You have to hand it to Microsoft. No, really, you do. When it leaps into the fray, it does so in a big, bold way.
Last week the software giant stepped to the plate to announce some new initiatives designed to put it back in the running at a time when all the good things on the web can be summed up in just a few words — Google, Skype, eBay, Amazon, blog and Yahoo!.
In a move that was classic Microsoft, founder and chairperson Bill Gates announced the launch of Windows and Office Live, a cluster of (free) applications that, when launched, will take the user’s focus off the desktop and into cyberspace, meaning you can log on from any PC in the world and still do the same things you could do from your home or office.
So, what’s the big news here?
Well, for years everyone has been looking for the next “killer app” (defined by that repository of the planet’s collective knowledge, Wikipedia.com, as “a computer program that is so useful that people will buy a particular piece of computer hardware, gaming console, and/or an operating system simply to run that program”).
Tech gurus and consultants have pontificated for years as to what the next killer app may be (the last one was probably e-mail, or web browsing, or voice-over-internet protocol, depending on who you ask and when you ask them). But take a step back and the answer will become self-evident. The next killer app is not a funky little piece of software that sends flowers off to granny on her birthday, or that SMSs you when your fridge has run out of milk. It’s the platform that allows all that to happen: the internet itself.
The companies that have managed to become the leaders of the pack (see list above) are those who recognised that ages ago. Google realised that people wanted to organise, search and access the internet in a logical way. Skype realised that, if the internet was sitting in everyone’s home, then it was as ubiquitous as the telephone. And so their strategy was to become the telephone.
Challenge for Microsoft
The team from Redmond, however, faced another challenge. Microsoft likes owning stuff and the scary thing for the company is that the platform is not only vast and uncontrollable, it is also not theirs. It belongs to everyone, and everyone can do what they like with it.
For a while, Microsoft let this get the better of it, and it floundered around the internet half-heartedly, never really making an impact. And as it sulked in the corner, everyone else overtook it. Microsoft needed something to wake it up. And it seems that something did.
Some say it was the appointment of rising star Ray Ozzie. Leaked copies of an October memo from him to Microsoft staff seem to demonstrate some fresh thinking on his part — he uses words like “seamless”, talks about software that “just works” and implores his staff to compete hard yet “responsibly”. But something must have happened in advance of his appointment — he’s only been there a couple of months and this new offering, or at least the thinking behind it, must have been in development for a while.
But whatever the catalyst for the new thinking was, it seems to have paid off.
The new, mature Microsoft realised that worrying about who owns what isn’t a sustainable strategy. And so it set out to become an indispensable part of everyone’s internet experience. Enter Windows and Office Live — a cluster of applications that, individually, would appear to be half-hearted, belated responses to those of Microsoft’s competitors. But collectively they represent a giant leap forward.
The rationale goes something like this: offer the users a great set of applications, for free, in one place. Get them hooked — integrate search, e-mail and all the other nice bits that have some sort of track record, and they won’t need or go near Google or Skype again.
Leadership position
And so, by using broad strokes rather than measly little ones (or adopting what corporates like calling the “helicopter view”), Microsoft has entrenched its leadership position and given everyone else something to catch up to. And by pushing “seamlessness” as the new buzzword, it is giving itself the edge. Assuming that the mantra is taken up and echoed around the world, then everyone will be working hard once more to become “seamless” with whatever the standard is. And the standard, still by a long way, is the Windows operating system. As I said, classic Microsoft.
A few months ago I, like many others, was prepared to write Microsoft off. It was bumbling along in its own little Windows world, working hard at next year’s release of Vista, allowing others to breathe in the enriched oxygen inside the new tech bubble. And then, from nowhere, comes this new salvo in the war. And with one announcement it put itself right back on the leading edge.
Microsoft has said to Skype: “Fine — focus on phone. We’ll do that too, but we’ll also do all these other cool things and package them together into one compelling offer. And we’ll make it free.” And then, just to twist the knife, it added: “Oh, and we’ve been asking around and customers seem to want everything to be seamless. So, you might want to make your offering function as an integral part of the whole … which means you have to make it talk nicely to our products.”
When a company with the reach and buying power of Microsoft throws down the gauntlet like this, then you can be fairly sure that more than one or two executives are having sleepless nights. Gates is back in the game. And he’s in charge.