Microsoft’s Stephen Elop Speaks!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on April 3, 2009 at 1:40 AM PT
In BoomTown’s ongoing series, “Microsofties on Parade,” I spent some time earlier this week with Stephen Elop (pictured here), president of Microsoft’s Business division.
Reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, Elop is a newbie, having gotten to Microsoft (MSFT) only a year ago.
Which is why he is enthusiastic in his determination to tell the world that the software giant has gotten the open religion and is becoming “the most interoperable company in the world.”
Elop said that humdinger earlier this week, when he was in San Francisco for an onstage Q&A with Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Expo.
The statement was met by a show of “no” hands, after O’Reilly asked who in the audience thought that was true.
Still, Elop pressed on, also hinting that Microsoft’s Office products–Excel, PowerPoint, Word–could even be coming to the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.
“Not yet, keep watching,” said Elop, whose portfolio has purview over Office, as well as the Dynamics business applications division and Unified Communications products.
I suppose Elop can be that cheeky, after a lot of Silicon Valley experience as COO of Juniper Networks (JNPR) and CEO of Macromedia, which was acquired under his tenure by Adobe (ADBE).
Or, it could be that he knows from having five kids–including triplet 10-year-olds–that patience is a virtue and that there might be a day when more hands might shoot up.
In any case, here is a video interview I did with Elop, where he talks about making Microsoft a more open and innovative place, the changing business model of software and more:
Comments
All the examples of Microsoft being “open” are future speculations, while at the same time pointing out that everyone else is going more toward “closed” solutions. The devil is in the details:
1. The iPhone isn’t as open as many would like it, but it is hardly closed. More importantly, the iPhone doesn’t present a barrier to my using a cell phone, or even the AT&T network. It hasn’t become such a “standard” that every other cell phone user needs an iPhone compatibility module. Nor is it likely to.
2. Similarly, the Kindle isn’t open, but it is based on Open Source software (should I anticipate a Linux version of Word?). There are a dozen or so alternatives to Kindle, and I could even download Kindle books to the iPhone if I wished. Books that aren’t DRM-locked can be downloaded for almost any device. In fact if we could factor out DRM concepts from our thinking there would be little reason for the software stacks on the iPhone (iPod with a phone) or Kindle not being totally open (i.e. Open Sourced).
3. Last time I checked Chrome was an Open Source browser. So will MS be Open Sourcing IE any time soon? It’s early, but I haven’t heard hints of any Google functionality ONLY working on Chrome. But I can’t use most of Microsoft’s “cloud” services unless I am using IE and Windows, and in some cases Office as well.
Yes, Microsoft has a copy of Linux running in a lab somewhere, and they have donated a few tid-bits of source code to the world (strangely though they mostly have to do with converting things to work on Windows).
To the extent that Microsoft makes products run or interoperate with any non-Microsoft hardware of software it is where they have clearly lost control and are being dragged kicking and screaming to the inter-op party. They made a commitment to continue supporting Office for Apple computers, but only after being incentivized by a court settlement.
In other words, their concessions to openness are never voluntary, always forced by circumstances.
Other than that, nice Mohawk.
PS: There was another video mentioned. Can’t find.
Posted by Mac Beach at April 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pmInteresting interview. Elop strikes me as the sort of guy Microsoft needs right now. Disclosure: I do work for Microsoft (not in Elop’s group). I’m genuinely impressed with the guy.
Re: Microsoft moving toward greater interoperability – there’s no doubt it’s happening (and has been for a while).
@Mac Beach – The products you referenced were things Elop mentioned as examples of “software-plus-services” in the video – not in the context of “openness” nor “interoperability” (which was the actual claim) – so your comment doesn’t make sense to me.
Here’s just a few things off the top of my head that points to increasing interoperability from Microsoft recently:
1. Silverlight runtime for platform experiences on Macs, Linux (via Moonlight, which MS helps with), PCs, Windows Mobile, Nokia/Symbian. Silverlight’s Dynamic Language Runtime lets you build rich experiences in Ruby (IronRuby), Python (IronPython), C#, or directly in XAML. Also cross-browser: Safari, Firefox, IE. And of course you can serve Silverlight from any web server, including Linux/apache.
2. Very strong IE8 support for W3C standards – IE8 and Firefox render pages to look essentially the same. This is a change from IE7, so a lot of folks might not be aware of this yet.
3. Industry-leading support for WS-Interoperability and the other WS-* standards used by big companies for web services.
4. Microsoft’s cloud platform – Windows Azure – is filled with examples of interoperability. Here a few:
- Host PHP, Python, Ruby, and .NET code in Windows Azure.
- Java SDK for .NET services – (standards-based interop, standards-based Identity Federation/Authorization, and workflow in the cloud) in CTP.
- Ruby SDK for .NET serviecs in CTP
- Eclipse SDK for developing and publishing apps to Windows Azure announced and coming out for v1 of Windows Azure.
- REST support throughout the Azure Services Platform.
5. Open XML native file formats in Office 2007 so anyone can read, write, and interoperate with Office docs. (Whether or not you think this should be an ISO standard, it’s certainly interoperable).
6. The “Windows Live Essentials” client apps like Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Writer – work with many services – not just Microsoft’s own Windows Live service… e.g., it’s just as easy to publish photos to Flickr as to Windows Live.
7. The core Windows Live experience itself (home.live.com) interoperates with Flickr, Twitter, Pandora, Photobucket, and many more, through sharing of news feeds. And increasingly the sharing of contacts (in a secure way where the user is in control of their data.) And more examples are on the way.
So there are some significant examples of interoperability across Microsoft’s rich application development technologies, browser, enterprise application integration, Windows Azure cloud platform, Office, and Windows Live. Again, this is just off the top of my head….
I’m sure there’s more to do, but I’m seeing some real commitment and real movement towards greater interoperability in Microsoft’s offerings.
Posted by John Mullinax at April 14th, 2009 at 6:29 am