Hans Hoffmann's Blog

Is it “Back to the Future”? No, I am just starting to think about ahead to the future of Windows. There is a little bit out there on the internet that we can point to regarding plans post Windows 8 which is set to ship god knows when.  But it makes for an interesting discussion.  One blog I found references a few things about the possible Windows 9 principles.    First it will be 64 bit only. 2:) There will be no legacy support.  3:) There will be only one OS 4:) There will be one user interface.  A lot of this was discussed at the Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this year so these are not shocking details but it does make for an interesting discussion and speculation.

Starting with 64 bit only I am not sure this is as big of deal, as for example when Windows 95 came out, which was 32 bit. When the industry moved from 16 bit to 32 bit the issue of compatibility wad important.  There were a lot of 16 bit Windows apps that would need to be supported.  Microsoft came up with Win32s (subsystem) in order to support those older applications.  In those days if you were a developer writing exciting applications you were writing to the Windows API’s.  This was before the web had taken off.  In order for an application to perform it needed Windows.  Moving forward to today’s developer environment, though still important, Windows is not the center of the development universe.  Developers are writing applications for the internet, meaning that consumption is through the browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox etc..).  Don’t get me wrong the decision (if true) to move to 64 but only will be a bit painful.  However there will not be as many applications that need to be moved to 64 bit in comparison to the jump from 16 bit to 32 bit.  There should be ample ramp up time.  We should see performance benefits from 64 bit, but in the end I believe due to the web this will be a non-event for both Microsoft and the industry.

The move to 64 bit makes the “no legacy” support a non-issue.  If you have an app that is dependent on Windows you are one of the few.  Over 70% of new development targets the web.  With more services being pushed to the cloud our PC’s are starting to resemble, dare I say, dumb terminals.  For device manufacturers this may be a bit more challenging as all device drivers will need to be updated.  So if you have a HP printer connected to Windows 7 or 8 and you buy a new PC but not a new printer, you will need a device driver written for 64 but.  Seems trivial to those who know what they are doing but most people don’t know where to find an update driver.    This will in the short run create support challenges for many and likely some PR disasters along the way, but we shall overcome.

One OS for all.  It seems like I have been here before back when Microsoft was shipping Windows and Windows NT.  There was a push to have a consolidated client operating system.  The world is a bit different now with the proliferation of different device form factors.  We now have Tablets, SmartPhones, Desktops, Laptops and new devices on the way.  So the question is how broad do you want to be when you say one OS for all?  Windows 8 already promises to be the desktop, laptop and tablet OS.  I guess that leaves the Windows Phone with is sitting over in a different organization at Microsoft, The Interactive Entertainment Business Group (IEB).  The group that owns the XBOX.  As I have said before this will not be a long discussion.  In the end Windows always wins.  Windows Phone will have a new home in the  next couple of years.  The key element in all this to me will be release cycles of the OS.  Phones and Tablets in the industry usually have new releases every year.  A desktop is every three years.  Ina  society where technology is consumer driven and these more aggressive life cycles are the norm, this will be the single biggest challenge of one OS.

Finally tagging on to that is the idea of one user interface.  My phone will look and feel like my laptop.  My tablet will feel like my phone.  Who knows what new devices and form factors lay on the horizon, but one thing is clear.  When we see Windows 9 the landscape will have changed yet again.  It is an interesting and predictable view from Microsoft.  But these ideas seem to much like an upgrade, a rather evil terms by today’s standards.  The idea of comfort.  It is something you are familiar with and feel at home with.  It is the Windows user interface. With Windows 8 the user interface is set to change with the introduction of the Metro interface.  A step in the right direction.  However Metro is taken from the Windows Phone experience, which is not built on the Windows code.  So the circle continues to morph into new and unexpected shapes.  When Windows 9 ships I do not expect Metro to be the user interface.  A bold prediction if I do dare say so myself.

In the end I do believe what we have “heard” so far is a good foundation for the future of Windows.  As I have stated it raises a number of questions.  Some internal to Microsoft and political.  Some are yet to be known as we do not know where the industry will be 3-5 years from now and what direction it has taken.  Others will be dependent on the success or failure of Windows 8, specifically in the tablet space.  If it succeeds expect the Windows division to consolidate and own all OS experiences within Microsoft.  If it fails and they continue to lose ground to Apple and Google, the wild west will be reopened at Microsoft.  I would hope that Windows will make some bets on the future that are yet to unfold.  It would be nice for a Windows OS to actually drive excitement in the industry again.  Not just OEM’s getting excited about selling more laptops, but actual enhancements that change how we work and interact with technology.  It would be nice to just have a vision for the future and not an upgrade.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann, December 19, 2011

One of the phenomena’s that came about during the DotCom era was Customer Relationship Management Software.  To be clear it did not start during this period but it seemed to generate a lot of press during this period.  It became significant as large enterprises needed to centralize how they managed their relationships with customers.  On paper or in PowerPoint it made a lot of sense.  Suddenly you had companies popping up providing customers with a solution.  On paper and in PowerPoint.  In reality it was actually not so bright and cheery.  However one company seems to have emerged from the rubble fairly unscathed and intact, Salesforce.Com.  It’s worth a look as beyond CRM I think we will increasingly see more of these Cloud players enter the market, in fact we already are.

I gotta admit CRM applications are painful. Does not matter who you are – the user, the administrators, the system integrators, etc…I have been around quite a few of them.  Early in my career at Microsoft, a corporate decision was made to go with Siebel Systems Software as Microsoft was growing and had customer information in spreadsheets, databases and 3 rd party software all over the company.  It was becoming increasingly difficult to manage and get good information out of those systems.   After the decision was made it would take over 2 years before it successfully launched Siebel internally.  The user experience was awful.  Later when I was part of the account team for Microsoft covering AT&T Wireless, AT&T was implementing Siebel for their call center.  Three system integrators later and millions of dollars spent it failed.  It was an industry joke.

Why do these systems even exist?  Well there is a huge demand for being able to manage customer relationships in a centralized way.  Both for small and large business it is important to project sales, pipelines etc..as  a measure of the overall health of an organization.  When we talk of Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) we talk about the cost of running a business.  With CRM we are measuring to see if  our revenues will exceed our costs.  CRM is the window into the pulse of the customer, or so it was hoped.  Initially CRM was thought of within the confines of a companies IT infrastructure. In hindsight that may have been a limited outlook.  The internet was exploding and it seemed apparent that CRM should reach beyond the confines of the corporate network infrastructure.  CRM systems during this time period became synonymous with cost over runs.

This brings us to the promise of the cloud in helping us off load those costs.  In the dotcom era a lot of companies came that had the right idea, they were just ahead of their time and the technology was not quite ready.  A few, however, did survive.  One from the era was Salesforce.Com.  Unlike other companies I worked with in the Dot Com era SalesForce.Com has a better and more mature plan.  An example of a company not so good at CRM in the cloud was a company called Corio.   I met with their CTO, who was an entertaining ex-Oracle guy, who laid out the Corio plan.  He said they were going to take Siebel, make it cookie cutter and resell to companies with no customization.  Remember how I started this blog post?  My eyes were rolling as soon as he said “cookie cutter Siebel”.

Getting back to Salesforce, they were much more pragmatic.  First their application would live in the cloud.  So all up-time and management of systems was on Salesforce.  That already is saving an IT department money.  Second they would allow customization, through a partner channel.  This made a lot of sense, because every sales force is different and always has some unique requirement.  To try to create cookie cutter solution is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.  They created a developer platform to support this customization.  These are all attractive solution offerings and reduce the burden to IT departments.  ATT Wireless was a good example of an IT department with extreme costs and therefore extreme burdens.  My last employer, Limelight Networks was an example of a company that was small and needed CRM, just not the headaches that went with it.  Salesforce made a lot of sense.

My impressions of Salesforce as a user were fairly favorable.  There were a lot of “how to” questions to the Salesforce guru at Limelight.  I am not sure any company can have a CRM app without having to hire a person or team of people to act as your go to people for general Q & A.  Even with a user interface as kind as Salesforce, there still is a lot happening and you could spend weeks trying to learn everything it does and how it interacts with other corporate information systems, or does not interact.  Because companies evolve there is a need for the CRM app to evolve with the growth of a company.

Salesforce right now is maturing. Like many fast growing companies it is in its  arrogant phase., This is based on feedback from people I know whom they have called upon.  It’s typical.  One because their CEO Marc Benioff is an ex-Oracle guy.  Oracle guys all seem to be aggressive type-A personalities.  Two during the early hip honeymoon phase all tech companies I have been around or worked at are cocky when things are going well,  The list is long, Microsoft, SUN, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and every dotcom start-up I was around (something to do with over inflated stock prices).  In hindsight,  it’s a good place to be. It is  a fun period professionally to know you are leading the pack. It will be interesting to see how SalesForce expands and goes to version 2 and 3 of the company.  Or it could end up like PeopleSoft and Siebel, two companies founded by ex-Oracle guys only to be acquired by Oracle.

The cloud is very real and is set to become a dominant part of the technology landscape.  Salesforce.com survived the dot bomb days and has emerged as a leader in the Cloud App delivery space.  They are still in the enviable space that many sales opportunities are greenfield opportunities (meaning net new revenue) which Wall Street loves.  Moving forward like any fast growing company  they will have to prove they are more than a one trick pony.  They will also need to be more humble.  Given their executive leadership that may be a bit of a sticking point.  The good news as I have said the cloud is here and Salesforce is well positioned to be a leader.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann December 9, 2011

Around the time Apple launched the tablet Microsoft was working on something called the Courier. A Microsoft alternative to the iPad.  Microsoft beat writer Jay Green just did an expose on the Courier and what happened for CNet.  It’s a pretty telling article on some of the inner working at Microsoft and how decisions are made.  It makes for good corporate political intrigue .  It raises a lot of questions.  I shall try to provide my insight.

I remember the first photo’s of the Microsoft Courier, the new, but ill-fated Microsoft project to capture the tablet market. For starters it was different. It opened like a book with two screens. It looked very cool and sleek.  It showed thinking outside of the box ( I hate that term).  Being at Microsoft at the time it was something everyone craved.  Microsoft has and still is in the mindset of let others create the market and we will come from behind and take the market.  In the past against WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell and many others it was a strategy that worked well.  Lately that has not worked so well starting with Search, Smartphones, Social Networking, Digital Music, Cloud Computing (Ballmer’s quote on the cloud -“We’re all in”…did you really have a choice?) etc..it has, in my view, become a rather outdated mode of attack.  The market is moving much faster and the gains some of these companies make in market share, make it a lead that cannot be caught

In reading the article you get a sense of internal Microsoft politics and I have to be honest a rather disconnected Bill Gates.  We will tackle the latter first and then move on to this blogs episode pf “Dallas” in the next segment.  At one point as things unfolded Steve Ballmer turned to his old friend, boss and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates for his opinion and guidance on which direction to move forward with.  J Allard and crew met Bill at his Kirkland office to review and promote the Courier, as the Tablet for Microsoft moving forward.  Things were going well until the discussion of email came up.  The Courier teams view of email was web-based services such as Hotmail and gMail.  Bill still had and has stuck in his head Microsoft Outlook as the greatest email client since sliced bread.  I think Bill has lost touch with how people communicate.  We have services like SMS (text messaging), Instant Messaging, and Social Networking.  There are a lot of options that do not require a desktop app of the power of Outlook.  But Bill is not a hipster so the new communications technologies seem primitive to him.  He is so connected to his inner geek.  As Steve Jobs said, “It would not have hurt him to have dropped some acid when he was younger”.  The Courier team did not gets Bill’s blessing.  They should have brought some LSD.

Microsoft politics at a high level is pretty simple.  The group with the most money wins.  At Microsoft that really means two groups, the Microsoft Windows division and Microsoft Office division.  What the Courier team was doing was a stripped down version of Windows that would have its own release cycles.  I always felt one of J Allard’s great attributes at Microsoft was his ability to see what was wrong with success.  When he launched XBOX he essentially formed a new company within Microsoft and did not fall into the Microsoft product group track.  The challenge he was going to have with the Courier was it required an operating system.  He was going to do battle with the Windows Division.  It was to be a David versus Goliath moment.  However in this story David does not win.

Steve Sinofsky is the President of the Windows Division, Though not always popular, he does do one thing very well, ship products on time.  I can only guess at this time but I doubt my guesses will be that far off base.  To talk slightly technical for a moment we have the issue of code bases.  This is the actual code developers write to create Windows.  The stuff that makes most people’s eyes glaze over.  What J Allard was proposing was a “new” Windows OS for the Tablet.  One with its own release cycles.  Over time it would “fork” into a completely different direction and I could see eventually being its own OS with its own fiefdom at Microsoft. .  These are very valid points as Microsoft release cycles are no longer acceptable in today’s technology world.  In the old days three-year release cycles were the norm.  In today’s consumer driven world the norm is 12 to 18 months.  More importantly it would not be under the guise of Steve Sinofsky.  Given that the Tablet space is one of the hottest markets on the planet and Microsoft was starting to work on the planning for  Windows 8, this was a battle Steve was not going to lose.  Steve simply could say, “J I have 10 billion dollars….game over”.  And so it was.

Coming forward to today we look like we are still 12 months from the release of Windows 8 (maybe sooner depending on which rumor mill you are listening to).  In the meantime the market has heated up.  The iPad 2 is a run away success.  It sold 500,000 in its first three days on the market.  We now have low-cost providers entering the market for the holidays the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes and Noble Nook.  These coming at prices below $200.  The early review on the Amazon Kindle Fire are very good.  In the mean time we wait for Microsoft.  Will it be June?/  In time for the holidays in 2012.  What version will Apple be on?  By then they should be hard at work on the iPad 4.  I big bet Microsoft is making is the belief that the market wants Windows, that they specifically want a Windows Tablet.  The market moves fast, it will be different when the Windows 8 Tablet ships.

Finally the frustration for many Microsoft employees was that there was a cool device being worked on.  It was perceived as something that could change the game and make Microsoft likable again.   It was different and dangerous, something that is a must if you are to change a market.  But do to internal politics we never saw the Microsoft Courier.  It was created with a start-up mentality in some cool offices in Pioneer Square.  As Jay Greene comments that has all been shut down.  I am not surprised by the death of the Courier and it’s legacy   It was a battle that it was never going to win.  However I know that the people at Microsoft crave this type of excitement in product development.  Though Windows brand still commands 90% market share, it is frankly becoming a rather dull brand.  In the mean time we are promised better things for tomorrow.  However a promise for tomorrow is a promise to no one.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann November 23, 2011

We seem to hear it every day. It’s on the news. The impact to the global economy could be immense.  The fall of the Euro Currency and the Euro Zone could begin.  The ripple effect will bring us into a global recession.  All this stemming from the birth place of democracy, Greece.  Somehow I don’t think Aristotle saw this coming.  How does a global economy evolve so that Greece holds the fate of economic recovery or economic disaster in it’s seemingly feeble hands?  More than anything it is evidence on how connected we are as a global economy.  It just takes one domino to fall to set in motion a chain of events.  It’s an interesting phenom but somehow the domino example simplifies what is a rather complex topic, but one I would like to try to tackle.  Hopefully it will make some sense in the end.

In college I studied in Copenhagen for a year in 1987 (prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall).  A primary focus was, the then 30 plus year old union, the European Economic Community.  The big transition being discussed at the time was not the move to a common currency, the Euro, but the move to border less states.  At the time you still required a passport to travel from Denmark to Germany.  It was a point of pride for my fellow students to have a passport with a bunch of  stamps representing all the countries they had visited.  All the students in the program had the travel bug.  Later in the school year we went to the European Union headquarters in Brussels, Belgium to see, hear and learn how this community worked.  We visited the different branches of EU government, US trade representatives and enjoyed Belgian beer.  It was an exciting time in Europe as they were moving forward with great plans of an integrated Europe.   There were obstacles. Certain countries were economically well behind others, this included countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece.  While other stronger members, primarily Germany paid the bills to modernize these struggling countries.  Looming in the distance was the idea of a common European currency.  The idea of saying good-bye to Italian Lira’s and Greek drachma’s

Stepping back a bit further Europe as a whole has always had different views on social services.  In part driven by the culture, in part driven by the different relationships between labor unions and the state and private industry.  There are, like any system, both good and bad things.  There are basics like health care.  In Europe it is covered by the state (through higher taxes), but specialty services like a back surgery you may need may take a long time to get scheduled.  But talk to anyone in the United States who is out of work and the biggest concern is health care.  Another big one is retirement.  In France for example some public workers can retire in their fifties.  With people living longer and needing more care in their old age, this has become problematic. not to mention very costly.  There are a lot of other services provided by many European Union members but bringing this back to current events when the economy dives it impacts these social services.

Since the fall of Lehman-Brothers we have seen the global economy dive, and it is worth to note I say global economy.  We are interconnected.  The effort to create a common currency in Europe was well founded as the world looked only to, and still only looks to the US dollar for safe haven.  This has been a savior for the US as foreign countries buy up US treasuries and float our debt.    The euro for a while looked like it would act as an alternative to the dollar.  And for a while it was.  The challenge in Europe is it is often called the United States of Europe, but in really these are still independent sovereign states.  Though they for the most part have a common currency (Denmark and the United Kingdom have yet to move to the Euro), in term of funding social services each country still has to fiance these services on their own.  This means that each country has to finance these services through the issuance of government debts.  In the end you have Greek Bonds, Italian bonds, Spanish bonds etc.. With 27 countries in the European Union how do you proactively manage each countries finances?  This is unlike the states in the US that have to balance their budgets each year, which is why a lot of the big cost cutting we see on a daily basis is happening at the states and down through counties and cities.  Imagine if you will 50 states, in addition to the federal deficit, all running multi-billion dollar deficits.  Now imagine Europe..except your not imagining.

When the economy tanked the math becomes pretty simple.  If your tax revenues fall below what your services cost you start to run a deficit and the lager the deficit grows, the more it costs to finance as the banks who loan the money expect higher returns, in the form of higher interest rates.  At some point the interest rates get to a point where the country cannot make payments.  In the case of Europe the magic number seems to be 7% interest.  So what does Greece have to do?  They have to cut government or what is being called austerity measures.  This means social services that have been available for years have to be re-examined and cut.  It could be health care costs are slashed.  Retirement ages are raised. Pension payments are cuts.  Unions rights are challenged.  Education cuts.  It all sounds very familiar to what we hear about on the news on a daily basis in the United States.  Except in this case it is very real.  However as we have seen on television this leads to civil unrest.

One scenario has that Greece declares bankruptcy and exits the Euro and goes back to the drachma.  That means anyone in Greece owing money in Euros will see there costs dramatically rise as the relationship between the drachma and Euro is one where we will likely see the drachma slide and thus end up costing debt holders even more money.  This will likely also lead towards sky rocketing inflation in Greece,  All in all this scenario would be bad for Greeks and the Greek economy. It would also cause instability in the Euro as you would then have the who’s next scenario, which right now is Italy, an even bigger problem looming, that is no longer on the horizon.  If the euro starts to falter it will be good for no one.  As we are hearing this eventually starts to impact economies beyond the shores of Europe.  We have already seen some Wall Street firms make bad bets on Greek debt, leading to more layoffs.

It’s hard to believe that the birth place of democracy has become such a focal point of global economics and politics. What would Aristotle or Socrates do?   Of course much of their dialog was about the conflicts of man himself.  this material thing called the economy might not interest them a whole lot.  But it is of interest to the people who make up the economy, who are already on edge from three years of economic unrest.  Frankly we are all tired of the instability in an increasingly connected and unstable world.  It’s still hard for most to grasp how Greece holds our fate.  I have  tried, but does this comfort someone who is unemployed in Topeka?  Maybe it is best to leave this to Socrates:

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann November 15th 2011