As the sun sets on Jim Allchin's Microsoft career, the dawn ahead holds uncertainty about the company's direction under its predominately sales-and-marketing leadership.
Allchin and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who retires on June 30, 2008, are among the last of a generation of Microsoft executives. They represent an era and software developer culture that is in transition--or is going to have to be, because of changes at the top.
Microsoft's evolving management structure puts sales-and-marketing people at the top of the Microsoft organizational pyramid. Several reorganizations pushed aside or put to pasture many high-level, hardcore technology managers and replaced them with sales and marketing folks. Before September 2005, product people had more direct contact with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer than they do today.
Microsoft's Bill Gates ushered his company's new Vista OS and Office 2007 software suite into Europe this morning, near the end of a round-the-world event that brings the software to 70 countries in 19 languages.
Gates, who wore a pin-stripe suit and burgundy tie, started his presentation about 20 minutes late at the UK launch event at the British Library, which is working with Microsoft to digitize parts of its vast collection.
He recalled how far the company had come since 1995, the year the 32-bit Windows OS was launched along with the Internet Explorer browser, now one of the company's most-used applications.
While Windows Vista and Office 2007 officially hit the streets today after years of development, Microsoft is far from done with innovating and changing the new user interface in the Office System family of products.
Going forward, the new ribbon-based user interface is likely to be applied to other applications that did not get it in Office 2007, Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Division Product Management Group, told eWEEK in an interview ahead of the general availability of the products on Jan. 30.
His critiques that day echoed the blunt, urgent e-mails Allchin sent in 2003 and 2004 while Microsoft was readying Vista. In one missive to Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer, Allchin saying that Microsoft had lost its way.
"I think our teams lost sight of what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means...I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products," Allchin wrote.
On the development side, Allchin was even more enmeshed. In the final days before Microsoft declared Vista done, Allchin and his technical assistant spent long hours testing arcane scenarios to try to spot bugs that either the development teams or the servers running automated tests might have missed.
Watch out: That sneak peek of your favorite television program may soon be doing double-duty as a Windows Vista .
Microsoft's past Windows advertising campaigns have centered on traditional TV commercials, such as its iconic Windows 95 ads with the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" as the soundtrack. These days, many of us would press fast-forward to skip it.
So in addition to regular TV ads, Microsoft will tout this week's Windows Vista launch with a broader campaign that includes new types of online ads, billboards and promotions. And even in the old-fashioned medium of television, the company will try some new tricks.
Microsoft has had more than 100,000 downloads of its Software Factories software development technology since it debuted six
months ago, S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, said in his blog.
A Software Factory is a package of tools, processes, and guidance that extends the Visual Studio developer platform to optimize
it for a specific type of application, such as an occasionally connected client or a Windows Communication Foundation service,
Somasegar said.
Microsoft launched a campaign in the United Kingdom to get midrange companies to submit to a software audit.
Those who refuse risk having their details being handed to the Business Software Alliance, which will execute follow-up interviews that could result in fines and other penalties.
The company revealed on Monday that it is launching the campaign, which is aimed at companies that have not already joined similar licensing schemes such as the controversial Windows Genuine Advantage.
On Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer attempted to end rumors that Windows Vista will be the last Windows client OS, claiming that Microsoft has "plenty more where that came from" at a press event to mark
the consumer launch of the new OS and Office 2007 in New York.
Sitting alongside executives from some of Microsoft's most important partners -- such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and
Dell -- Ballmer said there is plenty of room for innovation on the PC, and Microsoft plans to continue to build upon the user
interface, security, and multimedia enhancements in Vista.
After more than five years of development, over 50 million lines of software code, a $6 billion investment and a few headaches, Microsoft's Windows Vista finally reaches consumers this week.
But the extent of success of the new operating system may depend more on large corporations, looking for different things than the multimedia bells and whistles aimed at home users and who have more discretion about when to buy the software.
Computers running Vista go on sale at retailers on Tuesday, two months after Microsoft made it available to corporate, or enterprise, customers. This is the first major upgrade of the Windows operating system since Microsoft first released Windows XP in October 2001.
Since August, Microsoft has sought to get changed what it believes are inaccuracies contained in Wikipedia articles about desktop file formats, particularly Open XML. After months of slow responses from Wikipedia, changes were made, following word that the company offered to pay Rick Jelliffe to correct entries. The Talk:Ecma Open XML discussion page catalogs some of the requests and changes.
News stories proliferated over the last couple days, with many aghast that Microsoft would offer to pay someone to edit Wikipedia posts. Initially, I shared a similar view, which my colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols expressed yesterday, about the pay-for-edit offer. But in the more than 24 hours since, my position has changed, and I'm backing Microsoft on what was an arguably risky endeavor.