Gates: Ozzie was best guy not working for us

Bill Gates long considered Ray Ozzie, the Lotus Notes creator who joined Microsoft one year ago, a perfect fit for the software giant.

"I had said to Steve (Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive) for a long time that Ray was the best guy in the industry who didn't work for us. And Steve would always respond, ''Well, let's get him," Gates wrote in an email exchange published on Monday by The Boston Globe.

Gates also said that Ozzie, now a chief technical officer at Microsoft tasked with formulating the company's software services strategy, is "super well-respected inside Microsoft, just as he is throughout the industry."

Moreover, Gates says that Ozzie was seen as a valuable collaborator, even though he created Notes, a rival to Microsoft's Exchange email server software. "Ray has never really been an outsider. Even when he was developing Notes, he was helping us improve Windows.

And Gates left no doubt about Ozzie's standing among Microsoft's top thinkers. "We're an unusual company in that there are just a few key people that span our three major businesses--me, Ray, Craig Mundie, and David Vaskevitch."

Ozzie shares the chief technical officer title with Mundie, who deals with emerging technologies, such as embedded computing, and government policies, and Vaskevitch, who focuses on business platforms.