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Gates' Replacement says Microsoft Must Simplify
Javaman59 writes "This article in The Australian newspaper describes the background and the agenda of Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates'
replacement as chief architect at Microsoft. The creator of Lotus Notes, he's
a high-calibre technologist.
From the article: 'Ray's a programmer's programmer .. He's much closer to an uber-engineer, whereas Bill hasn't been a programmer for a number of years.'
Ozzie is also driving Microsoft to simplify its software: 'Complexity kills .. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.' He's not the only brilliant programmer in the world, but he does have Microsoft's resources behind him."
I don't get it. Technologist is a real, valid word: http://www.wordreference.com/definition/technologi st
Then he'll find that Microsoft has become so mired in its own muck that spurring the current crop of programmers who've been indoctrinated in the "Microsoft Way" will prove nigh impossible.
That doesn't sound like such an insurmountable obstacle to me. Microsoft can just do what they've done for the past 20 years -- wait for the current batch of "Microsoft Way" indoctrinees to burn out around age 30, and replace them with a bunch of workaholic recent grads willing to put in 70 hour weeks for the price of some free sodas and a complimentary mountain bike.
There's enough churn in the company that any issues with rank-and-file employee attitudes within the company can work themselves out within just a few years.
The company I work for has 20,000+ employees and uses Exchange without a hitch. Why? Because everything is networked and each inbox is 20MB in size. After that, you have a default archive PST that is placed on a Samba NFS mount. Storage is not a problem, which is key because our company is required by the SEC to store every email ever sent forever (literally, forever). While I'm not a diehard Outlook fan (I prefer Thunderbird at home), I'd say that Exchange does just fine when the administrators handle it properly. A good systems administration plan can handle anything the business needs.
When I worked for GE they used Exchange for 250K people. It was server-side unreliable (at least in our division) but it was a decent user experience.
I have since been involved with a smaller Notes install - Just 12K seats. IT WAS A HORRIBLE PILE OF SHIT.
IT was elated that they pulled off the config (of Notes/Domino), it was (server side) reliable, it ran on Linux, it fit thier needs.
The users were left in the cold with the brutal Notes interface. Tales of its suckage are all true.
I currently use Notes (at a MUCH smaller company) and am constantly amazed of how bad this software really is.
Ford Motor Co.
You might have heard about them. 130k+ computer users on Outlook/Exchange. I don't remember email ever being down due to software problems.