It was announced today that Ray Ozzie is headed out of Microsoft. Negativity out of Redmond has been at surprisingly high levels. "He wasn't a good leader", "A lot of people didn't like him" and similar quotes started surfacing almost immediately. The basic company line seems to be, "Ray just didn't get it."
The thing about Ozzie though was that he did get it. I remember thinking how clearly he understood Microsoft's primary challenges when I read "The Internet Services Disruption", his 2005 internal memo to Microsoft's leadership teams. This was at a time when Microsoft's official line was, "the Internet isn't as important as Windows or Office and will never run real applications" - that's actually pretty close to their corporate line and right on for field offices. Ray seemed to be the only one at Microsoft that noticed Google.com was in fact the only application as ubiquitous to a person's day as Office. As a young professional working in the Microsoft ecosystem it reinforced my own thoughts on internet technology services - that they rocked.
I also remember being impressed by Groove before I realized where it came from, the acquisition of Ozzie's Groove Networks, and thinking, "wow, they actually put something new and somewhat innovative in Office". Groove was essentially a collaboration application and has now been rolled into SharePoint as "Workspaces". My first surprise was that Groove was actually a new and useful application and my second surprise was, why in the heck wasn't Redmond pushing Groove? Simple, the true form of the application was to be server free. Groove didn't need expensive server products, infrastructure or consulting services - Groove didn't fit in Microsoft's vision of how we should be using technology. Although Groove still had the PC as the center piece of computing it did leverage internet services to sync data between all users. Basically, Groove was a nice move in the right technological direction for Microsoft. Today however, nobody knows what the hell Groove is, that it was part of Office 2007 (dependent on version) or all the useful features it had without much, if any, need for IT to be involved. Many customer business problems solved with expensive SharePoint projects could have easily been solved with the inexpensive use of Groove. However, SharePoint is a billion dollar category for Microsoft, solving one of their business challenges nicely.
Office and Windows dominate market share is now dependent on user ignorance of alternatives. Internet Explorer and Windows Mobile have already shown you just can't buy users off like you used to. Another Microsoft story was out today as well, they're going to spend $500,000,000 on marketing Windows Phone 7. But it won't matter. Everyday more and more people are becoming passionate about technology, which is very bad news for the business managers at Microsoft. The iPhone, on the back of the iPod, deserves the credit for teaching people they're powerful users of technology and that they have many choices. The iPad clearly illustrates the stereotypical "early adopter" category is disappearing. I had an executive at one of the world's largest news agencies approach me about how to leverage Google Sites for team collaboration because of a "pure hatred of SharePoint". A person who's insecure about their understanding of technology does what they're told. This is the perfect customer for corporate IT and for Microsoft's KIN commercials. A person who's used an iPad knows their technology choices are personal. This new independent thinker is the quintessential enemy of bureaucracy and the status quo it protects.
Ray did get it. Microsoft doesn't.
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