Ray (of light) Ozzie

It's going to take a while for all of this to really be digested inside Microsoft, let alone the industry.  But people really need to see the magnitude of this "turn the ship" effort - the internal memos and webcasts as well as the external communications, directed at making wholesale changes to how we do business.

It's a day to celebrate - there is an intelligent, informed, well-organized guiding force that is taking the company forward into the brave new world of Software as a Service.  I'm not talking about Windows + Office Live - see "Microsoft Previews New Windows Live and Office Live Services" - which looks like a good start for us. Don Dodge has some good coverage on this and also liked Richard McManus' writeup.

What the world didn't get to see today was Ray's internal memo on SaaS, which is brilliant.  It specifically calls out requirements for the entire ecosystem for SaaS and not just our direct offerings.  No doubt it will be leaked at some point but I'm not going to be the one to do it.

[Update: Here is Ray Ozzie's memo - thanks to Dave Winer]

For those who are interested, here is Tim O'Reilly's take on the announcements today.  Steve Hamm has put it in the right historical perspective but misses a key point - he says that Microsoft was able to beat Netscape because they were a software company and therefore appropriate competition, where Google is a different animal.  I suggest a different perspective - Microsoft is an indirect channel company (of $40B in revenue we generated last year, over 95% was indirect) and that we understand how to deliver value to ecosystems at scale.

The partner story for Microsoft in SaaS has not been officially told yet, but it is coming and it will have an impact.  To get an early look at what this could include, check out my previous post on providing a marketplace for SaaS companies to connect with small and mid-sized businesses globally. 

Offer your opinions and advice on this and I'll see that it gets into our SaaS discussions internally.  We have a cross-company team working specifically on how to make partners wealthy through our future SaaS offering, and we're looking for input.