Headline on CNet yesterday, Ray Ozzie innovates.
Once or twice a year, Ozzie tries to find time for what he calls "white space." Rather than be surrounded by the ideas of others, Ozzie prefers to lock himself away with the proverbial blank sheet of paper. His most recent such exercise was during a brief trip to Hawaii in April following a work trip to Asia.
Maybe CNet is picking up some of its news content from The Onion.
Interesting how this
became this. Hoo boy, I'll bet the folks at Yahoo loved that memo.
I've heard it said that no army should try to fight a war on three fronts. How many fronts does Microsoft think it can handle? Right now it's under attack from Google and clearly losing on that front. There's a war starting with VMware and on that front Microsoft currently lacks sufficient arms. Microsoft is spread across internet, OS, personal apps, databases, virtualization, business apps, and home gaming.
Can they really handle a Yahoo acquisition and turn it into something positive vs. Google? Could they handle a Citrix/Xen acquisition to battle VMware as well, or if not invest enough development and focus to battle VMware with Hyper-V?
While Microsoft earnings clearly make them a force and they have enough money to try and compete in diverse markets, I have to wonder whether they ought to retrench and pick a specific set of battles while giving others up. Money and clout is one thing, but personnel to achieve excellence and a willingness to break from the past is another. Whether Microsoft likes it or not, Google is crushing them in attracting the best talent for internet development and buying Yahoo probably won't help since all the remaining top talent will leave. See that link above for a clue -- right now Microsoft has cultural and historical problems that are working against it in attracting top talent for the key markets of the internet and virtualization, both of which (like it or not) are built on open source and lots of non-Microsoft technology. Are you going to make everyone at Yahoo use Silverlight and SQL Server?
If Microsoft thinks it's going to buy Yahoo and then have Microsoft technology and culture spread through Yahoo, they are in big trouble -- they'll bleed people and they'll ruin the value of Yahoo. If instead they do the reverse and actually let Yahoo technology and culture penetrate Microsoft, then maybe they have a chance to make it work. Of course it's hard to imagine that since it would be so unlike Microsoft of the past, but the one hope I guess is that Ray and Jack Ozzie understand.
Still, Microsoft better be careful that it doesn't bite off more than it can chew, the result of which would be a dilution of their brand and of their market share in every major category.
Over the holidays my in-laws were in town and I took a few days off (whew). That meant I had time to read some books, and also my wife and I were able to go out to the movies for the first time in a long while (the saga of having an infant).
If you're looking for a movie and you want something that activates more of your brain than National Treasure (did not see that) then you should see Charlie Wilson's War. Fantastic. Hanks and Roberts and Seymour Hoffman all good, and my favorite screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men) has done it again, maybe better than ever. How is it possible that TV producers keep pulling his shows (Sports Night, Studio 60) or removing him (after season 4 of West Wing)? By the way, having now seen the movie I think the marketing for Charlie Wilson's War stinks -- I really had no idea what the movie would be like. Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with intelligent art.
And I finally got to the last Harry Potter book. Wow. Every plot element, every twist and turn, seemed entirely "realistic" within the world of the characters, and exactly right. Here's what I'll say about JK Rowling -- to write 7 books, and not short books, and to basically not miss a note, is an amazing accomplishment. And I admire that she's not afraid to create complex characters and take chances. While her writing style may not match Tolkien, her storytelling and timing is superior and these books are going to last for a long, long time. Loved it.
As I've mentioned before my wife and I are members of the Gallup Panel, which means we participate in surveys and polls regularly. Most of them are more consumer-oriented than political, although the first question on every survey is whether you approve or disapprove of the president's performance.
Recently I participated in a survey on movies and entertainment. The survey asked "what is your favorite movie?"
I'm very curious that many people seem to find it easy to answer questions like this. Ask them their favorite movie or book, and they can tell you right away. It's kind of like your favorite color. We ask children what's their favorite color, thereby communicating that people do have favorite colors and making them think they should have a favorite color, too.
But do we really have single favorites that stand above them all? For me, I'd say that there are many movies and books I've loved, but each is different and often my love for them was at a particular time in my life, and at a different time I didn't feel the same. Asking me to choose between them is like asking me to choose between apples and oranges (literally) or spring and fall. Colors too.
For me, a better question from Gallup would have been "What is one of your favorite movies?" Or even better, "What are three of your favorite movies?"
But, since I'm trying to be a good Gallup panel member and they asked me what my favorite movie was, I thought about it. A pretty diverse set of movies came to mind, such as Godfather (part 1 or part 2, who can decide), Manhattan (superior for my taste than Annie Hall), and Silence of the Lambs (disturbing I know but dang that movie just seems perfect in every scene). I even thought about White Men Can't Jump, certainly one of my favorites although not quite as deeply satisfying.
I didn't spend too long agonizing over it, but finally I decided to go with Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. If I've got to pick one, then that seems pretty good -- smart, funny, deep, different, makes you think and feel. But ask me another day and you might get another answer.
We've started a new blog for my company vmSight. I'll be blogging there specifically about issues related to virtualization and virtual network intelligence. vmSight provides real-time policy monitoring and reporting for virtual networks, and is designed to help IT administrators trace user and application activity inside a virtual network, with features to support regulatory compliance (such as HIPAA and PCI), application performance monitoring and root-cause analysis, and variable rate user billing for virtual systems.
