12 Things Microsoft should do in 2012
Disclaimer — I’m a former Microsoft employee, was hired as the first
Silverlight evangelist, and have worked on many technologies from the
Web Platform, Windows Azure, ASP.NET, Silverlight (of course) and
Windows 8. This is not intended as an ex-employee to axe grind (like too
many before me have done), but as a love letter to a great company,
with great products, that, in some cases has lost its way. I’ve worked
with Microsoft technology for many years, and hope to do so for many
more. So many of my career successes have come from the simplicity and
power that Microsoft have given to developers. I sense that that mojo is
drifting away at an accelerated rate, and it pains me to say so.
I was inspired to write this post by reading Business Insider’s 12
predictions for 2012
(http://www.businessinsider.com/12-industry-predictions-for-2012-2011-12),
and was saddened to see Microsoft mentioned only in passing (with
relation to Nokia), and Windows 8 not mentioned at all!
So without further ado, here’s my 12 things Microsoft should do in 2012
Windows Phone – Give your developers even more love.
You want more developers to use your platform, you need more apps, as
apps drive sales of more phones. So lower the barrier of entry. The
iPhone developers ‘fee’ for one year is $99. For that I can put apps
into the iPhone app store and reach a far larger audience than I can
with Windows phone. The Windows phone developers ‘fee’ for one year
is….$99. Why should a developer pay the same to get into the much
smaller Windows app store as they do to get into the much larger iOS
one? Amazon have recognized this, and are waiving the fee for Kindle
Fire developers for the first year in order to spur entry into their app
store. Why shouldn’t Windows Phone go one better, and remove it
completely, or change it to a post-paid model? [i.e. 'You will earn 70%
of your app store sales after the first $100 each year']
Windows Phone – Make developer devices available
One of the straws that made me want to leave Microsoft was when they announced that all employees would get free Windows Mobile 7 devices.
When reality dawned, it was that all employees could sign up for an
expensive 2 year plan with AT&T, and get their devices reimbursed.
Great press hit on the free device wasn’t backed up by reality. I didn’t
take advantage of the offer because I didn’t want to get locked into a
long and expensive contract. I have a contract-free Android, and a
contract-free iPhone 4S that I use for development and testing. So, how
about going one better Mr Microsoft, and making contract-free Windows
Phone 7.x (or 8.x) devices available at a (much) lower cost than the
Android or iPhone ones, and lumping in the app-store ‘fee’ membership as
part of the cost? That way you can get more phones in the hands of more
developers.
You can’t advertise your way to beating the competition – fuel your growth in a more innovative way
After seeing expensive campaigns for Windows Phone (reportedly $500m — half a billion dollars!)
and Bing (same article mentions $100m back in 2009, so it’s likely at
least double that now), without enough growth or penetration for either
product being able to justify that cost, I would ask Microsoft in 2012
to stop throwing good money after bad. $500m would likely have put
‘free’ unlocked developer phones into the hands of 1-2 million
developers. Put a few strings on them, such as needing to get apps into
the app store in order to get the ‘full’ benefit, and you’d overnight,
have a developer ecosystem that blows Apple’s or Google’s out of the
water. Combined with the best-of-breed tools (Visual Studio/Silverlight
>> Eclipse/Java & XCode/Objective-C), and you could have a
huge wave of success. Instead, we have $500m spent on glitzy parties,
and TV adverts that get feedback like this. After all this Windows Phone sales went from ‘very small to very small‘ in the words of Steve Ballmer. There are far better ways to spend $500m to gather attention and grow the platform…
Do you know just how great the Zune music service is? Get it on iOS and Android before it’s too late.
I’ve been a Zune subscriber since (almost) the beginning. It’s great
to pay $10 a month and have all the music I can eat at my fingertips.
Since I left MS and started using Android and iOS more heavily, carrying
a device of each, I stopped carrying my Zune. So I cancelled my Zune
subscription and went Spotify, just like many other folks. Have you used
the Spotify client? It sucks. Big time. Microsoft — think of all the
millions of iOS and Android users that could use your service, and think
of all those $10 a month coming in from them? Change the name to
something else (sorry, but the Zune *brand* has failed), and launch it
to compete with Spotify on these platforms. So you lose a distinguishing
factor for Windows Phones, but you gain a much bigger market for
revenue from your service…
Sustaining a brand is as important as launching it. Make this your mantra for 2012 and beyond.
When I was first working for Microsoft, I expressed as an issue for
developers outside the Redmond Bubble. I called it ‘Shiny new toy
syndrome’. It was a problem in that Microsoft every few months would
release a new way of doing the same thing, or that they’d suddenly drop
something that they’d been pushing hard, and move in a new direction.
Think data access from JET Engine, to OLEDb, to DAO, ADO, EF, ODBC yadda
yadda yadda. Each of these technologies did the same thing — give
programmers the ability to access data, but MS would release each one
with a huge fanfare, with evangelists, trainers etc. all teaching folks
how to do it. In the end, developers would get sick of it, and the meme
would be ‘Just show me how to use data’.
This goes beyond developer APIs of course. When Microsoft starts up
something new, it’s done with full steam ahead gusto (Silverlight as a
prime example), but once it’s launched, and once it’s successful,
sustaining it doesn’t seem to be a priority. Hello IIS. Hello Zune.
Hello *. Heck, I just read an article that MS may be stepping away from the ‘decision engine’ branding for Bing that it spent goodness knows how many dollars to get out there…
HTML5 isn’t a standard. You should remember this, and you should be the thought leader around this.
HTML5 is not a standard, and likely won’t be for at least another 10 years!
Stop following the HTML5 bandwagon. It won’t make you cool. Yes, use
it. Yes, make sure that your products are the best at rendering it,
in-browser, out-of-browser, and on the phone. But to throw aside all
that has gone before (client development, WPF, Silverlight etc. etc.) to
embrace something that isn’t a standard, whilst acting like it is, is
not very smart. (Yes, we’re back to shiny new toy syndrome here)
Instead, capitalize on the wave of enthusiasm, and capitalize your
large share of the desktop market (remember most Chrome and FF users
still use Windows!) to show some thought leadership in this area. Teach
developers what they can and CAN NOT do efficiently with
HTML5/JavaScript. Show them the options. Don’t throw the baby out with
the bathwater. You’re just accelerating your demise that way.
Stop reacting. Start leading.
Azure isn’t a marketable entity – stop wasting time, effort and $ marketing it. Instead simplify pricing and development, and get the techies aboard.
The people who make the dollar decisions about IT infrastructure
really don’t care about advertising or marketing (*). Hanging banners in
SeaTac airport (and goodness knows where else) is not going to grow
Azure penetration. Getting developers up to speed on Azure, and getting
them using it is paramount. To that end, simplifying the process, and
simplifying the pricing.
How about giving us one fee instead of the smorgasbord of proprietary
terms (what does ‘extra small instance’ really mean?). How about an
offering to developers that is ‘Free for XGb throughput and 1 database’,
‘$10 for YGb Throughput’, ‘$20 for ZGb Throughput’ etc. The number of
computing instances needed is typically directly proportional to the
througput is it not?
Then, once the app is developed, hosted, tested, and working, if one
needs to upgrade to more ‘elastic’ pricing and terms, they can do so.
Right now, despite recent simplification, it’s still too obfuscated.
(*) In my experience, they talk with all vendors, and then ask their
technical staff to evaluate the best looking ones. The overworked
technical staff will do some simple pilots, and usually go with the ones
that they already know best. Thus, if they could be onramped to Azure
more quickly than they can be onramped to the competition, you will
improve the likelihood of them recommending Azure. All the obfuscation
negates that. I like to see myself as a Microsoft ‘expert’ (at least in
their technology), and I just don’t have the time to wade through the
alphabet soup. Sorry. [Disclaimer, I see ScottGu (hi Scott!) has been
working on a transformation here...I'll check it out]
Windows 8 – It’s about the consumer.
I was at //Build/ in September where Microsoft gave away the first
Windows 8 devices to the lucky developers in attendance. I got to play
with one. It’s very nice. But.
But after a little while, I realized that there’s no way I’d ever
ditch my iPad to use this. It gets hot. The fans start whirring. In
fact, it was just a PC without a keyboard. And it costs more than an
iPad. Would I be the only one to think that? I doubt it. Sure this was
just a preview device…so I’m hoping that the stuff you show off at CES
will be better.
So, in order to win the consumer, when you launch Windows 8, launch
it with a spectrum of devices that will compete, on the low end with the
Kindle Fire (nice, but flawed, but the flaws are forgivable at this
price point), the iPad (gold standard, let’s face it), and the best
laptops (IMHO, the MacBook Air).
You won’t win by just launching a PC with a new skin. To the modern
iPad-savvy market, this will look like Lipstick on a Pig. You only get
one chance at this. Don’t fail.
Windows 8 – It’s about the developer.
Much has been written about Windows 8, the emergence of the
HTML5/JavaScript/WWA platform, and the demise of the
.NET/WPF/Silverlight one. Much of it is true, but not all. The important
thing that Microsoft should take from this is the negativity from the
developer community around how they’ve handled communicating Windows 8
to *them*. Sure, giving out free devices at //Build/ was nice, but that
was to only a few thousand folks.
If you want Windows 8 to work in the tablet space, you should be
romancing the developer, not pissing them off. And way too many are
pissed off. Sorry. This should be a huge priority in 2012. Don’t let
internal politics mess this up.
The Web is still out there, don’t let it whither.
With the emergence of new trends, cloud, mobile etc., many folks,
including Microsoft appear to have forgotten about the good old WWW.
They (we) started making great strides in reaching Web developers again
with WebMatrix, and the ecosystem around it. For 2012, don’t like
WebMatrix and the Web Platform be last years Shiny New Toy. I know a lot
of the folks involved have moved to Azure, so my call to Microsoft for
2012 includes reminding them not to forget the non-Cloud web.
Hire the right people, and build up their skills
This is mostly an internal one. And it may come across as a gripe
(sorry), but Microsoft have a huge problem, internally, with turning
great technical people into low grade administrators. It was my #1
frustration when I worked there, and one of the primary reasons for me
to leave. You see, when you are an FTE there, you succeed by getting as
much done as possible. Getting stuff done means delivering results. You
can deliver more results by getting other people to do stuff for you. On
the surface, this sounds good. But in reality, it’s much different.
Getting other people to do stuff for you generally boils down into 2
things.
1. Get $ to get vendors to do the work for you
2. Become a stakeholder in as many projects as possible.
The problem with (1) then becomes that vendors do all the ‘real’
work, and the FTE folks managing the vendors often don’t understand how
it’s done, because they’re too busy recursing on (1) and getting more $
for more vendors. I’ve seen way too many issues where there was (for
example) a problem with a Microsoft web site, which could not be fixed
because the budget to pay for that vendor was exhausted, and we ‘might’
get more budget to get the issue fixed in the next quarter etc. We were
effectively held at ransom, by vendors, stopping us from doing what we
needed to do. Ugh
.
