Microsoft to Self: "What? We Have a Left Hand? What is it Doing?"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2925' target='_blank'>http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2925</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Normally, you should think, that a company like Microsoft is offering highly integrated services and normally they do if you take the integration of Windows Mobile into the PC and server environment with all the sync functionalities, etc but now imagine you bought a new Windows Mobile Pocket PC, you would like to start using MSN Messenger the first time and a friend tells you, that you need a Microsoft Passport account. Not a big deal at all, since you have the Internet in your pocket and you should be able to easily create such an account right from your Pocket PC. Ok, so far the theory..."</i><br /><br />An interesting, if quirky, discovery by Arne Hess over at the::unwired. In a nutshell, this boils down to the fact that Microsoft is a very large organization, and as is quite often the case with such things, one group has no idea what the other group is working on. But here's the real key to all this: <b>each group at Microsoft needs to think about how their product or service works with other Microsoft products and services</b>. <br /><br />A year or two ago, Steve Balmer made a speech in which he talked about every the core importance of "working better together". The idea was that every Microsoft product should work <i>better than anything else</i> on the market with other Microsoft products. It doesn't seem like many groups at Microsoft were paying attention, because it's rare to find any Microsoft product that has specific features in it to allow it to work better with other Microsoft products. Sure, there are tiny steps in the right direction, but overall I think it's pretty dismal. Witness the fact that I still can't sync Notes from Exchange with my Pocket PC after, what, six years? Sad.<br /><br />I think every Microsoft product team should have a checklist of every other Microsoft product, and they should sit down and figure out if their product has any synergy with any other product, and hammer out how they can tap into that. Microsoft needs to start taking this much more seriously than they currently are.

[mashtim]

yeah, what he said!

you'd think it'd be obvious in the Information Age.

[surur]

Isnt this "working best with other MS products" the thing they got convicted in court for? Wasn't there supposed to be a "firewall" between the OS and application development teams? I'm sure MS has a set of lawyers specifically making sure each division does not work "very well together".

Surur

[OneAngryDwarf]

All this talk of synergy and working together makes me want a Mac more and more... man I can't wait till i need a new comp... Intel Macs here i come!

[signothefish]

The problem lies in management. Each product division pretty much looks after their own. That means that interface issues tend to be lower priorities. I think it has to do with the fact that each division expects the other to do the testing to make sure the flow is seamless. Well guess what? That fits right in with your left hand/right hand analogy. Unfortunately, many big corporations don't get the picture. For some reason, they don't want to create a "flows" division, which focuses solely on product integration. It is a nightmare, though, because each division has several recent releases, as well as upcoming releases. If you count all the permutations of testing required, that's a whole lot of testing! Not only that, each division always wants to point the finger and say that if something doesn't work, it's the other division's fault. And to isolate a problem to one product or another can frequently prove to be a daunting task. And again, each division doesn't want to spend their valuable resources testing for something, when there's a 50% probability the problem is with the other product. That's why there are so many interface issues with Microsoft's products, and will continue to be until they get serious about their flows. And if they *do* have a flow division, they obviously need to get on the ball.

Another factor is importance. If a product is not successful, many of the other products will "cut them off". I don't know how far up the management chain that decision goes, but it unfortunately is the nature of the beast. Each division works like a miniature company, even some competing with others. Some products are leaders, in that other products will try to piggyback off the success of the major ones by providing interfaces to them. However, it has to be 2 ways. The major product divisions also have to provide support to the newer or less popular ones, and that means they have to devote the time to work with them. So what usually happens is that the less popular products end up doing the best they can to get by with whatever interfaces they can develop to plug in to the bigger products, even if it means there will still be compatibility issues which have to be addressed on the other side, which may never get addressed, BTW.

[whydidnt]

The worst part of this is how MS has intentionally left out functionality in the PPC space to protect their desktop market -- while at the same time not providing a truly seamless synchronization of our desktop to these devices.

If you are going to make sure the devices aren't "too" powerful, then you need to make sure that it can at least get and display all the data one might have on their MS software filled desktop. Unfortunately, MS has a lot of marketing people making business decisions and since WM is low man on the pole, it gets scraps when deemed important.

[IpaqMan2]

In response to the topic:

Amen!

[shindullin]

You know that you have a problem when the Mac version of WORD is considered to be a lot better than than the Windows version of WORD.

[SteveHoward999]

Isnt this "working best with other MS products" the thing they got convicted in court for? Wasn't there supposed to be a "firewall" between the OS and application development teams? I'm sure MS has a set of lawyers specifically making sure each division does not work "very well together".

Surur

That was my first thought too. Either let them do it and quit whining, or don't let them do it ... and quit whining!

[Ed Hansberry]

and the worst is where MS &amp; Google compete. In those cases, google almost always works better than MS on a Windows Mobile device. :?

[emuelle1]

I was poking around on Microsoft's website last week, and a pop-up window invited me to take a survey. I figured "why not?" so I did. It mostly had to do with the Office Live Beta release, and how well the name recognition was working for me and what I thought of Microsoft as a company and what confidence I had in them to provide a good solution. I could have been mean, but I wasn't. Then I got to one question asking about my perception of why MS is moving to Office Live. Out of the 5 or so available choices, I selected the one that said (my paraphrase) "Microsoft is doing this in a last ditch effort to keep up with Google". Since Google cooks up some really cool and useful applications and makes billions in advertising by allowing their use on the web, I guess MS is moving that way.

The problem we have with Pocket PCs is that there is no other viable solution which means no competition, and it's just not a large enough market share for MS to worry about. They know we're not going anywhere. Where would we go anyway? Palm :deadhorse: ?

[SteveHoward999]

The problem we have with Pocket PCs is that there is no other viable solution which means no competition, and it's just not a large enough market share for MS to worry about. They know we're not going anywhere. Where would we go anyway? Palm :deadhorse: ?


Symbian has a much bigger market and is catching up fast on features and functionality. It's not quite there yet, but look out!

[threedaysdwn]

Then I got to one question asking about my perception of why MS is moving to Office Live. Out of the 5 or so available choices, I selected the one that said (my paraphrase) "Microsoft is doing this in a last ditch effort to keep up with Google". Since Google cooks up some really cool and useful applications and makes billions in advertising by allowing their use on the web, I guess MS is moving that way.


I don't really see what Office Live has to do with Google. I mean, maybe there's some connection - but really I don't see Google offering anything in that market.

Windows Live is pretty clearly aimed straight at Google. But Office Live? I don't really think so.

[emuelle1]

That's what the question said. Somehow Microsoft learned that some of it's users have the perception that they're just trying to keep up with Google.