What a pivotal year in our industry! Mobile, Cloud and Social making new leaders

What a pivotal year in our industry! Let's face it, IT has been attesting more evidences that its tectonic forces at work did let emerge new leaders and previous ones fade.

• Mobile: now at the core of IT, Apple and Samsung getting much of the coverage and dominating the smartphone market - surpassing now regular phones - pushing Nokia to be acquired by Microsoft and RIM Blackberry to look for a shelter. For software vendors and CIOs, applications have to be designed for smartphone devices first, tablet second and desktop third. As evidences, PC sales are declining, Dell to become private again, Steve Ballmer retiring, Intel also changed CEO to deal with innovator's dilemma. Wintel once dominating this industry is fading.
• Cloud: depicted as a consumer or anecdotal phenomenon once, Cloud Computing is now center stage for the Enterprise and a key topic for CIOs strategic plans. CRM is paving the way with Salesforce.com becoming #1 CRM vendor all flavors combined (on premise, cloud), customer service and Marketing quickly following. Microsoft bending its Office model with Office 365 is trying to resist Google surge in cloud based productivity suites is another evidence of cloud computing importance.
• Social: with Twitter preparing its IPO, Facebook stock ticker finally getting traction thanks to its successful mobile strategy, Google acquiring Waze for $1B+, Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1.1B, Rondee for video conferencing and Xobni for Social Contact Management, Salesforce.com acquiring Buddy Media on top of previous Radian6, Social is another tectonic force at stake making or breaking new leaders.

Combining this to Big Data and associated analytics to get a modern business insight, let's attest we're already in a new world. Get ready if you're not already! CIO, CMO, CDO or CEOs, don't let your competition harness these revolutions before you get a chance to compete or lead: initiate change now.

Mobile computing is taking IT by storm: mobile world congress - iPad 3 announcement - Ray Ozzie interview

Without surprise it was the mobility week recently. With Mobile World 2012 just closing, this has been a week of announcements and research publications. As eWeek tries to summarize it, here are 10 hot mobile Trends to watch at Mobile World Congress 2011:

1. Bigger is better: it seems larger display are more desirable this year
2. Android Galore: without Apple around, Android was everywhere leaving Windows on the side for next year
3. Microsoft needs Nokia—desperately
4. Dual- and quad-core processors are everything
5. Fresh new designs aren't needed? No revolutionary designs introduced.
6. The "converged" device matters: smartphone bridging the gap with tablets
7. There's no changing carriers: disappointed if you wanted to hear some breaking news from Carriers though customer relations are in pain.
8. Companies think there's room for other operating systems: Mozilla announced its own mobile OS, Samsung did the same with Bada, running after Android and iOS.
9. iPad 3 fear reigns supreme: anticipated announcement on March 7, even Google had to admit via Andy Rubin that they're behind iOS.
10. The enterprise is an afterthought: Mobile World Congress is all about consumers. To be analyzed with CIO client strategy in the enterprise.

$GOOG Google Play replaces #Android Market, new source for apps, books, movies and music (funny video 1'30)engt.co/zYiIaf

The New Era of Computing bit.ly/xjxIfO

The announcement of the iPad HD, capturing all the buzz, is showing once again how much Apple is running the show. It looks like the entire industry is positioning itself regarding Apple and the impact of "The Barber Of Infinite Loop" on once the center of all attention Microsoft could be serious. Thus I encourage you to take a look at this Ray Ozzie interview video, the once Bill Gates visionary successor at Microsoft, who is starting a new venture and tells it very directly PC doesn't mean desktop PC anymore but Personal Computing in a variety of form factor. What a thrilling industry!

Apple's new iPad announcement: The numbers to know | ZDNet zd.net/ACGsNH

Video Q&A: Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates successor as $MSFT visionary on startups, Microsoft, ... states world is over the PC bit.ly/y4WY1s

The Barber Of Infinite Loop: How The #iPad Could Give Microsoft A Serious Revenue Haircut - $MSFT productivity apps tcrn.ch/wrrKC7

Week in review: Big Data's impact on the world - Enterprise Apps gold rush to the cloud

Big Data is pursuing to bubble up as the topic of choice for the beginning of 2012, even during Davos. Not surprising when one can attest that the cloud computing model is making significant progress all over the planet and even in my home country, France, where skepticism used to be the attitude regarding it. In turn, leveraging the cloud leads to Big Data, in a business context as well, to try to extract from all sorts of data streams meaningful business insights.

Big Data’s Impact in the World
Steve Lohr, in the New York Times, develops some examples in various areas and highlights some interesting numbers.

• Big Data, Big Impact: New Possibilities for International Development - World Economic Report 
• Cloud Computing to reach $270B in 2020 CAGR 30%: Kleiner Perkins said to eye “cloud” fund
• Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity - McKinsey Global Institute Report

I won't come back on Facebook IPO as the entire planet just twitted and blogged about it. But let's step back 5 years ago and remember how people where viewing Facebook back then. It changed big time, Facebook is no longer a youngster phenomena but a business eye opener. Amazing 180° view of the world for a company supposedly going to be valued more than $100B now. Don't you think? We're already in a new world. Social Media is now a reality to most businesses, Marketing cannot ignore it anymore and mobile devices are becoming rapidly the #1 entry point to it. By the way, what is the revenue Facebook is making on mobiles ;-)? (None for now, but stay tuned).

• The Web vs. Mobile Apps: How iOS and Android Are Disrupting The Open Internet 
• Google testing 'next-gen personal communication device'
• Interesting stats: Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC] 
• $267B enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket: The 3 secrets behind the enterprise tech gold rush 

By the way, recently SAP acquired Successfactors for $3.4B, Salesforce.com did the same with Rypple and Oracle with Taleo for $1.9B and RightNow, check this out. The enterprise apps gold rush seems to be on the cloud.

As Larry Ellison said about cloud computing in 2008: "What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?" Not there yet apparently ;-)

So are you ready for Big Data, cloud computing, social networks and mobile internet?

Best Internet Trends Presentation - Web 2.0 Summit

KPCB Internet Trends 2011

View more presentations from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

As usual, Mary Meeker delivered this presentation during Web 2.0 summit and summarizes important trends in our industry with a lot of meaningful data.

Internet Trends 

1. Globality – We Aren’t In Kansas Anymore… 
2. Mobile – Early Innings Growth, Still… 
3. User Interface – Text -> Graphical -> Touch / Sound / Move 
4. Commerce – Fast / Easy / Fun / Savings = More Important Than Ever… 
5. Advertising – Lookin’ Good… 
6. Content Creation – Changed Forever 
7. Technology / Mobile Leadership – Americans Should Be Proud 
8. Mega-Trend of 21st Century = Empowerment of People via Connected Mobile Devices 
9. Authentic Identity – The Good / Bad / Ugly. But Mostly Good? 
10. Economy – Lots of Uncertainty 
11. USA Inc. – Pay Attention!

Web evolution? Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 predictions

I found this perspective on web evolution quite interesting. We know predictions are a dangerous sport, but thinking about this might inspire you.

Web Evolution Nova Spivack Twine

View more presentations from Nova Spivack.

Enterprise 2.0 is going mobile fast

Celebrating more than 4 Billion mobile devices in the world cannot let us stay still in our views of the mobile Internet. It has dramatically changed the consumer behavior but is also making its way in the enterprise. It has many consequences for us marketers, application developers and executives in charge or impacting enterprise information system.

According to a very interesting Morgan Stanley research - The Mobile Internet Report - issued in December 2009, some early signs are attesting of a massive disruption ahead:

• Material wealth creation / destruction should surpass earlier computing cycles. The mobile Internet cycle, the 5th cycle in 50 years, is just starting.

• The mobile Internet is ramping faster than desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.

• Five IP-based products / services are growing /converging and providing the underpinnings for dramatic growth in mobile Internet usage – 3G adoption + social networking + video + VoIP + impressive mobile devices

Enterprises in the U.S. are already taking advantage of this revolution to solve business problems and meet goals in reducing time and cost, improving customer experience or including consumers directly in business processes. Information Week states:

"General Motors is looking to a new iPhone application to change how and even where people sell cars. A national chain of rehabilitation facilities sees smartphones combining with cloud computing to improve patient care and employee productivity. A heart hospital is using BlackBerrys for nothing less than real-time alerts of patient distress, including images of bedside monitors. And around Los Angeles County, law enforcement officers are using BlackBerrys for such tasks as taking and searching fingerprints." in a very interesting recent article.

In the complete research, you'll find interesting figures about more than 500 businesses such as this one



Get Ready, include mobility in your plans.

Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy at Java One video

What a pleasure to see these two great leaders on stage again. How could one imagine Scott would love to go on stage with Sam Palmisano ;-)

Many have been asking me about the underlying strategy of Sun's acquisition by Oracle, Scott gives it a clue: free advertising for winning the America's cup and cutting travel expenses on Java One Japan by doing it in Larry's garden.

We do not know what's next, but what is appearing more clearly is that the Oracle/Sun combination is bound to become another IT giant that can compete head to head with HP and IBM. As Scott would typically say: go kick some butts gang!

Good luck to them, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch.

2009 IT Trends: can community based IT services on the cloud help?

As 2009 sets itself to unfold, major IT trends are starting to shape our future.
In a nutshell we should be watching:

• Green IT
• Expense Cutting
• Cloud Computing
• Virtualization
• Mobile Computing
• SOA/WOA
• Leaning Architecture
• Social Software, Enterprise 2.0 and Communities

It's going to be tough and only those who can go beyond their fears and control it will be able to seize opportunities in front of us. Yes IT will be impacted, but what is a better time to make the tough decisions you've been reluctant to make?
I found it very interesting that in this context the eTask.it initiative, referred to by a friend of mine part of the management team there. In a nutshell, they describe themselves as "the first IT collaborative system" addressing IT staffing via community enabled sourcing.
Cloud Computing can also deliver Service as a Service, kind of funny, or maybe more appropriately Service on the Cloud as an important part of the Cloud Computing trend.
Good luck to them. More than yesterday, lesser than tomorrow, bet on the Web 2.0 for your future.

What are the key forces driving to Enterprise 2.0 transformation?

Tectonic forces displacing enterprise applications boundaries are very diverse, I don’t pretend to be exhaustive here, but I’d like to highlight the ones having in my opinion a significant impact:

• Ubiquitous good quality (bandwidth) web access – check broadband stats – encouraging employees mobility
• Web crazy expansion (5.5M new users per week, 1.3B Internet users in Dec 2007) and more specifically mobile web expansion (3.2B mobile devices and among them 1.2B with a modern web browsing user experience) and explosive e-commerce growth - check IDC stats : 50% internet users will buy on line this year – favouring extended enterprise process development
• Users are educated at home on web based applications, noticeably on web 2.0 applications (Social Networking, Blogs, Wikis, …) and are increasingly accepting the Cloud Computing model relevance by using it (personal e-mail, Instant messaging, social bookmarking, photo & video sharing, e-banking, ….) – preparing for webtop and web 2.0 introduction in the enterprise (check "moving from deskltop to webtop" post)
• SOA and Mashup emergence as a distributed application architecture
• Transactional processes automation maturity – very typical of the ERP supported ones – will privilege productivity gains and transaction costs reduction (referring to  Ronald Coase « The law of the firm ») in automating collaborative processes and exception management, paving the way to ERP/Web 2.0 integration

This nice cocktail augmented with a solid number of “ Y Generation ” employees -- born between 1982 and 1994 - having grown with the natural use of SMS, instant messaging and social networking on the Web and which will be enterprise leaders in the next ten years - prepares the company with its change towards Enterprise 2.0 (first defined by Andy McAfee) characterized by the use of the Web 2.0 collaborative applications within the enterprise to harness collective intelligence. 

Software on tap: SaaS and ASP are really not the same

I launched MS Word today, it's 24 years old! Don't you have enough? Don't you think time has come for a new software paradigm. Do you like Word? What do you do in e-mail then? This industry has come to a conclusion that software could very well migrate to it's editor servers. It started with hosting, then ASP, and now SaaS (also called on demand applications) is coming around.
Conventional wisdom has coined it at the same thing but it's not. But an ASP delivers your monolithic application at distance, that's all it does. Those who believe ASP and SaaS are the same thing have just missed the Web 2.0 paradigm shift where the web has become an application platform. In fact "application" is not a proper term, where as "application services" better describes what is happening. You probably know Facebook by now. If you don't go ahead and build your friend community there. As I recently stated, one of the major success factor of facebook lies in its application platform strategy. The beauty of it is that users are defining a unique user interface to THEIR facebook by adding application to their home page. Customization, as we know it, is king. Gone the days when software vendors would define frozen user interfaces e.g. MS Word.
But this new way of combining small applications, or widgets, into a dedicated user customized portal has reached the enterprise. Yes! Enterprise mashups are coming up. Do you know Longjump? You don't, then just go there for a test drive. It speaks for itself far better than a long post of mine.
This is the destination: mixable enterprise widgets or applets on tap. You pay as you drink it. Software is a service, isn't it?
Bye bye MS Word and all the monolithic applications, whether on your PC, your servers or with your ASP. Time has come for SaaS to thrive.

Technology's 10 Most Mortifying Moments

Just for fun, I could not resist but to share with you this article on Computer World Technology's 10 Most Mortifying Moments. You probably remember all of them, but even if you do you'll have a great laugh.
Let's just end the week like this. We'll be back on more serious topics next week like what is the difference between ASP and SaaS?
My favorite is still Ballmer dancing on stage. I wish I could be there to see people

Social Networking: the facebook mashup effect

I'm a recent facebook user. I knew about facebook for quite a while but I thought, as probably most of you, that it was a youngster phenomena. I'm no longer a youngster if anyone in doubt out there ;-) . This comes as no surprise as Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard graduate, and restricted at first to Harvard College students, then to other Boston area schools. More details on Facebook history here. On May 24, 2007, Facebook launched an API that allows the development of applications to be used on the site, known as Facebook Platform. A defining moment that illustrated one more time this web 2.0 postulate that the web is now an application platform.

When inviting some of my friends to facebook, I sometime needs to explain to the most reluctant among them why this social network site is THE one. I think this ability to mashup tens if not hundreds of cool applications to leverage your friends network is sticky. It gives your facebook a constantly evolving face, a user interface typically webtop where users do refine it as they use it -- see We're moving from Desktop to Webtop. The real-time informations about your friends (mood, networks, events, ...) gives it another reason for it to be addictive. Some of them even joined a group called "I facebook too much" demonstrating the addiction.

As you can see in the Alexa graph, Facebook is on its way in 2007 to surpass the MySpace phenomena. More than the success of social networking as one of the Web 2.0 killing applications, I see it as a clear indication that mashups and webtop will prevail in the future. Fellow software vendors, take it as a home run. Enterprise 2.0 software should take this into account as well, as it will not remain a consumer phenomena. Large corporations do need social networking. In the coming months, we should see tremendous repositioning around this and some of the software vendors could just enter obsolescence allowing for a new software leaders generation. Beware!

Who needs a PC? HP acquires Neoware for its thin Linux client technology

Intelligence seems to take place on the network these days. What about this amazing breaking news of HP acquiring Neoware for $16.25 per share i.e. $214 million announced today. Check out the news.
It strikes me as HP is the leading vendor in PCs and yet they place their bet on a thin client, but a Linux one, as they want to take advantage of virtualization technology. But pay attention to this: Neoware is the third-largest thin client vendor, after Wyse and HP. Wow, if this is not a big bet on the webtop, I should just change job and move to the pharmaceutical industry.

More importantly, it seems that HP was attracted by the mobile thin client computing paradigm as Linuxdevice.com reports:
"During the past year, Neoware has claimed a couple of "firsts" in thin client computing. Its m100 thin client notebook, introduced last October, was touted as the first device aimed at extending the security benefits of network computing to mobile workers. And, in March, it announced a new VDI Edition family of thin clients aimed at virtualized client computing systems. These clients appear to have been instrumental in convincing HP to acquire the company. "

Who still needs a PC?

Learn more about thin client computing, virtualization on wikipedia and listen to this podcast about state of virtualization on eweek.

We're moving from Desktop to Webtop

"Microsoft and IBM executives Wednesday admitted feeling heat from Google now that the Web search giant is trying to make inroads into the enterprise market with its hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools." says NetworkWorld.

Desktop productivity suites -- i.e. Microsoft and Open Office -- are beginning to appear as legacy apps for younger internet user generation. If you think about it, up to a few years ago, our desktop was application centric. You'd have to think about what application to use to either create, edit or read information. In this antic time, still valid for conservative users, Office was the place where we'd live on our desktop. Not anymore for Internet centric users, especially 15-24 years old.

Multimedia content, supported with the advent and success of Youtube, flickr, slide.com, and others not to forget podcasts, is paving the way to another information form factor. As a matter of fact, information streams to you via RSS feeds sitting on your desktop via Netvibes personal portal on the web and various widgets. Google apps are starting to give a clear headway towards SaaS collaborative "desktop" productivity applications, not to mention they've just completed another step in completeness with Tonic acquisition -- a presentation sharing and collaboration solution for Powerpoint slides.

To sum it up, I believe we've moved from Desktop to Webtop with several key implication:

• Our digital environment is no more sitting on our PC but on the network,
• Our environment is no longer application centric but user centric i.e. information is flowing your way whatever the application required to exploit it should be. Various alerts are pacing your information day from blogs, information sites, our mailbox and calendar,
• Users are empowered to design their environment, not software vendors!
  

Webtop is a personalized web hosted desktop that you can use everywhere, from any device, that no software vendor would design for you. This is pure Web 2.0 attitude: users are designing their webtop "app" aggregating various components in an iterative and collaborative way -- users recommend widgets and apps to others. Gone the day when software vendors were dictating their view of the world. Folks, we're in charge again. And webtop already have vendors, check out Goowy.

Microsoft colleagues, can you feel the heat?

Google Gears: last mile to a 100% web based application world?

In a meeting recently, in my new job at Sage, we were discussing with R&D about the client model in our new world. Interesting debate among specialists that are seeing the world through RIA (Rich Internet Application), RDA (Rich Desktop Application) and the fading 100% HTML or client/server models. It clearly shows we've been moving fast in a connected world were web based applications are weaving into desktop based applications.

Tectonic moves are taking place between Microsoft, with the Silverlight new cross-platform and cross-browser Internet platform, Adobe's Apollo run-time and the newly announced Google Gears Javascript API to let web applications work off-line. Read Information Week Why Google Gears Is Good News, Bad News For Microsoft article for a better understanding of the landscape and browse through the 92 news articles about it.

But now the non connected world enters web based applications and the very last argument pleading for desktop based applications is just going away, even before being connected to the Internet will be as natural as receiving daylight (a bit futuristic I must admit, but you know me by now I like to provoke). Give it a try and install it. Are you as curious as I am to see what the next Google/Microsoft battle is going to be?

One thing for sure: user's information environment is already partly on the web and on his desktop. I'm not a big fan of this as users need to decide before searching or operating where the information might be or be sure they carry a laptop with them at all times. My bet is user's information are going to move 100% on the web with a solid secure access and backup. The device we will be using to access and manipulate this data is secondary and might just be borrowed when we need it.

What business are we in: Software or advertising? Google latest news

I just couldn't help but coming back on Google (GOOG) latest news, accelerating innovation and dominance -- read Google expands office software for more on businessweek.com -- attacking both Yahoo and Microsoft at the same time :

"Google announced Friday it would pay $3.1 billion to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc....Google announced the acquisition Tuesday of Tonic Systems Inc., a startup based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. The company specializes in collaborative presentation software and is expected to contribute to future versions to Google's productivity suite." -- businessweek.com

This InformationWeek Google's Deal For DoubleClick Could Be The End Of Yahoo article emphasizes the advertising acquisition even more, and finally here is what reported on earthtimes.org about the Google Clear Channel deal:

"Google Inc. and broadcaster Clear Channel Communications Inc. have signed a multi-year advertising sales agreement under which Google will start selling its advertising on radio stations, thereby making its entry into what is described as offline media -- radio, TV and even print publications."

If you didn't realize that Google is clearly moving on two fronts at the same time, SaaS dominance together with entering end-to-end advertising via the on-line door, you've just been living on an island without any kind of media access since January! No later than today, MediaDailyNews reports about how the ad industry major players are reacting about it: Google Looms Over Ad Research Summit, Seen More As Friend Than Enemy.

What business are we in folks? Software or advertising ... it may be both.

My Sun's journey is over: Marketing 2.0 can be on your side

31 January was my last day at Sun Microsystems Inc. After a passionate and exciting 4 years journey I'm now headed to new ventures. As many Sun alumni, I miss the people more than anything else.
What stroke me when I joined back in 2003 was the Sun's bold approach to IT. "The network is the computer" tag line was not just a marketing gimmick, but a genuine belief aimed at changing the way the world would see and appropriate computing forever. The Internet bubble left Sun in a bad shape with a 50% revenue decrease at that time, but the dot com spirit was still there because it was more than just a business opportunity, it was a raison d'etre.
This way of living digital got in my face when I first joined an internal meeting. I saw executives just sliding their employee badge in a Sun Ray, a thin client device, retrieving instantly their environment and the slides they were about to present though miles away from their usual office. Where is their laptop was I thinking to myself? What a strange crowd! Network Computing was a reality and it works great fellow marketers.

I experienced many times Scott McNeally's ability, Sun's CEO at that time, to make unconventional assertion without shaking and against everyone else opinion -- that he used to call "conventional wisdom" with despise. What is amazing is that he was very often right. Scott demonstrated a true inspiring leadership during tough years at Sun. Innovation, humor, and resilience were his attributes. He was easy to access to when present on Sun's campus. Simply human but so smart.

Jonathan Schwartz took over in May 2006. A very bright executive, very passionate. As Sun is achieving its turnaround, Jonathan will have to face a tremendous challenge. He's more than up to it, he can succeed glamorously. Just one recommendation Jonathan, if I may. Don't loose sight of Sun's human capital. I did witness several talented people leaving Sun despite their willingness to stay. It is sad and sends the wrong message. Sun used to be a very good company to work for and attracted the brightest contributors. Good luck to you and good luck to Sun and my ex-colleagues.

As a matter of fact, I get back my freedom of speech and I'm now able to comment on Sun's strategy independently. I'll use that. This also set me free to engage with you if you need some help in your projects. Marketing 2.0 can be on your side.

Michael Dell returns as the CEO: the shake-up is on its way

I've been commenting and highlighting for some time what was appearing to happen at Dell -- you can read all Dell related posts on Marketing 2.0. Dell customers should be glad to see Michael Dell return as the CEO of the company he created and by the way investors as well. Why? Mainly because Michael Dell has always been focused on customers satisfaction.
Let's take a close look in the coming weeks to the concrete changes Michael Dell will initiate to turn things around. To begin with his recent e-mail to Dell employees already indicates that he will attack bureaucracy and develop its global services business.

I would repeat my recommendation, in a pure Marketing 2.0 inspiration:

"Appoint a Marketing 2.0 executive that you'd call Chief Voice of Customers Officer, with Web 2.0 as the only authorized marketing media. Engage the customer community in a genuine, transparent and honest 2 way conversation with your brand."

Of course this is not to be considered as the only thing to be done, but one that could not be forgotten. Customer loyalty is key to any business growth and trust is key to customer loyalty. Trust nowadays demands transparency and genuine customer centric business state of mind. Good luck Michael.

O3Spaces: open source SharePoint for OpenOffice

The open source world is about to welcome a competitor to SharePoint from Microsoft. In 2007, O3Spaces from the Netherlands will release its open source version of its integrated collaboration and document management application for workgroups and small businesses that use OpenOffice.org or its commercial sibling StarOffice. It is already available in its professional version, you can take a look at this quick tour to figure it out, and read a Sharepoint feature comparison here.

It is important as SharePoint is central to Microsoft Office 2007 launch. People Ready is all about collaboration and probably the most compelling reason to upgrade your office suite software. Web 2.0 drives this collaboration attitude, motivating all individuals to do it easily over the network and from very different devices, including our cell phones.

Let's not forget that desktop productivity software is also making its early steps in the Software as a Service (Saas) world. Just keep in mind what Google is doing with Writely and its online spreadsheet service, offering native web collaboration, all for free!

2007 will definitely be a very interesting time for the office suite market and probably give us some indications on whether customers are keen to stay only with the old licensing model or move partly to the open source model or the Saas one.

Is Microsoft 2.0 on the rise?

Most of us do remember the last major Microsoft transformation around the Internet in 1996, don't you? At the announcement for its new BBS, Microsoft Network (MSN) Bill Gates declared about the Internet something as "it's just a fad". After Windows 95 launch, Microsoft was quickly reorganized in 1996 and did let appear an Internet division -- read the detailed story here. The rest is history: Netscape became an industry icon for museums despite being once the web browser gorilla.

As challenging times are back again with the rise of Web 2.0, especially around:

• rich on-line user interfaces
• applications directly cooperating via the network (i.e. SOA and mashups)
• the Internet becoming a platform rather than just a media

Microsoft once again needs to reinvent itself. And this time, it seems to include a new Microsoft leaders generation, check out this business week slide show. Business Week reports this week on The soul of a new Microsoft.

Zune, Vista, Live and MDAS are some of the new ingredients of Microsoft 2.0 as I see it. The People Ready campaign will need to provide an umbrella for this, which is a challenge as the range of Microsoft marketable offers is stretching like crazy. Similarly to the last major transformation I was refering to, Web 2.0 seemed to be lagging in Microsoft communication. Not anymore, watch this Businessweek Video where "Kevin Johnson and Jeff Raikes talk about how new versions of Windows and Office represent a leap into the Web 2.0 world". I'll give you a hint, it's all about web services. Surprised?

I trust the new Microsoft leaders, especially Ray Ozzie, will probably take it to the next level. I wouldn't be surprised if a major reorg was to take place after Vista launch that we could finally call: Microsoft 2.0.

Who's next?