February 28, 2008
Opening the windows on Microsoft
My column in the Financial Times this week is on Microsoft’s efforts to make itself more open and the internal obstacles that stand in the way. You can read it here and comment below.
Saturday Jul 5 2008
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I am the FT's chief business commentator and this blog is about business, finance, media, technology and related matters. I live in New York so there is a bias towards US topics but I range more widely. Comments and criticism, which hopefully are at least as interesting as anything I write, are welcome. There is more about me on my columnist page.-
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In “Opening the windows on Microsoft”, FT, 28/02/2008, you correctly identify Microsoft’s culture, and its organization, structured along product groups, as militating against its new found desire, to collaborate with outsiders to make their software work better with its own Windows & Office applications suite. You are also spot on in recognizing Microsoft’s habit of secrecy, whereby details of its products and their protocols are shielded from internal divisions, and not only from outsiders, as more suited for competing in an earlier era.Microsoft needs to evolve towards an open source culture and a transparent, collaborative ethos to survive the new software industry order, as you rightly conclude.
In progressing towards such a transformation, Microsoft’s divisions should shed all secrecy and subterfuge first between themselves, so that they are then able to extend such collaboration seamlessly to outsiders.
In order to overcome the entrenched power culture that promotes internal competition as against collaboration, Microsoft may well have to split itself up into multiple companies along the lines of its existing product groups. Such a split would demonstrate that if the new baby Microsofts collaborate well between themselves, they will also work well with outsiders - the principle of arms-length collaboration. This breakup might incidentally also improve the overall valuation of Microsoft itself.
Ironically though this might be what Microsoft’s competitors and the EU anti-trust regulators would like to see happen. But, if nothing else works the new team at Microsoft led by Mr. Ozzie may have no other choice than opt for such radical surgery.
Best Regards,
Posted by: Ganesh Melatur | March 5th, 2008 at 1:04 pm | Report this commentGanesh Melatur