Peter Is Right About Jim
|
Colleague Peter Galli gives a stirring tribute to Jim Allchin, whose Microsoft career has come to an end. |
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates praised the former co-president of the Platforms & Services Division during yesterday's Windows Vista launch celebration. Gates said, "I want to make a special mention of Jim Allchin, who's been at Microsoft 16 years, and really personally made a huge commitment to Vista quality."
Some of us in the press corp noted Allchin's absence. Vista should have been Allchin's swan song. Instead, he has quietly been put out to pasture.
With him will go an era, for good or for ill--and I predict more the latter.
As Peter noted in his blog post, a new management team comes in to fill the vacuum created by Allchin's departure. They bring in a different style, too, one that is much more about business than developer and partner relations--two pillars of Windows' success.
Peter reminisced that he will "miss the many candid exchanges" he had with Allchin. We'll all soon miss the candor and perhaps better appreciate the departed executive.
Under Allchin's leadership, Windows development floundered, perhaps because vision got in the way of practicality. Likewise, reality--as in a more dangerous Internet prompting a major Windows XP update--got in the way of vision. All the while, Allchin and the Windows group he led wore his (its) heart on the sleeve. There was openness and candor, which has proved to be important for developers and partners.
Kevin Johnson, now solo president of the Platforms & Services Division, and Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live Engineering, will run Windows client operations quite differently. Johnson's Microsoft role has been sales; he's no hard-core software geek like Allchin.
Sinofsky is best-known for his work leading Office development. Where Windows has been open, releasing lots of internal test builds and external betas, Office operated more behind closed doors. The contrasting styles have their place. Under Sinofsky, the Office group tended to ship on time and deliver an expected product. Windows development could use a bit more discipline.
That said, the degree of transparency--how little from Office compared with Windows--is disturbing. It's a good explanation for why Microsoft's efforts to make Office a platform have stumbled compared with Windows. A successful platform requires cooperation of partners and developers, for which Office has received far more limited support than Windows. As important, Allchin was at the core, a coder. He understood developers because he was one of them.
Allchin's departure ends an era for Windows. Another begins, but will partners and developers like it in three years? I leave the question to Microsoft Watch readers to answer in the comments.
Comments (5)
First of all, developing an Office suite is one thing, developing an operating system is completely another. I believe the direction Microsoft has been taking for the last several years is simply dumb and naive at best, and could only come from a bunch of business and marketing folks. The largest software maker in the world being managed at the top by purely business folks is just dumb and stupid. This sounds like the direction taken by Borland in recent years. What makes Microsoft products stand are not what Microsoft actually sells, but who they attract, developers. If developers don't see high-level technical leaders at Microsoft, they will move to other pastures. Plain and simple. And what pisses off developers more than anything else are business folks. Hence, Microsoft is moving in the wrong direction.
Posted by ajam | January 31, 2007 10:10 PM
First of all, developing an Office suite is one thing, developing an operating system is completely another. I believe the direction Microsoft has been taking for the last several years is simply dumb and naive at best, and could only come from a bunch of business and marketing folks. The largest software maker in the world being managed at the top by purely business folks is just dumb and stupid. This sounds like the direction taken by Borland in recent years. What makes Microsoft products stand are not what Microsoft actually sells, but who they attract, developers. If developers don't see high-level technical leaders at Microsoft, they will move to other pastures. Plain and simple. And what pisses off developers more than anything else are business folks. Hence, Microsoft is moving in the wrong direction.
Posted by ajam | January 31, 2007 10:11 PM
Windows developers and partners always had a place where to whine and ask for things: Microsoft. Should developers "move to other pastures", i.e. Linux, who do they complain, who do they ask for help and support, who do they hold responsible? There is no one. That's why Microsoft will succeed with future versions of Windows, unless they make some really catastrophic mistakes.
Posted by Brad Freeman | February 5, 2007 7:05 AM
"With him will go an era, for good or for ill--and I predict more the latter."
Well, of course you do. Others might look to the track record of actual accomplishment in Windows during his tenure as its head - including the massive LH/Vista screwup - and say "is that really what we should have been expected by the leader and most resourced company in the industry?". The answer, imo, is clearly "No". Therefore, any change will be for the better.
Posted by bob | February 8, 2007 12:29 AM
It's interesting to compare major open-source operating-system projects with a closed-source one like Vista. A project like Ubuntu can ship a code base several times the size of the one in Vista, and provide major updates twice a year, while Microsoft struggles to manage one in five years. How is that possible?
Two words: code reuse.
Posted by Lawrence D'Oliveiro | February 10, 2007 2:25 AM