Microsoft Losing Two Top Talents
Jeff Raikes, one of the Microsoft execs with the most years under his belt
(and one of the nicest business leaders you'll ever meet), is
retiring
this fall.
Originally from Apple, Raikes has done nearly everything in his 27-some years
at Microsoft. Most recently, Raikes drove the Office System business, especially
the collaboration tools that run on top of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Whenever a big-time executives leaves, rumors fly about whether they were forced
out. I don't sit in on Microsoft's board meetings, but I'd venture to guess
that the decision was all Raikes'. First, he's not leaving for nine months.
Second, Raikes recently took the lead in launching Microsoft's Unified Communications
line, which is off to a good start. And third, Raikes, part owner of the Seattle
Mariners, is pretty much free to do whatever he wants!
Meanwhile, the man who drove Microsoft's acquisitions for the last two years
is retiring
next month. Bruce Jaffe, who helped Microsoft spend billions buying everything
from Desktop Standard to aQuantive, started with Microsoft 12 years ago in the
corporate strategy group.
Development Platforms Forever Changed
In the early days of programming, you had a language and typed in instructions.
One of the biggest transformations came in the form of integrated development
environments (IDEs). In both cases, the software is still written largely by
scratch (with a few libraries tucked in) and assume the platform is either a
PC OS or a Web browser.
The newest approach is far different. The newest approach assumes that there's
a back-end platform, not just in the form of an operating system, browser or
software like e-commerce, but actual stuff -- servers, storage and even customers!
This is the pitch Google, eBay and Amazon are making
to corporate developers. They want corporate developers to build apps that
tap into the Google/Amazon/eBay cloud, services and infrastructure. Sounds like
a pretty cool head start.
The World's Most Dangerous IM Client
Talk about a dubious distinction. Microsoft last year gained top honors as the
most-hacked
instant messaging client of 2007. According to some quick and dirty Internet
research (read: this information could be wildly inaccurate!), AOL has by far
the most IM market share, with Microsoft coming in second with roughly half
the number of users.
If MSN is the most hacked, there are only two reasonable theories. First, it's
easier to hack MSN than other clients, or second, it's just more fun to hack
a Microsoft product. I'd go with the latter!
Mailbag: Hung Up on Cell Phone Ads
Count Jay as one
more cell phone user who doesn't like the thought of mobile advertising:
Advertising on my mobile phone? No, of course not, I can't even use it
in the car anymore here in WA state. Unless they are going to give me free
text messages, free pics or free services, I'll not absorb any more advertising
than what I am already subjected to throughout the day. There is definitely
no time during a phone call to view, read or listen to an ad.
-Jay
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About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.