Change in culture at Microsoft?

Georg Holzer whips out the camcorder at Mixx08 to catch Steve Ballmer yelling “Web Developers” in parody of his famous “developers” rant on stage at Microsoft. This simple act, caught on camcorder and available to watch here might be signaling not just a new direction for Microsoft, it also signals new direction for Microsoft in an increasingly Internet driven cloud computing environment.

There will always be a need for an operating system at the local level, on the individuals PC or on the server. We don’t literally “boot to the Internet” yet (although that is probably coming). We still need to run local applications to bring up our window on the world. All copies of web browsers are still local, meaning they rely on some interface between the hardware and the browser. While that is slowly changing in favor of mixed desktop web applications, we are still not there yet.

While the Internet has changed the world in often surprising and unexpected ways, we are still working with the computing interface that was developed back in the 1970’s at Xerox PARC park. With the interface well over 30 years old now (which is ancient in computing years) the focus on “Web Developers” by Steve Ballmer is a significant change in culture let alone attitude.

Famously starting with “The Internet will never go anywhere” from Bill Gates, through to the rant yesterday for “Web Developers” maybe that message has finally sunk into the Microsoft management hierarchy. The Internet has turned into more than a fad, it has turned into a way of life, a way of communications that transcends barriers like the “Great Firewall of China” or the recent debacle with Wikileaks.

Companies are quickly becoming if they are not already geographically diverse companies where teams seldom meet in person, where key players can be half way around the world. Startups can happen with a weekend of coding and 12,000 dollars max. Small startups thrive on the ecologies that social networking sites provide, audio and video delivery have been so transformed that the older rooted in physical products companies are falling apart and desperately trying to stay alive.

Microsoft needs to get this message not just at the top but all the way down to the lowest life form inhabiting a cube somewhere on campus. The Internet is where it is at today. While this does not mean that it will not be the same tomorrow, Microsoft needs to start leading the pack and moving well beyond the idea of “web developers”, they need to be working on what is next, and start screaming.

“Mobile Developers” and “Internet booting computing” and their fantastic table top computing system that is on the “we want one now please” list. Frankly, they need a leapfrog of innovation here, but that means shedding decades of culture, thousands of management positions, and as Mini-Microsoft states “Let’s slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine!”.