This guest post was written by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net. Box.net was founded in 2005 with the goal of helping people and businesses easily access and share information from anywhere. He has a few suggestions for how Microsoft can better embrace the cloud.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, Microsoft will articulate and evangelize its cloud strategy. It will unveil its Office 2010 product line, and we’ll see if Steve Ballmer can stand behind his claim that Microsoft is truly “betting our company” on cloud computing. Honestly, I hope he can. Yes, my small company, Box.net, competes with Microsoft’s SharePoint product, but I believe that a more innovative, open, and user-centric Microsoft benefits the technology industry at large, not to mention its massive customer base. By rethinking its entrenched but rather stagnant product line and embracing the cloud, Microsoft has an immense opportunity for reinvention. And because the cloud becomes more compelling to businesses as mature platforms and meaningful integrations proliferate, Microsoft’s entry can be a boon for other vendors, partners, resellers and developers. But in order for its move to be a force for good, Microsoft needs to be serious about going “all in.” And if it is, there are some major challenges ahead:
Designing software for the web.
I’m going to make a blanket comparison here. In just over a decade, Google has amassed an army of web engineers and evangelists. In over 20 years, Microsoft has built a closed culture around a software model that is fast becoming extinct. They haven’t commercialized a single major web technology innovation that I can think of in the past decade (okay, maybe Bing, but even that is more evolutionary than revolutionary). Apple brought us a new generation of connected devices with the iPhone and iPad; Google brought us open mobile operating systems, a new breed of apps, and a scalable business model for the web; Facebook made social the underlying fabric of software; Salesforce.com commercialized SaaS.
Microsoft has some major catching up to do if it wants to stay relevant amidst the massive cultural and technological shifts underway. The company has a solid Enterprise brand, no doubt, but their users aren’t happy with the experience, nor are they drawn in by the story that Microsoft has been telling. Customers have been leaving for Google Apps, Salesforce,and other cloud-based alternatives in droves, and to prevent further exodus, Microsoft won’t have the luxury of their standard three-attempt approach. Nor does it own the underlying distribution channel anymore (the operating system). The web has produced a market that is highly democratic in how it decides the future, leaving Microsoft without any unfair advantages.
Suggestion: Design software specifically for the web, rather than retrofitting old single-tenant software to the cloud. Steve Ballmer insisted that “the goal can’t be to throw out all the world’s software and start again,” but in some cases, it will be necessary to start from scratch. Make your services more usable, social and people-centric, like you’ve done with Docs.com, and address long-standing problems with release cycles, operating system delays, and enterprise limitations. Redmond can be an insulating place. Encourage your latest generation of employees—and push on all those who’ve been around since Windows 95—to be scrappy, entrepreneurial, and up-to-date.
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