IT edge

I just finished the book “Microsoft Rebooted” by Robert Slater. It was a great, easy read which provided insights into Bill Gates’ and Steve Ballmer’s personalities and business strategies. As well, it was good background information on both of these men before Microsoft was much more than a couple of dozen employees. I got the impression that Bill has the tendency to view himself, since childhood, as the underdog. This feeling was transferred into his company. This results in his competitive, never give up attitude. I suppose if you had as much to lose as Bill, you would adopt that same sort of attitude. Very interesting was to see how he reacted to the Anti-trust trial with the US DOJ.

When Steve Ballmer became CEO of Microsoft it was amazing to see how he and Bill had really yet to define their roles within the “new” Microsoft. These roles where more or less discovered, as opposed to created between the two of them. I know there are a lot of cynics about the so called changes to Microsoft, but I think that Ballmer really understands what needs to change… and from what I read it appears Bill is beginning to warm up to those ideas, even though he may not have liked the idea of giving up so much of his power. Steve really sees the need to be more open and ‘friendly’ to their customers, partners, and even in the industry as a whole. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be competitive in their markets however.

Microsoft is a business. They need to remain innovative and competitive if they will survive the next twenty years. As a stock holder, I expect they will. I know that some will always view Microsoft as an evil empire, the same way many view Wal-mart, but they have done much for the software industry since their inception.

Microsoft and Bill Gates had the vision of putting a PC on every desktop in the workplace and in the home. This would mean PC’s would have to be easy to use, or at least easy enough for most to learn. Ways to use the PC to improve personal worker and home user productivity had to be discovered and exploited. Microsoft had achieved this vision. This was discussed in detail in the book ‘Business at the Speed of Thought’ by Bill Gates, published in 1999. I would venture to say that Microsoft was one of the few companies who saw this type of opportunity and created a new market.

The other computer companies of the day couldn’t see past what they were already doing. Bill Gates & Co. had vision and created the market while companies like IBM and Unisys as a whole refused to believe in the opportunity. Some would argue Apple saw this as well. That may have been true, but Microsoft understood that it’s strength was with the software, not the hardware. Where Microsoft concentrated on its strengths, Apple wanted to be a software and hardware vendor. I believe this is where Apple failed in the personal computer market. As the single vendor for the hardware, OS, and the majority of the applications that ran on their platform, Apple had nobody competing on the hardware. Microsoft software was independent of a single hardware source which resulted in a dozen or so hardware manufactures competing with one another for market share which resulted in lower prices and new models with increased performance. All the while Apple prices remained relatively high. What compounded the issue with Apple further was there wasn’t a great programming language to develop application for the Mac OS, while Microsoft realized this was a key in getting companies to further adapt the Windows OS.

From my perspective, I can see Microsoft starting to take a new approach to how they view and support their partners. It seems they are changing their attitude with the new realization that they need to support the people selling, implementing, and supporting their products. This book helped me to appreciate how things are changing at Microsoft by from the top-down…. although it may take some more time on an individual employee level.