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Jason Stamper's Blog: June 2006 Archives
Understanding Bill Gates' Long Goodbye
June 23, 2006
So Bill Gates is to leave Microsoft by June 2008, in a slow, drawn-out exit designed to calm investors' already jangling nerves. So the big question is, after so long at Microsoft's helm, why is Gates leaving now?
Gates will end a 33-year reign at Microsoft in 2008 and hand over the software reins to new chief software architect, Ray Ozzie. Announcing the move, Gates said it was because he wants to donate more of his time to his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, though he will remain Microsoft chairman.
Is it genuinely that he wants to spend more time on his philanthropic activities as he claims, or is it because the company has in fact been on the ropes for some time, and Gates has shown himself incapable of matching the inexorable rise of Software as a Service, or SaaS, in general -- and Google in particular?
Has world gone mobile (and football) mad?
June 20, 2006
During the last World Cup, the big questions being asked in the IT space were how much network bandwidth would be consumed by employees watching matches on their PCs at work (lots), and how much productivity would be lost as a result (also lots). But this time round, the buzz is mobile. "Mobile phone networks set for football overload", read a press release typical of its genre, from videomail specialist Mobeon.
Scoble leaves Microsoft, puts cat among media pigeons
June 13, 2006
So news breaks that one of the web's most famous bloggers, Microsoft's Robert Scoble, is leaving the company to go to a start-up. The 'blogosphere' shudders at the news.
Why Google attack is Microsoft's not-so-secret secret sauce
June 01, 2006
It's official - Microsoft is playing catch-up with Google, and putting its back into the task in the form of that massive increase in R&D spending in the area.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer yesterday spent an hour at the Sanford C Bernstein & Co Strategic Decisions Conference in New York seeking to reassure Wall Street that Microsoft's surprise $2bn increase in R&D spending, revealed a month ago, is justified. It needs to catch up with Google.
"We've got to make this transition, which our industry is making, from software as a product to software as a service," he said. "If you want to be a leading software company, you've got to be a leading software-as-a-service company."
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