Memorandum Excerpt, Alleged: Internet Software Services
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 9:56 PM
To: Executive Staff and Direct Reports; Distinguished Engineers
Subject: Internet Software Services
“… Ten years ago this December, I wrote a memo entitled The Internet Tidal Wave which described how the internet was going to forever change the landscape of computing… Five years ago we focused our strategy on .NET making a huge bet on XML and web services… We will build our strategies around internet services and we will provide a broad set of service APIs and use them in all of our key applications… This coming ‘services wave’ will be very disruptive… This next generation of the internet is being shaped by its ‘grassroots’ adoption and popularization model, and the cost-effective ‘seamless experiences’ delivered through the intentional fusion of services, software and sometimes hardware… I’ve attached a memo from Ray which I feel sure we will look back on as being as critical as The Internet Tidal Wave memo was when it came out…”
–Bill
PS:
From: Ray Ozzie
Date: October 28, 2005
To: Executive Staff and direct reports
Subject: The Internet Services Disruption
“… This isnt the first time of such great change: weve needed to reflect upon our core strategy and direction just about every five years… In 1990, there was actually a question about whether the graphical-user-interface had merit… When we reflected upon our dreams just five years later in 1995, the impetus for our new center of gravity came from the then-nascent web… In 2000, in the waning days of the dot com bubble, we yet again reflected on our strategy and refined our direction… It is now 2005, and the environment has changed yet again- this time around services…
The Landscape:
… In the US, there are more than 100MM broadband users, 190MM mobile phone subscribers, and WiFi networks blanket the urban landscape… We shouldve been leaders with all our web properties in harnessing the potential of AJAX, following our pioneering work in OWA [Outlook Web Access]. We knew search would be important, but through Googles focus theyve gained a tremendously strong position. RSS is the internets answer to the notification scenarios weve discussed and worked on for some time, and is filling a role as the UNIX pipe of the internet as people use it to connect data and systems in unanticipated ways. For all its tremendous innovation and its embracing of HTML and XML, Office is not yet the source of key web data formats- surely not to the level of PDF. While weve led with great capabilities in Messenger and Communicator, it was Skype, not us, who made VoIP broadly popular and created a new category. We have long understood the importance of mobile messaging scenarios and have made significant investment in device software, yet only now are we surpassing the Blackberry… The same is true of Apple, which has done an enviable job integrating hardware, software and services into a seamless experience with .Mac, iPod and iTunes, but seems less focused on enabling developers to build substantial products and businesses.
… Only a few years ago Id have pointed to the Weblog and the Wiki as significant emerging trends; by now theyre mainstream and have moved into the enterprise. Flickr and others have done innovative work around community sharing and tagging based on simple data formats and metadata. GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting are very popular low-end solutions to remote PC access and online meetings… VoIP seems on the verge of exploding- not just in Skype, but also as indicated by things such as the Asterisk soft-PBX. Innovations abound from small developers- from RAD frameworks to lightweight project management services and solutions…
Key Tenets:
… 1. The power of the advertising-supported economic model… 2. The effectiveness of a new delivery and adoption model… 3. The demand for compelling, integrated user experiences that ‘just work’…
The Opportunities:
Seamless OS… Seamless Communications… Seamless Productivity… Seamless Entertainment… Seamless Marketplace… Seamless Solutions… Seamless IT…
Moving Forward:
… Platform Products and Services Division- a. Base v. Additive Experiences… b. Services Platform… c. Service/Server Synergy… d. Lightweight Development- The rapid growth of application assembly using things such as REST, JavaScript and PHP suggests that many developers gravitate toward very rapid, lightweight ways to create and compose solutions. We have always appreciated the need for lightweight development by power users in the form of products such as Access and SharePoint… e. Responsible Competition…
Business Division- a. Connected Office… Should PowerPoint directly broadcast to the web, or let the audience take notes and respond?… b. Telecom Transformation… c. Rapid Solutions- How can we utilize our extant products and our knowledge of the broad historical adoption of forms-based applications to jump-start an effort that could dramatically surpass offerings from Quickbase to Salesforce.com?…
Entertainment and Devices Division- a. Connected Entertainment… b. Grassroots Mobile Services… c. Device/Service Fusion…
Whats Different?:
… Complexity kills… Another simple tool Ive used involves attracting developers to use common physical workspaces to naturally catalyze ad hoc face-time between those who need to coordinate, rather than relying solely upon meetings and streams of email and document reviews for such interaction…”
–Ray
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