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The end of the Gates era
June 16, 2006 -
Ozzie, Mundie pick up tech mantle at Microsoft
June 16, 2006 -
Gates stepping down from full-time Microsoft role
June 15, 2006
Okay, that's not entirely true. Many of Gates' duties are being handed off to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie as part of the tech icon's effort to step away from day-to-day technical leadership at Microsoft.
But while the company is looking for individual leaders, the company is also aiming to further democratize its technical leadership. A key part of that is a new internal communications system designed to allow workers to spitball ideas on where the company should be headed, CNET News.com has learned.
In an interview Thursday, Gates said that the system, known as Quests, is still in the early stages of development. Still, it "gets us to be really specific about the future of the home, the future of the office, the future of the data center," Gates said.
The idea is to draw more of Microsoft's technical minds into the process of planning for the future. "It will be a SharePoint wiki thing internally so people can say where they disagree or we're missing something," Gates said.
It's part of Microsoft's effort to make the company less dependent on any particular individuals, including Gates.
"Two years from now...the commitment I made to Bill is that we're going to be in the position where hopefully we would anticipate anything he would suggest to us," Ballmer said. "That's part of getting the company to the place where it can have this broad, big agenda and it's got to be driven by not only guys like me, but the next generation of leaders."
Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer declined to offer too many specifics on the system, or say when it will be up and running." It's a good exercise that (CTO) David Vaskevitch and Bill and Ray (Ozzie) are championing to have a little bit more regular, informal way to actually call on people to express and help the company shape its long-term technical direction," Ballmer said.
Google has its own system in which workers can be inspired by what their colleagues are working on. On its internal Web site, Google workers can see each employee's key objectives and results, thereby getting a sense of what co-workers are up to.
However, Gates and Ballmer took pains to contrast what Microsoft is doing with Google's system.
"This is different," Gates said. "This is about what the future is."
Ballmer concurred. "This is where you kind of synthesize what you think we ought to do as opposed to just saying 'Hey what is everybody up to?'"
Greg DeMichillie, an analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft, said the key is whether the system helps Microsoft come up with concrete plans.
"I don't think Microsoft is suffering from a lack of ideas," he said. "(Windows) Vista isn't in trouble because of a lack of ideas. It's a shortage of planning, scheduling and estimating."
DeMichillie said, from his perspective, Microsoft's biggest problems is stitching together all of its ideas into coherent plans. "One of Microsoft's big problems is that they have all of these different (product) teams," he said. "How does that ever get tied together in a way that makes sense for customers?"
Such a system is important for the broadening giant, Ballmer maintains. "We like to think it as a way of being intentional about the key technology transformations that we think will be important over the next 10 years, even if the business models are uncertain, which for a lot of things, they will be uncertain for a long time."
See more CNET content tagged:
Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, worker, leadership
No, MSFT is taking a great first step towards transparency and internal innovation from the ranks. No doubt, the Ozzification of MSFT is just now beginning; the ugly old fat and delusional grub soon to become the beautiful, multi-colored butterfly it is so capable of morphing into!
No, MSFT is taking a great first step towards transparency and internal innovation from the ranks. No doubt, the Ozzification of MSFT is just now beginning; the ugly old fat and delusional grub soon to become the beautiful, multi-colored butterfly it is so capable of morphing into!
http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/www_innovate.nsf/pages/ourselves.thinkplace.html
http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/www_innovate.nsf/pages/ourselves.thinkplace.html
Majority of all Xbox 360 games are developed on a G5 Power Mac, not a XP machine, why is that ?
Your Vista is no better then Suse Linux 10.1 that I can download for free with access to thousands of programs for free and commercial solutions are there to purchase as well.
I am so disapointed is MS, that XP is the last OS that I am got and your OFfice update looks retarded, you guys removed all the menus that people are used to and made it look retarded for retarded people.
Majority of users who can afford Office that cost what $500 or more for full version are not people who are 21, they will download it and hack it for free.
And people in their 30's and so on, don't like major catastrophic changes. You guys should have done more useability studies, lock people in rooms and study them like rats. Either you forgot about that, or it wasn't presented to your core market.
Majority of all Xbox 360 games are developed on a G5 Power Mac, not a XP machine, why is that ?
Your Vista is no better then Suse Linux 10.1 that I can download for free with access to thousands of programs for free and commercial solutions are there to purchase as well.
I am so disapointed is MS, that XP is the last OS that I am got and your OFfice update looks retarded, you guys removed all the menus that people are used to and made it look retarded for retarded people.
Majority of users who can afford Office that cost what $500 or more for full version are not people who are 21, they will download it and hack it for free.
And people in their 30's and so on, don't like major catastrophic changes. You guys should have done more useability studies, lock people in rooms and study them like rats. Either you forgot about that, or it wasn't presented to your core market.
They didn't take the time to develop & evolve normally like every
other company in the industry has. There practice has always
been taking strategies from other companies and making it
there own.
Now in the conflict of crisis. Internally they are going from Dept.
to Dept. really trying to figure, what it is there exactly good at.
Now its a Human Resource issue?? Sheesh whats next...
Its a total mess and their public admitting there faults only now..
What was all the talk of them being a company on the move??
Whats worst now is there lying to their customers..
They didn't take the time to develop & evolve normally like every
other company in the industry has. There practice has always
been taking strategies from other companies and making it
there own.
Now in the conflict of crisis. Internally they are going from Dept.
to Dept. really trying to figure, what it is there exactly good at.
Now its a Human Resource issue?? Sheesh whats next...
Its a total mess and their public admitting there faults only now..
What was all the talk of them being a company on the move??
Whats worst now is there lying to their customers..
I see Internet Explorer, I see a huge imitiation of Netscape.
I look at Vista and I see an imitations of OS X.
I see Windows Media Player 11, I see imitations of Itunes.
I can go on and on..
Based on the points above....Tell me how can you see MS as
being original?? Point is they've been the follower all along and
almost never the leader. Except when it comes to taking its
customers money.
I see Internet Explorer, I see a huge imitiation of Netscape.
I look at Vista and I see an imitations of OS X.
I see Windows Media Player 11, I see imitations of Itunes.
I can go on and on..
Based on the points above....Tell me how can you see MS as
being original?? Point is they've been the follower all along and
almost never the leader. Except when it comes to taking its
customers money.
After a while everyone gets borred, even as we see Bill Gates, he doesn't want to stick around anymore, he lost interest.
MS made a mistake of trying to do too much and put their hands into too many different pots, if you know what I mean.
They need to re-concentrate on their core products that got them where they are today and on other core future products. They just try to do too much and I think this is because there is so much competition. MS is being fired at from all angels and they feel like they have a need to defend and challenge every bullet fired at them.
They are going to run out of resoursces and time and fall behind and in the long run loose money if they continue to do that. They need a war plan that has strategy and make sense, because you can react to every single tease trown at you. There is plenty of floppy products that MS and other companies put out through out their history, even Apple, but it seems like that average is increasing for MS and not going the other way.
- My opinion of what MS needs to do
- by rmiecznik June 20, 2006 8:13 AM PDT
- Let's just say that know someone that works at MS. There is some smart people there, but the majority are idiots, lots of people that care about how they dress, look and are perceived in the public, over their job role. Lots of people that act and use a combination of macro/micro management styles, but I havn't a clue for they got their jobs, maybe favors or friends. There is a lot of young blood that still has to prove them selfs, majority of the people that had a lot of skills, while not all, left to enjoy their millions, start their own ventures, retire, or try doing something else for a different employer.
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- by shadfurman March 5, 2009 10:37 PM PST
- your stupid, I've been hearing this argument for 10 years now. suck your assumptions and "I know better" mentality. cause MS is worth billions... and your NOT.
- Like this
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (60 Comments)After a while everyone gets borred, even as we see Bill Gates, he doesn't want to stick around anymore, he lost interest.
MS made a mistake of trying to do too much and put their hands into too many different pots, if you know what I mean.
They need to re-concentrate on their core products that got them where they are today and on other core future products. They just try to do too much and I think this is because there is so much competition. MS is being fired at from all angels and they feel like they have a need to defend and challenge every bullet fired at them.
They are going to run out of resoursces and time and fall behind and in the long run loose money if they continue to do that. They need a war plan that has strategy and make sense, because you can react to every single tease trown at you. There is plenty of floppy products that MS and other companies put out through out their history, even Apple, but it seems like that average is increasing for MS and not going the other way.