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I assume you saw the headlines light up across mainstream media and the industry press today about Microsoft’s leaked memos on the Internet services table turnover. (Heck, as a I write this, I am hearing the source of all this, Dave Winer, get interviewed on NPR about the details.)
Bill Gates wrote a good one though surprisingly half-hearted but Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s CTO, wrote the best.
His panoramic, internal summary of Microsoft’s precarious position is both electrifying and poetic:
Despite Ozzie’s amazingly written treatise though, MS evangelist Robert Scoble is the one that captured the real problems that are rotting Microsoft’s business model (and many other vendor’s) from inside:
This new, rapidly emerging vision of the Web, with Web 2.0, Software As A Service, and Web As Platform has just run a potentially fatal stake through Microsoft’s heart, and to a lesser extent of IBM, Oracle, and other traditional software businesses.
The ultimate fallout of all this is certainly unclear at the moment. Read the coverage closely along with everyone else and see if you can figure out -- with the rest of us -- where things are actually heading.
And I know some of you don’t believe, maybe even think these guys are wrong. But the stakes are high, and if you calculate poorly, then your business, and your customers and employees may be the ones that pay.
Just remember that giants fall hard and fall slow. Windows will remain on the desktop, but Microsoft’s growth and relevance is probably permanently disrupted.
The upshot: The shift to the centrality of software on the Web is faster and more significant than most of us thought.
So important things are afoot along with big questions:
I don’t think you can do the latter any longer and really matter.
Update: Robert Scoble, official Microsoft technical evangelist extraordinaire, had a few nice comments on this post yesterday.
Notice that each of the applications you've identified as part of this new
centrality are effectively recreational apps popular with the blogo., but
hardly aligned with the concerns of the corporate world.
I think it's important to say why these new web-services are
disruptive. They allow new, small companies to produce products that
compete with Microsoft's, but MS can't retaliate without canibalizing their
own packaged software market.
At first, everything stays small, is recreational and doesn't matter. Like
cell phones, GUIs and personal computing itself. Eventually, the tech will
reach the corporate world because it makes sense.
<A HREF="http://rsspundit.blogspot.com/2005/11/turn-ship-around-gatesozz
ie-memos-and.html">I believe</A> the battle for this space is
going to be a bloodbath with many companies being eaten or dying. While I
would NEVER underestimate Microsoft, I think it will face some MAJOR
culture shock responding to these memos. If the 'corporate cultural
arteries' are too hard, a massive stroke and ultimately a long, painful
death may be the result.
Microsoft needs to lead the way in API innovation that makes HUGE DATA
(like the satelite images used in Google Maps) more accessible. Nothing
new with that, and your “Amazon Understands the Long Tail” post is a great
example of how Amazon is working on this.
Thanks for very interesting article.
