A Month of Gates #8
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News Commentary. Nicholas Carr gives Bill Gates a little kick out the door. |
Tomorrow is the Microsoft chairman's last day as a full-time employee. Nicholas views Bill as the past, perhaps the personification of the desktop PC era that is beginning its decline.
In a video for Structure 08, a cloud computing conference under way this week, Nicholas observes the coincidental timing—or not—with Bill's quasi-retirement:
"It certainly is appropriate that Structure should be held during the same week that Bill Gates is retiring from his active duties, his active management duties, at Microsoft. Both at a symbolic and real level that marks an important transition point in the history of computing and the history of the IT business in general.
"We're going from a time when computing functions were trapped, if you will, inside individual machines, whether it's a PC or a server down the hallway, to a time when more and more of the those functions are moving out onto the network."
The cloud is the future, and the desktop is the past. Cloud computing is inevitable. Even Microsoft realizes this. Otherwise, why is the company readying hosted versions of products such as Exchange and SharePoint, Live Mesh, and the broader unnamed Web services platform?
Could Microsoft have made the cloud transition with Bill actively running the company? He did designate Ray Ozzie as chief software architect heir, with responsibility for taking Microsoft into the 21st century. And Ray is actively focused on cloud computing. But could Bill have taken Microsoft there?
Bill Gates tributes are everywhere this week, with some asking what Microsoft will be without its co-founder. My eWEEK colleague Jim Rapoza even wrote what the computing present might be if Bill Gates hadn't been born.
The real question to ask, and this isn't meant as insult: Is Bill Gates and the PC model he established an anachronism? I have to say yes.
Many Microsoft employees I regularly speak to would disagree. They harp on about the importance of the rich client, of the software. They're not wrong about software's importance, just where it resides. Increasingly, that's going to be the data center and clients that predominately won't be PCs. By every measure, the cell phone is looking to be the next dominant client. Fat apps won't be appropriate for thin computing. Or, mixing metaphors, fat apps will be too heavy to reach the data center cloud.
Perhaps the best example of how out-of-touch Bill and his company might be is the remarkable January 2003 e-mail posted by Todd Bishop on Tuesday. It was sleuth and smart reporting for a week when the Bill Gates tributes were sure to be pretty similar. Todd scoured documents made public during the Iowa class-action lawsuit, which was settled in February 2007. There he found an unexpected message from Microsoft's chairman to several Windows executives.
The e-mail tells the sordid tale of Microsoft's chairman unsuccessfully trying to download Windows Movie Maker. Choice quote: "I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying—where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated."
It's the process, what Bill does, that is most revealing—about how he thinks. He strikes me as exactly the kind of end user cloud computing targets. Bill is looking for something simple and straightforward and not annoyingly complex. His thinking is too desktop-centric, or that's how I interpret his approach to downloading Movie Maker and part of the reason he didn't get it.
Personally, I expect Bill to be more successful giving away money and overseeing complex research and human assistance problems. And while he's traveling the world over, he just might realize the importance of anytime, anywhere informational access on anything. That's going to mean connecting to some data center, where the "magic of software" is pushed from the server to the device.
Comments (7)
I attended Structure 08. It was an interesting conference. But the funny thing was that it was filled with maybe 300 people who were all there because they have no idea what "the cloud" is. I chatted up probably 25 people during the course of the day and the vast majority were there because "the cloud" is the latest trend/buzzword so it must be important. But when you actually talked to people about what "the cloud" is...most people described something that was ironically reminicent of...a datacenter. As in datacenters that have been around for a long long time...only better.
Rearding Carr, I'm amazed that people listen to him. Here's a guy who famously argued that IT doesn't matter...speaking via video at...an IT Conference filled with people who paid hundreds of dollars to be there. And, most of them work for companies that are producing IT products and services. He's arrogant and, worse, not particularly interesting. When Om started to introduce him..."a surprise" for the crowd...I expected someone interesting. Maybe Eric Schmidt or Sergy Brin. Or maybe even Bill Gates. Carr? Uhh...should have grabbed a coffee.
Posted by Mark Ashton | June 26, 2008 11:35 PM
"Rearding Carr, I'm amazed that people listen to him. Here's a guy who famously argued that IT doesn't matter...speaking via video at...an IT Conference filled with people who paid hundreds of dollars to be there. And, most of them work for companies that are producing IT products and services."
He was right. IT does not matter... anymore. If they paid for the seat they should have at least listened to what he said. If they acted on the advice they probably have saved their careers.
The sheep think the pasture will always be there.
What is it about people that makes them so skeptical and cynical and sardonic they fail to catch the message while laughing at the messenger?
Posted by portuno | June 27, 2008 12:24 AM
"He was right. IT does not matter... anymore."
I disagree. Definitely there are many resource intensive platforms that will be attractive to outsource, Exchange being a prime example (providing you don't need customizations... that costs extra.) When that shift happens the IT personnel that design and support these platforms will simply go work for outsource shops.
However, any large company that's older than 10 years has many embedded systems that have evolved over time. They are not going to be easily, or cheaply ported anywhere. It will be more cost effective to just leave them where they're at. Hell, most companies will stick with a horsecrap solution forever, just because they've already spent the money.
Also there are basic IT services that will always be required... authentication, authorization, IP, hardware fix, etc. These aren't going anywhere.
Finally, there are systems that could be moved but won't just out of paranoia. Data that corporations just will not trust anyone but themselves to provide high-availability, disaster recovery, security, etc. Out-sourcing is not new, corporations know from experience that their systems will not get the same attention externally as they would internally.
I'm just an IT person that did not attend this conference, so I'm just blabbing, but I would think there are (and will continue be) plenty of systems that won't fit into a cookie-cutter outsourced solution... not that I wouldn't put it past IT management to negotiate themselves out of a job.
Posted by Scott | June 27, 2008 9:54 AM
Scott Says :
"...I would think there are (and will continue be) plenty of systems that won't fit into a cookie-cutter outsourced solution..."
@Scott :
You will always have Internet, Extranet, and Intranet, all are applied solutions. They can be aggregated to form a "solution"(s).
Posted by n0neXn0ne | June 27, 2008 1:21 PM
A Scott,
"They are not going to be easily, or cheaply ported anywhere."
But that's where the shock is going to come. "Entity objects" are going to allow virtualizing any level of data making the control of that data possible. "Arbitrary objects" are going to take those entity objects and apply them anywhere there's a need. Interfacing and "porting" are going to be done once and the legacy code absorbed into the arbitrary framework never has to be "maintained" ever again. If there's a need for modernization, I'll wager it won't be using procedural tools.
So, don't be so swift to dismiss what's coming. Learn about it. Embrace it. Or become obsolete. It won't be going away and you will be repeating mistakes made many years ago over again.
Posted by portuno | June 27, 2008 11:29 PM
Gates is the epitome of lust for power. His version wasn't done through politics or through militarism. His way of immortalizing his humungous ego was to take control of the PC world. And he did it while riding roughshod over lot sof people. His company has been convicted of criminal activity, but he has not. Gates shouldn't be missed. He ought to be considered a criminal who got away on technicalities.
Posted by Maddog | July 2, 2008 10:46 PM
It's not the Gates, it's the bars
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm
Quote from the link; "To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers."
Posted by chips | July 4, 2008 2:00 PM