Yesterday I woke up at 4:30am so I could get in my car by 5am, pick up a nice big triple vanilla latte and make my way to Los Angeles for a 10am meeting with Steve Ballmer. I was really thrilled to be invited to this event, thanks to my local Microsoft office (Kevin R., Scott, Kevin B., Suresh…you guys rock!), and it completely exceeded my expectations on many levels. I had no idea what to expect. The title of the event was a conversation with Steve Ballmer but did this mean a conversation with 1000 people? 100 people? 50 people? I was happily surprised to discover I’d be sitting at a table with 10-15 local ISVs…and Steve.
That’s right, we’re on a first name basis now <g>
The purpose of the conversation with Steve was to ask him questions, voice concerns, and in general discuss Microsoft’s overall direction and strategy related to supporting developers, building relationships with ISVs and other partners, and to get a sense of his short and long term vision for the company. Answering our questions and concerns was the focal point of the meeting. Steve began by asking each of us to introduce ourselves and articulate what we wanted to get out the meeting. Of course, with my luck I was asked to go first (thanks Scott) and I was completely unprepared for the question. What do you say to the captain of the mother ship, in a room small enough that you can’t hide behind your laptop screen?
In that fleeting moment many things went through my mind:
But seriously, since my interest lies in Web applications and services, 24x7 operations, and so forth…I asked about Microsoft’s strategy for improving the market’s perception about platform reliability and scalability, in comparison to other platforms. Other’s at the meeting, mostly product vendors, had more specific questions related to their product strategies and pain points.
I’m not sure what I am free to share from the meeting’s discussions, but I would like to share my impressions and some of the messages I personally gleaned from the discussion. First of all, the meeting format was very effective. Steve collected all of our questions, put them in what he called "buckets" and proceeded to initiate interactive discussions for each bucket by sharing his vision and perspective with articulate and deeply informative delivery. His concern for answering all of the attendees’ questions and concerns seemed really genuine, or, maybe he was just happy because he was going on vacation soon…but so much discussion ensued that the meeting went long and as his assistants gave the wave to wrap it up, Steve forged on, consciously extending discussions despite his busy schedule. Nice!
One thing discussed at the meeting is the fact that we can probably all agree that Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Sun would all enjoy selling homogenous solutions to their clients. In the case of IBM and Sun that includes hardware and software. But the reality is that today’s enterprise requires a more flexible approach to all architectural and departmental layers. Enterprise solutions may have any combination of ERP, CRM, BI, SSO and more that deliver on business strategies, but rarely can a single vendor satisfy all. Microsoft is no different in wanting what other vendors want…a single vendor solution…but they also have focused on Web services and platform extensibility (and will continue to do so) so that .NET can be deployed as part of a comprehensive data center solution (for example) and plug-in to existing infrastructure without being intrusive.
I buy all that, however Microsoft needs to be better at telling the story of how its product offerings fit together, and what those pricing models, solution deployments and success stories look like. How can Great Plains, BizTalk Server, Host Integration Server, Sharepoint Portal Server and .NET be deployed in a comprehensive solution? What would it cost and how does that compare to the expense of J2EE equivalent choices with various vendors? What problem does each product solve? Where are the integration points where other vendor’s products can be swapped for one of these enterprise products? The Java community expects to license different products from different vendors (usually) to solve a problem. For very large enterprises, they are sometimes willing to pay an arm and a leg for annual product support (which is not always so supportive in my experience) for multiple products, that can lead to costs upwards of $1 million for a small company to $40 million for a large enterprise including hardware and software licenses. I would wager a bet that a Microsoft solution would be more cost effective, provide a more productive development environment, be highly flexible and extensible, and be equally secure, reliable and scalable…but where’s the data to back this up? I’ve personally talked with folks that have a great scalability story to tell, yet they will not allow a case study to share the most important details in public! There has to be someone that will share!!! Pet Shop doesn’t cut it. Microsoft needs to seriously allocate some funds to pulling together this story. Hey Steve, I’d be happy to help write it just say the word!
Discussions went into the fact that vendors building on the .NET platform want the framework to be distributed with the operating system, to reduce deployment overhead and the need for bootstrapping. Steve made it pretty clear that the focus of XP Service Pack 2 (which does not put a .NET footprint on machines) is 100% security, and it was purposely mandated that no other agenda be satisfied (I think we all know why). But today’s deployment and versioning story for the smart client is one that requires careful planning to reduce the number of times we need to touch the client. Your first installation CD must have magical powers instilled by your team’s proactive efforts to include automatic update triggers that align with your client’s need for control over when and how updates happen (telepathy is not yet an option). Web deployments are more complicated today (pre-ClickOnce) since regardless of bootstrapping the redistributable, there are issues of runtime security privileges since Web apps run within a different runtime host, IEHost.exe. The bottom line, installation programs, and deployment and versioning solutions have always been and will continue to be a pain in the you-know-what…even while things like ClickOnce make things a little easier...you have to put in the effort evaluating your client’s demands and plan ahead…as they say in Spanish, no hay silver bullet.
I don’t really know what else I can share here, so let me get back to Steve, with whom I remain impressed. Why? Well, I liked the way he approached the meeting, how he responded to difficult questions about partners and competition, outsourcing, and open source (to name a few other subjects). His grasp on every aspect of Microsoft’s product offerings present and future was impressive as well, he is no slouch. And, let me tell you another reason why I’m impressed. I asked one of the Microsoft guys why Steve would take time out of his (obviously busy) schedule to meet with such a small group. What does he get out of it? The answer – to gather feedback from the vendor and developer community in a small, quality venue where conversations can run deep, so that he can think about how this shapes his message to the company going forward. I was told that <ducking> feedback from this type of discussion ultimately turns into a shift in focus that will be propagated through the ranks at Microsoft shortly after the meeting</ducking>.
I for one feel fortunate to have had the chance to shake his hand, hear him speak candidly with injections of his usual animated persona, and get a glimpse of his true character. One thing’s for sure, Steve is one classy guy, and he groks developers and technology…
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