There is no getting around the fact that Vista was a really big disaster for Microsoft, even more so than Windows ME was (we won’t go down the Microsoft Bob road).
During a chat with CEOs at Microsoft annual CEO Summit Steve Ballmer came as close as he ever has to admitting that Vista was a low point for the company. Ballmer is quoted by Paul Hales at the Thinq.co.uk blog as saying to the CEOs:
“How do you get your product right? How do you help the customer? How do you be patient?” he asked, as if he knew the answer.
What he did know was that Microsoft spent too many years building Windows Vista. “We tried too big a task and in the process wound up losing thousands of man hours of innovation,” he said.
The thing is, as bad as Vista was for both the company and the consumer I think it was something that had to happen. Sure it was a period that really sucked for Windows users and saw a lot of them finally make the jump to Apple but Microsoft needed to realize that the computing landscape has changed.
For much of Microsoft’s history it has been the dominant player in what was basically a one platform computing world. It could always be assured that no matter what they did, good or bad, there were no real viable alternatives for people and that they would always continue using Windows.
Even with the arrival of the Web and companies like Google the executive at Microsoft still believed that it would always be business as usual. Then along came the iPhone and this was the beginning of a number of events that succeeded in shaking Microsoft out of its stupor.
It was during the early days of the iPhone that people began t o realize that just as they didn’t need to use just any supposed smartphone they also din’t need to be beholden to Microsoft for their operating system and other software. Then along came Vista which no matter how much money they threw at it couldn’t get any kind of love.
I believe that even though Vista was on a stripped down reworked version of what Longhorn was imagined to be there was the belief that Vista was indeed something that people would go WOW! over. When that didn’t happen and in fact the complete opposite was happening I think the folks in the Microsoft boardroom and management level were caught off guard.
It was then that they realized that the Gates and Ballmer way of doing both business and software could end up being the stone around their neck that could drag them down into oblivion. Granted the company wouldn’t have imploded and gone away but it could have been very badly damaged. No to Ballmer’s credit (and one of the few things I will give him credit for) he made the smartest move he could have – he pulled in Steven Sinofsky the head the Windows platform.
With that appointment gone were the days of the Microsoft social media flood of useless information. Gone were the days of the tech press knowing everything as it was happening within the company. Oh there was still the social media outreach but anything to do with Windows was strictly off-limits unless approved by Sinofsky and crew.
Tie this in with the realization that had started with Vista but became almost a mantra with Windows 7 – get rid of the bloat and we begin to see a real change in the company. In other words it was time for Windows to get back to its roots and bring something of real value to the table both for the corporate clients and the general consumer.
Windows 7 has done all that. It has brought back consumer confidence in Microsoft. I also think that its success has also revitalized the people within the company from the top down. We are seeing Microsoft trying things that I don’t believe they would have thought of doing prior to the Vista failure.
I still believe that Ballmer needs to retire from Microsoft. Ride out on the success of Windows 7 and let the new blood that is bringing the imagination and dreams back into the company have their turn. Everyone else might be all excited about Apple and Google, and all too willing to write of Microsoft but I think that the success of Windows 7 and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 suggest that doing so wouldn’t be a good idea.
Vista may have been a mistake but it was a mistake that Microsoft needed to make and learn from.
And they have.
image courtesy of Thinq.co.uk
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