Microsoft’s Vision

re: Microsoft’s Vision

Kevin Daly — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:20:11 GMT

The magic of software is a key concept in my opinion, and in quite a literal sense: in what software can do it really comes very close to the things our ancestors dreamed of.

It's unfortunate that magic is automatically associated with mystification, which has negative connotations for IT.

But to me software really is the human imagination unleashed, and as far as I'm concerned that's magic. It's also a Hell of a lot of fun.

re: Microsoft’s Vision

kettch — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:52:00 GMT

There certainly are a lot of Microsoft products and technologies that have the magic. However, the seamlessness is definitely something I'd like to see done better.

For instance, under the devices heading there, they have a Zune, a WM phone, and an XBox. All are fairly cool on their own, but they don't exactly work together as well as they could. Sure, you can shuffle content around between the three, but not in a way that I'd call seamless.

re: Microsoft’s Vision

stevecla01 — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:22:58 GMT

kettch - yep, I'm with you on that one. It's tough to get so many product groups to see where the magic between their products could be and even more so when products release at different times and in different places. however, that just the facts - not an excuse. Under Ray Ozzie's tutelage I think we can and will do better. his recent strategy memo talks about a social mesh and that's a good way to think about where the products you mention can work together in a much better way

re: Microsoft’s Vision

sytelus@yahoo.com — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:06:00 GMT

As a consumer I don't find myself getting jazzed about this vision. Frankly there is very small percentage of people who would own such multitude of gadgets and being desperate about having "seamless" experience on all of them. If I can't read blogs in my microwave, I care less. Actually this kind of vision statements shows how out of touch (and "unvisionary") MS execs are. PC industry has been history. Computers aren't important anymore - rather they are just tool to create and consume *information*. The *information* is the kind. It will matter in future more than ever which company has every single bit of information every published in any form. An ability to collect all these information and make it accessible - that's what this century is about (as opposed to things like an ability in Xbox or Smartphone to type word documents). Google gets this. And IMHO very naturally. When your excecs dvelve on things like "business value" of scanning all of the books in the world and aren't really convinienced, com back here and re-read this comments.

re: Microsoft’s Vision

stevecla01 — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:54:17 GMT

I could offer you a long explanation of why business value is important to Microsoft and not Google but lets not dwell on that for now....

I'm interested in this - if *you* were Steve Ballmer, what would you state as the company vision? Remember you have to capture ALL the audiences Microsoft sells to, not just people who read blogs and have iPhones :) Seriously, I'd love to know.