Rebuilding Microsoft

Un bell’articolo di WIRED Magazine sull’ascesa di Ray Ozzie (il papà di Lotus e Groove) in Microsoft e su come la compagnia di Redmond stia cambiando da quando Bill Gates gli ha ceduto il testimone.

There are, of course, two major reasons for Ozzie’s ascendancy at Microsoft: Gates and Ballmer. Ozzie is one of the few technologists anywhere whom they respect; they’d been trying for years to get him to join the company. Now he’s carrying their hopes for the future, and it’s a heavy load. Ozzie needs to move Microsoft from selling software in a box to selling lightning-fast, powerful online applications ranging from gaming to spreadsheets. The risks are enormous. The mission is to radically alter the way the company sells its most profitable software and to pursue the great unknown of so-called Web services – trading an old cash cow for an as-yet-to-be-determined cash cow. No, Microsoft doesn’t think its customers will stop using PCs with hard drives and work entirely online, but the desktop era is drawing to a close, and that promises to force some painful trade-offs.

Link: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/microsoft.html