Continuous services and connected devices

Ray Ozzie, who took over the role of Chief Software Architect at Microsoft from Bill Gates about five years ago, recently announced that he will be retiring soon. When Ozzie first became Chief Software Architect, he wrote a famous 5,000-word internal memorandum titled The Internet Services Disruption. The memo outlined the transformative and disruptive potential of web services.

Ozzie wrote, "The ubiquity of broadband and wireless networking has changed the nature of how people interact, and they're increasingly drawn toward the simplicity of services and service-enabled software that 'just works'. Businesses are increasingly considering what services-based economies of scale might do to help them reduce infrastructure costs or deploy solutions as needed and on a subscription basis." Ozzie was spot on, as this is what today's Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing are all about.

Now, five years later, just before his retirement, Ozzie wrote another 5,000-word memo entitled Dawn of a New Day. In this memo, Ozzie reflects on how Microsoft has been transformed over the past five years with regard to so-called "services". Despite many successes, Ozzie acknowledges that, for the most part, Microsoft missed the boat on mobile and social software.

More importantly, he also lays out his vision of where things are going in a post-PC world: "To cope with the inherent complexity of a world of devices, a world of websites, and a world of apps and personal data that is spread across myriad devices and websites, a simple conceptual model is taking shape that brings it all together. We're moving toward a world of 1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and 2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services."

I spent most of my evening reading both memos. They provide some unique insight into what it means to be Chief Software Architect at one of the largest software companies in the world, as well as how Microsoft sees the future. In general, I agree with Ozzie's vision of the future as he explains it in his latest memo. The part on complexity also resonated with me. I think the points he makes are very relevant for most of us who make a living with Drupal. Like Ozzie, I think the development of this new service-connected world will be neither fast nor easy. However, I think Drupal is uniquely qualified to play a prominent role in such a world. It requires us to make the right decisions, to manage complexity, and to stay on top of our game. Whether you like Microsoft or not, the memo is worth reading.