Category: Microsoft

With the announcement of Ray Ozzie’s pending departure i t seemed to be a good time to finish a blog I had started many months ago.  Partly with this announcement in mind. It seemed apparent for some time while at Microsoft and after I was gone that Ray had become very silent. It was also pretty clear that the rumors that Ray and SteveB never talked were true.  It ended with Ray not even participating in Microsoft’s company meeting recently held at the hollowed venue: Safeco Field.  It’s good to look back on Ray’s time at Microsoft and what to expect moving forward.

To start let me be clear: In the tech industry Ray Ozzie is a legend.  When Microsoft acquired his company Groove Networks, what really happened was Microsoft acquired Ray Ozzie.  The happiest person on campus was probably also his biggest fan, Bill Gates.  It was like two kids in a candy store.  Two men who were software guys who had helped create the tech industry now together talking about the power and impact that software could have on day-to-day lives, what could be better?  As time would move and Bill Gates would move on it was apparent that Ray would be the new Chief Software Architect.

Early on Ray would send an important memo around the company called the “Internet Services Disruption”.  It as important at the time because this was the type of memo that BillG would send which would have great impact in mobilizing the forces at Microsoft as to what the new company imperative should be.  When I read it it was what I viewed as a brilliant piece of work.  Not just because of what he viewed the challenges would be moving forward, but some of the great technologies we already had to meet these challenges.  In some cases they were things that maybe had lost their pizzaz but when Ray took a fresh look at them he saw value. An example was technologies like AJAX and DHTML which were created at Microsoft and fueled a lot of growth on the internet (AJAX was more evangelized by Google, but invented by MS). It was those set of fresh eyes on our assets that impressed me so much.  It was a brilliant memo and one that seemed to lay the ground work for who would be fueling the vision post Bill Gates.

Where did  it then go wrong?  I can point to a number of instances.  I will start with my own Ray Ozzie experience.  He was speaking in Silicon Valley and the topic of Bill Gates “Think Week” came up.  BillG had done this for years.  Anyone could submit a paper to BillG’s “Think Week”.  He  would then accept papers and go to his compound in Hood Canal and armed with just a personal chef read and review all the papers submitted.  When he got back he would post all the papers so we as employees could see what was on his mind.  Some papers were about the future, others about internal Microsoft technology challenges.  It was a fascinating read.  When asked if he as going to do one, Ray as blunt, “No that was really a Bill thing”.   I was not impressed.  In fact I was so upset about it I sent him an email.  It was pretty simple, but my point was firm.  Microsoft is a technical company, with very technical people.  These people crave this type of peer review.  Especially from some one like Ray Ozzie.  I said in the email “don’t sell your self short, people really do want to hear your opinions”.  Ray did reply to me saying thank you and being very gracious.  I guess in the end it was something he did not want to do.

A second area was just Ray’s personality.  He was not a comfortable speaker.  I am not saying he was bad.  When Ray spoke people listened.  Anyone in the tech industry wanted to hear hat he had to say.  But everything about Ray was about a guy who was most comfortable in a meeting room with a whiteboard.  Everything I heard internally was when he was doing this he usually wowed the people in the room.  He was a classic wingman.  Loved operating behind the scenes and influencing those around him.  Front and center was just not a big driver for Ray.

Finally there was the cult of Steve and Bill.  I was once told by someone at Microsoft that the company suffered from a cult of personality.  It was personified in Steve and Bill.  Ray was Bill’s choice to replace him.  That however does mean that Steve had to accept it, despite the title bestowed upon Ray of Chief Software Architect.  The relationship between Steve and Bill was very close, forged over 30 years,  I would also say it was not one of pure peers.  Steve would often say it is “Bill’s Company”, much to the annoyance of other execs.  My impression was despite the outside perception they worked in tandem, Steve deferred and I think to a degree was in awe of Bill.  When Bill left it would be a void no one could fill.  Ray was put in a position to fail.

With Ray’s departure it raises the question “Who will provide the technical leadership, the technical vision for Microsoft?”.  Yet another tech legend is leaving Microsoft.  It is paramount that someone is there to anticipate the tidal wave changes that impact the industry, because when they come, they come fast, furious, and with no remorse.  Are there candidates?  Hard to say at this point.  In his announcement SteveB said there would be no new Chief Software Architect.  No one to set the internal trends for future software development.  Oh well I guess it is not really that important to have a visionary at the worlds largest software company.  All I can add is pathetic.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann Oct 19, 2010

When I look back at my career so far it is easy to fall into a longing for how things once were in the tech industry.  Certainly when I speak with many fellow Microsoft friends who were there in the era of greatness we love to talk about how everything was so much fun and success in driving the future always seemed obvious.  That is an easy thing to do when what you are really doing is looking back upon your youth.  I can only add that it was fun but the road before us in technology is far wider, far faster and far greater.

One thing I have felt for a long time is no matter what cutting edge field you decide to play in, whether it be robotics, nanotechnology, biotech, technology or simpler things like consumer electronics, they all share one thing in common it will take great software to make those things a reality.  The ease of use for consumer electronics is driven by software (anyone own a iPhone?).  The mapping of the human body to make robots act and think like humans will require great break troughs in software development.  The vast computational metrics required for nanotechnology will require great software.  To cure cancer will require great software.  Yes, other things will be necessary – great minds, faster hardware, but as my old CEO Bill Gates used to say, “Software is where the magic happens”.

Now what are some things that are going to happen soon, that will be fun and exciting?  Here I will offer up some thoughts on what I think both the near and long-term future will hold for us.  Some I think will be rather obvious as, like many things, they have been talked about for many years they just have not occurred.

• In the next ten years all school text books will be digitized and students will have a iPad or similar device at all grade levels(Android based for example). 
• Anyone under the age of fifty, before they die will go to a bar and order a drink – it will be made and served by a robot
• The home media center (that centralized hub for music, TV, Games, video etc..) will finally become a reality and most homes in the US – please I do not want any comments from some technical snob with a home router and dedicated storage saying “I already have one” – what will happen is we will have something simple everyone can use.
• Vacuum cleaners as we know them will disappear as robotic appliance like Rumba will be the norm
• Within 10 years Microsoft Windows will have less than 70% market share (in my mind this will spur innovation)
• Lanline Telephone Services will disappear within 10 years as wireless will hit speeds never imagined (Gigabyte Wireless anyone??)…..Not so hard when you think less than 20 years ago at Microsoft I started with a PC  hard drive that had 40mb.
• Within 15 years all medical records will be digitized
• Dentists will grow your teeth – no more fillings (my dentists says I am too optimistic on this one…he justs says this because I am good business for him)
• Cars will not need you to drive them…just plug in the coordinates (sorry car lovers that is just the way it will be). Eric Schmidt CEO of Google spoke to this specific point at TechCrunch 2010

All these things will be good for the economy and our day-to-day lives.  Before we get to gushing about the possibilities I should add that like all things in technology they come with a price.  We need a break through in how we will power all this technology.  One thing that is missing is what will be a big break through in power utilization. Another question is what will be the cost to humans.  How lazy will we become?  One thing they seem to miss in discussions about obese America is how everything we need can be controlled from our couch.  What scares me even more is some people like it.  How about a proposal to congress, if you can’t get off your coach no healthcare?

There is a dark side to technological advancement.  With these advances the information available to those who would do ill against their fellow-man or woman has never been greater.  Will there be a bio-terrorism attack in a subway? Airport? Office building?  Unfortunately I can add that to my list of predictions.  But my old CEO Bill Gates never looked at things that way he was a opimist on everything to do with technology.  So I leave this article to him rather than take you down the darker side of my soul.

As I wrote my coming predictions I found it easy.  I could probably easily add fifty more predictions.  But the trick in any advancement is not predicting it but timing it.  There were many efforts at a Kindle before the Kindle.  As I saw Newt Gingrich say in a speech on CSPAN when reflecting on the past century and moving forward in this one, “If you take all the advancements of the 20th Century, we will surpass them all in the first 25 years of the 21st century”.  I will not go out on a limb in just adding Newt is right.  That’s not a prediction that’s just the way things will be.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann September 30, 2010

In technology it is vitally important yet very difficult to see and understand when change occurs. You can invest millions in a product only to discover upon release that the market has moved on. I was on a recent camping trip when this thought started to come into perspective. As I think of the huge Microsoft Windows Phone 7 launch it dawned on me that the market Microsoft was going after was moving on into new fields of gold.

To put in perspective there are many technologies that are ahead of their time.  Sometimes it is just trying to find the market or an inability to create the market.    It’s challenging these days because we are faced with technology purchase decisions on a regular basis.  It could be a game console decision – am I going to be a Sony, Wii or Xbox person or family.  What eReader technology – Kindle or iPad?  Not to mention all the wannabe’s.   How long will these new technologies last before I have to get the latest and greatest?  How many people still have the original iPod, but more importantly how many people bought the next release? The Nano?   It’s an industry in constant flux.

This brings us back to our latest topic – mobility.  It’s been three years since Apple released the iPhone.  Three very painful years for the Microsoft Windows Mobile team (not to mention a lot of others: Nokia, Palm, RIM, etc..).  It caused a lot of denial at Microsoft and took some people to make a big decision to scrap the old code and stat all over again.  I am not sure what the people supporting the old code were defending, it was light years behind what Apple was doing. But the question to me will be when it releases this fall it will have been 3 years since the debut of the iPhone and is the market still in a place dreaming of a new great smart phone or has it moved on to newer and greener pastures?

There are three things that I see in play in the current mobile market:

1. A titanic struggle between Apple and Android – causing a huge surge in application development for these two platforms
2. A rapidly changing form factor being driven by the iPad changing how we interact with technology – that seems to bridge the Smartphone and LapTop/Netbook market
3. The rise of the “First Globalists” (age group 18-29) in driving technology adoption across the remaining groups in the market place

There is no question that when Apple launched the iPhone, beyond the beauty and experience of the device, Apple caused a huge shift in the developer community.  It seemed overnight you had companies starting up writing applications to the iPhone.  This means that developers were spending less time as a group on other platforms.  It was a rapid shift in the market.  Shortly after Google launched its Android initiative.  A beautiful example of the private sector mixing with the Open Source community.  Google provides the financial backing along with sales and marketing expertise.    Thee Open Source community, which is a developer community, provides the magic of creating a large application library.  I was talking with my friend Allen in the Silicon Valley  and he told me, “Right now in the valley it is all focused on iPhone and Android development”.  Today these platforms are each at or close to 100,000 applications.  At launch the Windows Phone is hoping for 10,000. In the tech industry if you do not have the hearts and minds of the developer, you have nothing.

The second area that is changing is the form factor of mobility.  The iPhone started that change, but the iPad is moving it forward in an ever changing direction.  The point being you can release a iPhone killer smartphone tomorrow, but it will not matter as the market has moved on. Not to mention that many capabilities we want in our smartphone are better suited for the iPad – such as browsing the web.  Another area is a phones primary function – voice.  Voice is no longer a service but an application and with the proliferation of voice enabled devices for PC’s, Netbooks and Tablets.  Though I do not expect phones to away our ability to interact with people through voice from whatever device I am connected to at that particular moment has been enhanced to the point that if I am watching TV i can interact with people through my TV while watching television.

The term “First Globalists” first came to my attention after reading John Zogby’s great book “The Way We’ll Be”.  It is the definition applied to the current 18-29 age group.  The first generation who have grown up in a world of ever and rapidly changing technology.  Who have always had the internet and a cell phone.  Who do not view technology with fear like many in my generation did.  So when the changes in form factor and how we interact with those new form factors occur they will approach and embrace these changes without hesitation and they will lead the market to new places.  Including yours truly.

Markets change rapidly and nowhere do they change faster than in technology.  You may have the best phone or at least a very competitive device but if you are late the market you are after may be transitioning to a new place.  From my days in marketing class at my university the term we used for these type of players is “laggards”.  Then it was academic but now I realize it’s not very flattering.  So my question to my past is “Where do you want to go today?”.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann Sept 21st 2010

When I think of technology and what is successful and what is not, what ends up being a big success is not necessarily new, but something that has been tried many times before.  It just took someone or some company to take a different approach to make it a huge success.  When I look around the industry at the state of what is becoming the eReader space its interesting to see how it has evolved from its inception to the current rage, the current rage being the Apple iPad.

As is usual for me I guess I have to leverage those 18 years at Microsoft.  Some of my “former” readers find this very boring, but I think for this little blog its a good place to start.  Since the dawn of Microsoft R&D one of the things they have worked extensively on was eReader technology.  Microsoft Research (MSR) was launched in 1991 right around the time I started with the company.  It was one of the earliest Microsoft mantra’s -“to provide the technology for the paperless office”.  Trying to move books to the PC seemed like a great place to start.  Probably most people do not know this or do not care because during all those years not much in the way of a product was actually released.  They did invent something called Clear Text which was cool as it looked and read like a book when and was not very hard on the eyes.  In fact most of what I see today in the industry is Clear Text. But true to Microsoft they looked for partners to create the “wow” experience.

It was a long time before anyone figured this out to make it popular on a wide scale.  It came from what would seem an unlikely candidate, Amazon.  I only say unlikely because up to tha point they were really a eCommerce site.  However when you  think about all the relationships they have with the major publishers it made sense.  It is expensive to carry an inventory of books and ship books.  When it is all stored and delivered digitally then the margins become much more attractive. The Kindle became a huge success from Amazon and an eye opener for the industry.  This idea of reading paperless books and been envisioned for so long but the dream of success had never been achieved.  I first saw one of these devices on a flight.  An older gentleman was sitting next to me in First class.  He was showing it off to one of the flight attendants and I could not help but ease drop.  The Kindle was elegant just based on its simplicity.  It allowed you to change font sizes at a click of a button.  This was great in my eyes, since as I get older it is getting harder to see. then there is the sheer quantity of books that can be stored on your Kindle.

However when I look at the Kindle, despite its current success I view it as a stepping stone technology.  That technology that is great and popular until something better comes along.  There are a lot of past and current examples of these type of technologies.  Tivo seems to me likely to fall behind as a home media server finally takes hold (xBox is going down this path).

The new rage and the one that I think will be around for a while is the Apple iPad.  Unlike the Kindle it is not a single function device but allows users to read, watch videos and play music to name but a few things in a seemless user-friendly experience.  We over use the term “user-friendly” in technology but in the end it cannot be emphasized enough.  Simply because so many companies say it, but fail to deliver upon it.  Then there is the question of how many devices to I want to lug around, the more I can condense my devices into one device the better my experience.   The iPad is yet another big hit for Apple and one that seems destined to sink those in the eReader space who oppose it.

It will be interesting to see if Amazon will be able to respond to the threat of iPad or carve out a niche for itself.  I think they will be very challenged to keep pace with the innovation coming from Apple.  Not to mention the fact that Apple is leading the consumer technology industry in defining the term “user-friendly”.  As I said in the beginning what is being done with content is not new, it is not as if it has not been envisioned.  It has just taken time for everything from device form factor, to software experience to content distribution to fall into place.  But that time has finally arrived and now there is no turning back.

Good Night and good Luck

Hans Hoffmann August 31st 2010

It is hard to believe in technology how far we have come in such a short time.  Through the years companies have come and gone.  There were times when the “hot” companies were Sun Microsystems, AOL, Yahoo, WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell, Informix, Enron, Qwest (pre-USWest acquisition), MySpace etc..It is a long list.  Some are still around but a shadow of what they once were.  Today we have a whole host of new “glamour” companies like VMWare, SalesForce.Com, Google, Research in Motion, Facebook, Twitter etc..Some of these companies will survive others will burn out in a flame of glory and still others will slowly die or be acquired.  There are a few stalwarts who have survived.  Some died and came back like Apple.  Others have just plodded along achieving great success later like Adobe.  In my many years in tech one company that is a constant and I have admired from a far is Oracle.

Founded by the eccentric and eclectic Larry Ellison Oracle has risen from nothing to make Larry one of the. richest guys on the planet.  I first heard of Oracle back at my first MGX in San Diego in 1904.  Microsoft was building a database business with SQL Server and had targeted Sybase and Oracle as its two strongest competitors.  At the time we knew we were no match for Oracle.  We were going to tackle Sybase first and then go after Oracle.  I remember quite well Bill Gates on stage talking about the future and going after Oracle.  Microsoft felt that they were priced way too high and that eventually would come back to haunt them.  Bill even poked a little fun at Larry Ellison saying, “I could pick on Larry, but that would be too easy”.  Sixteen years later the fight goes on.

There are a lot of characteristics about Oracle that have allowed them to succeed.  One area in the industry where they are legendary is their sales force.  Oracle has the reputation of being cut throat in sales.  Only Type A personalities need apply.  It is interesting to note that the culture was created by a man who was a former Mormon Bishop.  It’s well know in the  industry that at Oracle you can be a superstar one month and irrelevant the next.  Microsoft’s sales culture does not have that type of attitude.  A large part is due to the licensing practices Microsoft has which creates a situation where a Microsoft rep has sold a bunch of licenses that may be sitting on a shelf and the Microsoft  field force is not incented to get customers to utilize.  Oracle also in the enterprise space has partners willing to sell in Oracle solutions to customers,  Having competed against Oracle the value of these partners solutions is very hard to win against. It is especially hard when those partners do not have an equivalent Microsoft based offering.  On top of that most enterprise customers have a lot of Oracle DBA’s.  As the CIO of T-Mobile once told me, “I don’t know what they do but I pay them”.  When you add all these things together – aggressive sales force, strong partner channel, and an army of DBA’s trained on Oracle you have a hard to beat competitor.  In my opinion current Microsoft COO Kevin Turner would fire the Microsoft sales force in a heartbeat to have Oracle’s

Oracle is an enterprise company.  Larry Ellison goes where there is lots of money.  Enterprises have lots of money.  I admire the focus Oracle has on selling into the enterprise.  Beyond selling into the enterprise Oracle has enhanced its position with a focus on acquiring companies that help facilitate more sales into the enterprise.  They acquired Siebel the dominant CRM vendor.  They acquired ERP power PeopleSoft.  For the middle tier they acquired BEA Systems.  For the developer (and hardware vendor) they went out and got Sun Microsystems (in the enterprise Java rules).  I will add that as part of this acquisition of Sun they also got MySQL, the number one open source database.  Since open source means it is free, Oracle is quietly killing it as Larry Ellison makes no money. In my opinion they have been very smart in who they went after and how they would fit into the Oracle empire.

I would add that this focus has blunted Microsoft ability to overtake Oracle as the leader in enterprise databases.  Oracle continues to have customers believe they can scale where others cannot (besides TeraData).  Despite Microsoft’s continued improvements in this area and all start cast of database people (Gordon Bell, Dave Campbell, Bill Baker and the late Jim Gray).  When I went into accounts they never knew or believed that SQL Server scaled beyond one terabyte.  I attribute this to Oracles efforts to suppress it and Microsoft’s marketing inability to promote it. 

Oracle like Microsoft has its own image problems.  But when I look at Oracles competitive landscape it is not as broad a Microsoft’s and many of the competitor duels as partners like SAP and Salesforce.Com.  They compete against Tibco in the middle tier, but Tibco is a big J2EE shop, so not all bad now that Oracle owns Java.  Oracle has had its share of failures like when they were going to overtake Microsoft Exchange as an email platform   Though I did find it humorous at an Exchange Conference they rolled up an espresso stand for attendees and provide free latte’s along with a promotion for their email system.  They were also smart with Linux and XML.  They jumped all over the Linux OS.   The OS is free but pay Oracle.  On XML I met with Microsoft guru and industry legend Don Box (Don was one of the people who wrote SOAP). Microsoft was just starting to jump on XML.  We were prepping for a meeting with ATT Wireless and he was going to cover UDDI. He said , “Oracle is five years ahead of us”.  I was depressed but when I guy like Don Box speaks it carries a large amount of weight.  He did the whole presentation to ATT Wireless in Notepad.  I was impressed.

There are many things to admire and despise about Oracle but in the end they have never wavered on their business and technical focus.  They continue to lead in the database market after all these years.  as I started the blog so many have competitors have come and gone over the course of time , but Oracle has always had the grit to survive.  I have no doubt in ten years we will still be talking about Oracle.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Hoffmann August 19th 2010