Ray Ozzie To Step Down From His Role At Microsoft 229
denobug writes "Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, is stepping down. He is to remain with Microsoft until he retires, focusing his efforts 'in the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments,' based on a memo from Steve Ballmer. Also according to Steve's memo, the role of CSA was unique and it will not be filled."
Not filled? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also according to Steve's memo, the role of CSA was unique and it will not be filled.
This has Balmer sounding like Francisco Franco [wikipedia.org], who created a monarchy but put in no king, only leaving himself as regent. For decades. Somehow I don't feel that Microsoft's situation isn't going to benefit any more than Spains, for the same reasons.
Re:End of Azure (Score:5, Interesting)
The GCC, LLVM, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux communities, for instance, do a fantastic job of keeping "software architecture" in check, while still developing amazingly complex, practical and very high-quality software.
Yeah but at enormous cost (if you count the labour involved) because it is basically a test of strength on the mailing lists and forums with the last man standing getting to make the decision.
Re:End of Azure (Score:3, Interesting)
> Does this mean MS is killing the Azure platform?
It would surprise me. Azure is not that great so far, but recently I had to deploy an application and the money that my client saved by using SQL Azure instead of traditional hosting is huge.
Same goes with BPOS (Exchange online and other stuff, offered by MSFT). It's only about 5$ a month per 25GB inbox to have Exchange, connected to your own Windows Domain. For people who make the decision to go with Exchange this is pretty competitive. No more backups, no more DR, no more administration mistakes or forgotten critical patches. Of course there is always the alternatives, such as Google or Linux hosting, but some business are not ready to let go of Exchange, and with the features that they keep adding (such as voicemail integration) very often the business case to switch is just not there.
MS could have owned the cloud (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is /., not FOX News. (Score:1, Interesting)
He asked very legitimate questions. How are they leading when he is asking? Asking can't be leading by definition. His post can lead to several branches of discussion that may or may not be interesting. Your post is just spiteful and flamebait. [Ooops, sorry for the reply folks.] Anyway, I'm still curious about the questions, but instead of retyping them I will simply quote him.
Does this mean MS is killing the Azure platform? Or maybe Bill Gates is returning from the hinterland? Or are employees just leaving one by one until only Steve Balmer is left to turn off the lights?
CAPTACHA: paranoia
P.S. If you think Fox News is leading the public on by asking questions, I think you may have missed the point of journalism. And if asking questions could be leading, then the global warming activists wouldn't need all the pseudo-science. [[/S]Is this post opinion and fact based enough?]
Re:End of Azure (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't be silly.
For all his personal faults, Balmer has done for Microsoft what Bill Gates could not. He's made some very prudent decisions (or lack of decisions, maybe) which have had opposite results to what BG did:
* Windows has been steadily improving since Bill Gates left the helm. The last vestige of Gates' impact was seen in Office 2007 and Windows Vista, both of which were horrible.
* Stability, scalability, usability - name it, it's improved since Gates left and Balmer took over.
* Xbox was a huge fail; Xbox 360, on the other hand (while having been released under Gates and not doing that well during that time) has seen steady improvements over it's long life - and is still considered 'premiere' by many after 5 long years (since when, the PS3 and Wii have been released - to limited impact).
* Sharepoint, while it sucks giant donkey cock and is the bane of my existence, has become quite the beast, seemingly being the preferred choice for any sort of corporate extranet deployment/content management system. It is better than most of its competition at substantially lower prices.
* HyperV has become quite the mature, capable product - a far cry from the code it was based on, at this point. Microsoft has helped push virtualization forward through many of its VT-related initiatives - to the benefit of the industry as a whole.
The only thing Balmer seems to have butchered severely is the mobile handset OSes. It had potential 3-4 years ago; today, the MS offerings are has-beens and also-rans not much worth consideration (except for the older WinMo based phones, which have some merit due to Exchange/PIM and decent integration).
Re:End of Azure (Score:4, Interesting)
I think its more like having a single technical lead in a powerful position is a bad thing for management because they keep asking hard questions. So lets split the role into smaller project based positions, leaving the strategy to management and marketing.
Having a single technical lead across a company as diverse as Microsoft possibly is a bad thing -- should SQL Server, Word, XBox Live, and Phone 7 all be managed by the same technical lead? Is that one person really going to have a deep understanding of all the technical, business, and user issues across all the products, or are they inevitably going to skew towards their favourite area, or not have enough time to devote to all the areas to be both effective and timely? I suspect Ozzie just found there wasn't enough time in the day anymore. For Gates, being across everything probably worked better -- the whole company was his baby; for Ozzie, coming in from the outside and trying to be across everything might have been harder.
Re:End of Azure (Score:5, Interesting)
> You don't need "software architects". You just need a small number of developers who can actually code
Clearly you do not have a lot of experience in big environments, where people come and go because the workload is not the same all the time. In that type of workplace, where contractors are part of the landscape, design patterns and architecture orientations are a must, otherwise each time you bring in someone new you go again all over the same sterile discussions about PHP Vs Perl, Web Vs Fat client, Plain DAL Vs ORM, and whatnot. Not having a clear set of design patterns will lead to a mess, quick.
Faced with this problem, typical core developers usually come up with overkill rules, such as very detailed naming conventions and flowerbox documentation requirements, and quickly you end up with reams of paper wasted and no improvement. Then someone brings up an idea of using a common library, and from there it's a sure path to Yet Another Framework.
Software architecture is a trade, a specialized one, and maybe small companies can't afford one (usually the same that won't pay for a good DBA) but it does not mean there is no need for this skillset. Being able to establish efficient guidelines and avoiding the pitfalls of frameworks and other common mistakes requires a specific expertise.
> and that are using a sufficiently-expressive language to not need "design patterns".
When you work on relatively complex systems, design patterns are not bound to the programming language, especially since the said system can require more than one language. And even if you are lucky enough to work on a software solution that can be done with a single language, there are usually more than one way to do something - so you still need design patterns.
> I know, I know. You'll claim it's difficult to find developers like that. In reality, it's not. You just have to offer them a good salary. Sure, you could buy 450 shitty Indian developers with the same salary as three or four good developers, but those three or four developers will be tens of thousands of times more productive than your shitty Indian developers.
I don't agree. Remember a few years ago when everything was about code generators and whatnot? I remember being amazed by JBuilder and TogetherJ where all I needed to do was draw a class diagram in UML, and automagically the stubs were created in the java source files.
Well guess what: reality won (again) and the cheapest and more efficient code generator there is Southeast Asia. At some point it is more cost-effective to have a good analyst write specific requirements (even maybe executable requirements) and have the code done somewhere in India or China. Sounds silly, but it beats the shit out of all those scaffolding solutions. Does it mean you can outsource everything? Of course not, but don't underestimate the economics of expandable code monkeying.
It's just like the Y2K madness. With mainframe and proprietary locked code that could not be updated in time, one of my biggest customer had a big team of engineers working around the clock to find a way to move data out of the mainframe before the crash. And the most efficient solution they came up with was "Marge Protocol": bring in shitloads of data-entry clerks to read on one machine and type on the other one. Did the job pretty well. Cheap labor 1, software engineering 0.