From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Ray Ozzie "Complexity kills"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/technology/27soft.html?hp&ex=1143435600&en=48
2f269e6e35b1c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Eight years later, long after Microsoft lost and then settled the antitrust
case, it turns out that Windows is indeed stifling innovation - at
Microsoft.

The company's marathon effort to come up with the a new version of its
desktop operating system, called Windows Vista, has repeatedly stalled.
Last week, in the latest setback, Microsoft conceded that Vista would not
be ready for consumers until January, missing the holiday sales season, to
the chagrin of personal computer makers and electronics retailers - and
those computer users eager to move up from Windows XP, a five-year-old
product.

In those five years, Apple Computer has turned out four new versions of its
Macintosh operating system, beating Microsoft to market with features that
will be in Vista, like desktop search, advanced 3-D graphics and
"widgets," an array of small, single-purpose programs like news
tickers, traffic reports and weather maps.

So what's wrong with Microsoft? There is, after all, no shortage of smart
software engineers working at the corporate campus in Redmond, Wash. The
problem, it seems, is largely that Microsoft's past success and its
bundling strategy have become a weakness.

Windows runs on 330 million personal computers worldwide. Three hundred PC
manufacturers around the world install Windows on their machines; thousands
of devices like printers, scanners and music players plug into Windows
computers; and tens of thousands of third-party software applications run
on Windows. And a crucial reason Microsoft holds more than 90 percent of
the PC operating system market is that the company strains to make sure
software and hardware that ran on previous versions of Windows will also
work on the new one - compatibility, in computing terms.

As a result, each new version of Windows carries the baggage of its past.
As Windows has grown, the technical challenge has become increasingly
daunting. Several thousand engineers have labored to build and test Windows
Vista, a sprawling, complex software construction project with 50 million
lines of code, or more than 40 percent larger than Windows XP.

"Windows is now so big and onerous because of the size of its code
base, the size of its ecosystem and its insistence on compatibility with
the legacy hardware and software, that it just slows everything down,"
observed David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School.
"That's why a company like Apple has such an easier time of
innovation."

Microsoft certainly understands the problem, the need to change and the
potential long-term threat to its business from rivals like Apple, the free
Linux operating system, and from companies like Google that distribute
software as a service over the Internet.

In an internal memo last October, Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer, who
joined Microsoft last year, wrote, "Complexity kills. It sucks the
life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and
test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and
administrator frustration."

Last Monday afternoon, James Allchin, the longtime engineering executive
who leads the Vista team, held a meeting with 75 Windows managers and
senior engineers to discuss the status of Vista. On Tuesday morning, Mr.
Allchin met with a handful of his lieutenants and told them of the decision
to push back the consumer introduction, a move that was announced publicly
later that day, after the close of the stock market.

Brad Goldberg, a general manager of Windows program management, who
attended the Tuesday morning meeting, said he was not surprised, because he
had been involved in the decision. "But it's a different place than
Microsoft a few years ago would have wound up," he said.

Like other Microsoft executives, Mr. Goldberg bristles at the notion that
little innovative work has come out of the Windows group since XP. In the
last five years, he said, Microsoft has released two versions of the
Windows Tablet PC software intended for pen-based notebook computers, and
four versions of Windows Media Center. To combat viruses plaguing Windows,
much of the engineering team focused for 18 months on fixing security flaws
for a downloadable "service pack" in 2004.

But last Thursday, Microsoft reorganized the management of its Windows
division. Steven Sinofsky, 40, a senior vice president, was placed in
charge of product planning and engineering for Windows and Windows Live, a
new Web service that lets consumers manage their e-mail accounts, instant
messaging, blogs, photos and podcasts in one site.

The move is seen as an effort to bring greater discipline to the Windows
group. "But this doesn't seem to do anything to address the core
Windows problem; Windows is too big and too complex," said Michael A.
Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Microsoft feels it can't get away with breaking compatibility," said
Mendel Rosenblum, a Stanford University computer scientist. "All of
their applications must continue to run, and from an architectural point of
view that's a very painful thing."

It is also costly in terms of time, money and manpower. Where Microsoft has
thousands of engineers on its Windows team, Apple has a lean development
group of roughly 350 programmers and fewer than 100 software testers,
according to two Apple employees who spoke on the condition that they not
be identified.

That ballast is also Microsoft's great strength, and a reason industry
partners and computer users stick with Windows, even if its size and
strategy slow innovation. Unless Microsoft can pick up the pace,
"consumers may simply end up with a more and more inferior operating
system over time, which is sad," said Mr. Yoffie of the Harvard
Business School.

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