everyone read the same text into their handset/PC, so Research will instantly have massive samples for variance studies. Everyone in the company, from overworked coders to middle-management speedbump slackers, can contribute. Get the XBox people to come up with a small, robust music player/VOIP handset... set up for voice input to ANY computer on ANY OS running a Microsoft client app (a tried and tested business model, known to music lovers). And forget about patents and blackbox voodoo firmware: open up the source as Microsoft's contribution to Earth, and work on developing profitable business models providing vertical applications, everywhere connectivity, and 7/24/365 reliable (absolutely SLA) data availability.
As a concrete suggestion, Microsoft could start supporting industry standards instead of fighting, subverting, or ignoring them. Microsoft has always penetrated new markets by supporting existing formats, conveniently dropping support as competition heats up. Examples: The OpenDocument file format, which is very clearly what the world needs for long-term document archival - yet today, Microsoft has nothing better to do than push an encumbered alternative and refuse to add a filter to the 73 (I counted them) filters currently in Office. Or how about the MPEG-4 Chapter 10 (AVC, H.264) video standard, enthusiastically supported by every audiovisual industry player except Microsoft; no codec for Windows Media Player in the forseeable future - native on Macs for months now already, supported on a multitude of platforms including GNU/Linux by VLC and others. The list is long - PDF write support at OS level, W3C browser compliance, SMB/CIFS, the RTF and CSV pseudoformats which wander aimlessly with every version of Office, etc. Building to industry standards would be win/win/win for everyone - developers who could be more productive, integrators and administrators who could spend less time solving silly problems, users who could discover a system that just works. After all, dropping NetBEUI for TCP/IP never did Microsoft any harm. Why not show true commitment to customers and open the proprietary binary formats of previous Office versions, so we could all be assured of accessing our data in 10 years should we want to? In that vein, why not open the source code to your legacy apps? I fondly remember Excel 3, which ran well on my little 386 with 12 Mb of RAM... and had enough functionality to model the mortgage loans I'm still paying. Microsoft has always spared no expense wooing developers; you are losing a generation of engineers to the superior Free Open Source Software model.
Too, you didn't mention virtualization, which is about to eat Microsoft for lunch: The future of Windows is an image running in a sealed container over a serious OS (and by that I mean stable and secure and multiprocessor optimized) such as GNU/Linux or *BSD. Malware will be as eaily handled as flushing a contaminated image. Banking data will run in a separate image from gaming, or surfing. Users will become accustomed to using alternative (secure, ergonomic, standards-based) main desktops, keeping a virtual Windows around for legacy apps and data. In this context, insisting on licenses per image, rather than per CPU, will simply hasten the departure of fed-up users.
I'm afraid Microsoft is destined to be seen as an accident of history: IBM gives away the store, savage business practice of browbeating OEMs into exclusively preinstalling DOS and later Windows quashes OS competitors, OS dominance makes conditions ripe for Office monopoly, stagnation rots bloated empire from within. The traditional strengths which justified this monoculture - rock-solid DOS under floopy Windows, robust installers with outstanding hardware support, localization in numerous languages - have been surpassed by FOSS. I moved to a new office recently and was dismayed to discover my first day that I had forgotten the new password on my XP Professional-equipped laptop. Fortunately, I had a recent Knoppix with me, booted with that, and was able to access all of my supposedly encrypted files, which of course meant i had to later encrypt my sensitive business data with third-party software (a FOSS project, naturally). Since Windows 3.0, I have not seen Microsoft as a tech company, but as a profit-making venture - the poverty of the DOS CLI compared to Unix was a dead giveaway. That's been fine until now for the founders of the company and for shareholders, but rotten for the industry and for end users. Today, Microsoft consistently reminds me of a country I had the privilege to visit in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - born with passion and vision, capable of great strides in the early days despite the warning signs, finally extinguished as the fire went out and today judged harshly for its catastrophic failures. Microsoft's paralysis even as revenue streams in from Windows and Office (and doesn't from other products) is ghastly to watch - Microsoft can't hold those monopolies for long, for a number of reasons (growing irrelevance of PC-centric computing, stronger and stronger offerings from standards-based FOSS). I suspect that Microsoft's tumble, when it comes, will come more quickly than anyone suspects... when your OEMs rebel and start offering choice to buyers. Don't alienate your OEMs by going all-Dell; although they are fine machines, Microsoft would do much better to buy from ALL its OEMs, ideally in proportions related to marketshare. Any biologist will confirm the advantages of diversity, and for once you could properly debug an OS before shipping it. I don't agree that you need to convince any partners about driver development, given your marketshare, but not shutting out any of your OEMs could do wonders for the way you are perceived by your partners.
Your marketers, unfortunately, have to deal with senior managers who have only a passing interest in the arts and culture, the enabler of taste in what's cool. It was said that the USSR could have bloomed if Lenin appreciated fine wine and modern art more. I am one of those personally offended by the ads which describe me as a dinosaur because I won't shell out for buggy new Office software (which I know is buggy since my employer has already shelled out). Savvy buyers feel locked in; unsavvy buyers just assume it's normal for a company to be so greedy. Today, most of the 20-odd basic users of Windows I support (for free - family, friends, neighbors) assume that all personal computer operating systems are as crappy as Windows. They feel cheated when they have to buy additional software to secure their computers, in particular when they are surprised to learn that less or none is necessary for the alternatives. They wonder why GNU/Linux or the Mac was never talked about at the store, feeling like they have been rooked. Finally, they ask if their data - documents, photos - would be readable on another platform. By the way, without exception, they are incapable of backing up their data, aside from the occasional CD burn.
Sadly, Microsoft has stunted innovation in the IT industry for years; the industry's response is to move to collaborative development, which is fundamentally incompatible with Microsoft's sell-licenses-forget-support-laugh-to-bank business model. FOSS is coming after you, and you can't compete on quality and you can't compete on price. I personally believe it is too late to change; I think the future can only hold a diminished Microsoft, or maybe a group of companies - each focused on services and products meeting customer needs. The golden boom years are ending, and a huge number of current Microsoft employees won't make it through. But there is still a long-term possibility that Microsoft's successor startup companies, or a reduced and focused core, could thrive. Should you continue to decide to stay with Microsoft, I wish you luck - you shall need it.
Sean DALY.
What would stop RIAA or MPAA from subpeonaing the entire system to see what MP3's and movie files were on those drives to see what was legal and what was not. We have yet to learn what the impacts of google's shared drive is going to be, but the major security companies are against it, and many have labeled it malware because of that issue, and advocate not using it.
Is anyone going to pass up a file named "US Senate Master Misstress list.xls"? We would have to have better trust in the corporation (even google has problems with this right now), and we would have to seriously stregthen privacy laws before I would ever use something other than my own drives for storgage of my data.
Nice idea, too many risks for me to adopt it.
A product which was bought, not 'innovated'. FoxPro probably doesn't count as a 'big bet', but can certainly be counted as another victim of "embrace ... extinguish", without, unfortunately, the intervening 'extend'.
MS ALWAYS disclaims ANY liability for whatever happens with it's customer as a consequence of using... whatever it's offering.
It came to the point when this is a 'no go'... Enough is enough. Think about this for a moment. You have to take responsibility FOR SOMETHING, otherwise - MS will become history.
Regards.
Microsoft's "big bets" have always been in innovative software, not hardware infrastructure.
Think bigger... if "the network is the computer" then MSN should be managed as the new computer.
Create "Web OS" software that let's any hosting partner or VAR participate in the MSN cluster and reap some rewards for being part of MSN.
Even Google will eventually need to decide whether their core competency is in innovative datacenter operations or software development. They'll likely outsource or contract the hardware in the future.
I think Steve Ballmer should be fired. Plain and simple.
It does not matter to the consumer that a driver or dll is needed from an hardware vendor that is compatible with the current os version. Or that Microsoft has trained the general public into purchasing a product that will not have full functionality until the arrival of the first service pack.
What continues to befuddle me, any other business sector that sells a product that does not work off the show room floor as advertised is bound by consumer law that recalls that product at no cost to the consumer until repaired or replaced. Otherwise the consumer is refunded their money.
When Microsoft advertises that a particular flavor os will work with specific hardware and then it doesn't. The consumer should be refunded.
When a consumer buys an off the shelf box that is preloaded with an Microsoft os, and the os prompts them to install patches to fix a broken preloaded os, and the patch crashes the consumers off the shelf box, the consumer should be refunded.
If someone would take the time to do the statistical analysis of lost productivity from unrecoverable data, or data that is recoverable, the cost to the consumer to retrieve said data. Microsoft would be getting off cheap refunding just the initial cost to the consumer. It would in no way cover the actual loss the consumer experiences.
If consumer protection laws were changed to reflect real life consumer experience with software and hardware vendors across the board, impose real time fines and sanctions to said companies. It would have an impact that would not only get their attention, it would enforce b2b to change their policy to get the lead out of whats dragging the industry down and deflating consumer confidence, in the so called vision of the future.
I realize on the surface this may appear as off thread, then again it used to be the most important person in a corporation was the consumer. No consumer, no Microsoft, go figure.
Mo Better to point, so now that Microsoft Employees are no longer treated like upper class citizens and find themselves downgraded to the consumer level, how's that working for ya? Because it sure has not been working out for those of us that keep praying the next version is really going to work as advertised.
So let's try and keep it real, the consumer either owns or works for a company that supports Microsoft Employees. If they come up short on their offerings they do not implore their company to offer them incentives to be better employees. Nor expect their employers to give them a voice in how the company is run or change company offerings. They either put their nose to the grind stone or they find another job. Welcome to the lobby....