While I’m not in the habit of link blogging, Jason Kolb blogged a similar take to my recent themes about Microsoft entitled Five Not-So-Easy Steps to Save Microsoft. Jason starts with:

Let me stick a disclaimer on the front of this post: I cut my teeth on Microsoft technology and have been a big supporter of them in the past. I would really like this company to survive because otherwise I’m going to have a lot of useless knowledge cluttering up my brain. However, I am a realist and this is a company in a dangerous situation. It saddens me to see this once great company slowly dying, and I hope they do something to stop the bleeding before it’s too late.

Microsoft is in an interesting situation right now. Their monopoly is fading fast, and the only product they have that’s driving any significant level of buzz is the Xbox 360. They’ve gone from  absolutely dominating the technology space to almost falling out of the cutting-edge technology consciousness. They’ve done very little in the past couple of years to enhance their standing as a leading technology company, and I think a lot of people view them as living in the past.

He continues with (emphasis mine):

I think Microsoft is in a precarious situation right now–it’s on the verge of becoming irrelevant. The reason Microsoft has been so dominant over the past twenty years is because they have not only courted programmers, but they (it) made much easier for programmers to use their technology as a platform than anything(body) else. This resulted in the majority of mainstream software being written for Windows. Which resulted in more people buying Windows, which resulted in more developers writing for Windows. It was a catch-22 in favor of Microsoft, and they made money hand over fist because of it.

That’s what I’ve been saying recently, though my posts came from a slightly different angle. Jason’s take is that operating systems and language no longer matter (emphasis mine):

The result of this software lifecycle shift has been that developing for a mass audience has a lot less to do with the operating system and a lot more to do with the end-user experience. The language and platform no longer matter, it’s just the end result now. In fact, more than which operating system or language is used, it’s now the ability to scale on an as-needed basis that is the primary requirement for applications. Microsoft fails miserably at this requirement because of their licensing model and the way they try to monetize their software, which they haven’t really changed since the 1980’s.  Just from keeping an eye on the Net I sense a mass migration to open source development platforms, and the search trends seem to back that up–as a bonus bad omen, the news volume for their languages is practically non-existant.

While I don’t disagree with his main premise, I don’t completely agree that the language and platform don’t matter; they are still what is used to create and host applications, be they local or on the web, and those things take time to learn and build expertise in. Jason even acknowledges that at the start by saying “…otherwise I’m going to have a lot of useless knowledge cluttering up my brain.”

In my (humble :) opinion, the problem is more in Microsoft’s licensing model which makes it so much easier for people to choose open-source. And I believe people are choosing open-source in droves over Microsoft’s solutions as I know I am starting to. Jason addressed this point in the last paragraph above by saying: “Microsoft fails miserably…because of their licensing model and the way they try to monetize their software, which they haven’t really changed since the 1980’s.”

Jason then goes on to recommend the following five (5) “not so easy” steps to fix Microsoft, which I think are spot-on (except for the last one, that’s at the same time both obvious and too vague to be an action item):

1. Release .NET as open source.
2. Release Windows as open source.
3. Release a SaaS version of Office, ASAP.
4. Find a Steve Jobs clone.
5. Start innovating again.

Jason of course goes into far more detail and his post is definitely worth a read if you care about these things. Oh, there is one final pull quote I’ll reference on his second step to drive the point home (emphasis mine):

What’s really going to hurt them, however, is the licensing model for the server products. When you compare the cost of running and scaling a Windows-based application versus running and scaling on Linux, it becomes a no-brainer. I can’t think of a single good reason for developing a SaaS application for Windows when you’ll be paying Microsoft licensing fees every time you need to scale, and you could be getting that software for free using Linux. Microsoft needs to consider the operating systems loss leaders and an incredibly powerful way to market their other products, before everyone stops developing for them and everyone stops using them as a result.

Via Ben Coffey.

P.S. I have numerous posts that are in various stages of completion covering some of this same ground from, again, a slightly different angle. But when I finalize and post them, please don’t think them a copy-cat of Jason’s post. :)  This is such an obvious area to discuss these day’s, there are lots of similar independent thoughts, for hopefully obvious reason.

business, dotnet, microsoft, urldesign, windowsserver, windowsvista

What’s the next big thing? AJAX? Ruby on Rails? PC Virtualization? Open-Source Software? Data Security? Open Office File Formats? Windows Vista? Windows Live? Apple’s iWhatever? Yeah, all those things will get lots of hype, but the next big thing is something we’ve had access to all along:

Simplicity

Are my thoughts revolutionary? Nah, I’ve been reading about it at places like Information Week and the other usual suspects. Even Bill Gates at Microsoft gets it, through Ozzie at least (though execution will be the key.) But unlike all that gets hyped, simplicity as a concept that is for real.

Let’s look at two of the best known examples:

1. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
2. Really Simple Syndication.

Over the years, the world’s Internet email infrastructure evolved from that simple little mail transfer protocol (spam and all!) And RSS exploded as a method to syndicate blog posts in a very short order instead of one of the many complex content syndication concepts most of us never even heard of.

To most people the Internet came out of nowhere ten (10) years ago yet it evolved for at least twenty (20) years prior. The Internet’s foundation protocol TCP/IP isn’t exactly simple, but once the simple protocols HTTP and HTML were layered on top, Internet use exploded because implementing websites was simple (by comparison.)

But it’s not just simple technologies, its also simple to install and simple to use applications: ASCII text editors (i.e. Notepad), web browsers, email clients (w/apps like Outlook Express), instant messenger clients, wikis, blogging apps, online forum apps, and QuickBooks (simple is relative; accounting is required yet QuickBooks doesn’t really require accounting expertise.)

And to many people this simplicity makes sense. Scott Cook (founder of Intuit) got it. The founders of the original Instant Messenger (ICQ) got it. Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay) got it. Google gets it. The original author of PHP Ramus Lerdorf gets it. And a lesser known group also gets it; the developers of Basecamp (although 37 Signals could also be the poster child for when a group elevates a concept to an ideology, and like all ideologists, becomes blind and misinterprets the concept. But I digress…)

Okay this is all obvious, and well, it’s simple. So what’s the big deal? People recognize that simple is important but without a simple roadmap, most don’t know how (pun intended.) I don’t know that I can provide that roadmap, but at least I can get you started.

First, just for grins, let’s look at some counter examples:

• MS-Access – Have you ever tried to develop an app is MS-Access? Yeah right.Access it pretty easy in where it allows you as a user to point and click, but once you hit its brick wall of end user functionality, you’ve got to be an Access guru to do anything more with it.
• VB.NET – Thank god for the My namespace in VB 2005, albeit five years late, but VB.NET is still too damn difficult to use productively without weeks of learning.Don’t get me wrong, I love the power of VB.NET language, but it has very little transitionality.
• ASP.NET – I know its blasphemy, but let’s be real: VIEWSTATE, __doPostBack(), Server Controls, @Register, @Import, WebForms, DataGrid, etc. etc. There’s so much complexity there, where does one start? It’s no wonder so many people still use ASP & VBScript.
• Exchange Server – Oh my god! How complex a beast can you get? Most POP3/SMTP servers use files and directories; Exchange using some bastardization of an Access/Jet database that corrupts whenever the power fluctuates. And have you ever tried implementing server events?
• SharePoint – I can’t even figure out SharePoint as a user, let alone as a developer. What was Microsoft thinking?
• Active Directory – Need I say more?!?

I’ve bashed on Microsoft thus far, but let me not give them all the credit:

• XML, though itself simple, has been complicated with namespaces which I’ve studying for literally years I but still can’t figure out how to use.
• SOAP – Okay, Microsoft was heavily involved here. But why did they have to make web services so hard?I mean, what was wrong with HTTP POST?
• J2EE – There’s a reason J2EE developers get paid the really big bucks.
• Oracle – Have you ever tried to tune an Oracle database application?
• Content Management Systems – Is there anything out that can pass for simple? I’ve been using DotNetNuke on one of my sites for a while and I can tell you, it isn’t.

This brings me to my key point. Aside from being intuitively obvious, what’s so great about simple?

The Benefits of "simple" are, quite simply:

• For the User: Productivity
• For the Platform Provider: Rapid and Widespread Adoption

But you say that all of my counter examples have widespread adoption?

Do not underestimate the institutional will of large organizations to implement tremendously complex technology, because they can.

On the other hand, departmental users, users in small businesses, college students, home users and more can’t deal with complex technology. If it’s too difficult, they don’t or can’t use it. And there are many, many more of them than there are large organizations. What’s more, large organizations are effectively made up of these small groups and individuals. Simple technologies benefit all.

Microsoft, with its Windows monopoly has been able to get away with complexity and consequent low user productivity and low platform adoption with many of its products for a long time. But with the new challenges from Google, SalesForce, et. al. they better get pragmatic religion, and they better get it fast.

And that roadmap to which I referred? To quote Albert Einstein:

As simple as possible, but not simpler

:-)

ajax, aspdotnet, dotnet, forums, msoffice, rss, simplicity, tools, vbdotnet, webarchitecture, webbasedapps, windowsvista, xml