Last week I had the honor of attending the Microsoft Technology Summit 2006, along with 50 other people from all around the world. And from Silicon Valley, two of the software mavens I respect the most: Tantek Celik and Brian Behlendorf.
I’m going to follow this post with my impression of the summit, talk about the positives and the negatives. But if I had to summarize it all, the two big lessons of the summit are:
- Microsoft has an outstanding developer outreach program.
- How the innovator’s dilemma can hurt your business.
There are some pockets in Microsoft who get it, they realize the world is changing and it’s time to adapt or die. We had drinks with them, we talked we listened. Then there’s the rest of Microsoft who still think their business is to sell complex, over-priced solutions that are incremental updates. And not by chance, those came, presented and then walked away. They talked, we listened.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to two simple things. People want to do more and pay less. Markets self-correct for any inefficiencies. Microsoft realizes now is the time, they know the when, but not the why or how. Or let me say it differently, some of the people I met at Microsoft can see why, guess how. But the top is too busy defending the ways of the past, or just not sharing those secrets with us.
Microsoft has a lot of R&D money, but in three days they showed us how they’re wasting it all. Of course, it may not matter in the end. Microsoft does get it right by version 3, and when your bread and butter are enterprise customers, when your competition is IBM and Sun, the when is probably not now.
Labnotes » Blog Archive » MTS 2006: The exciting parts
Labnotes » Blog Archive » MTS 2006: The disappointing parts