It’s not quite Ray Ozzie’s Microsoft swan song — at least not just yet — but the company’s soon-to-retire chief software architect did issue a warning to the company. In a memo he wrote shortly after announcing his plans to leave Microsoft, Ozzie prophesied the “Dawn of a New Day” in computing.
For all the progress Microsoft has made on the service-centric seamless OS front, as well as moving Windows to the cloud, Ozzie said some of the opportunities he expressed in the memo he wrote after Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates promoted him to chief software architect remain elusive.
“Certain of our competitors’ products and their rapid advancement and refinement of new usage scenarios have been quite noteworthy,” Ozzie admitted. “Our early and clear vision notwithstanding, their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences, in the seamless fusion of hardware and software and services, and in social networking and myriad new forms of Internet-centric social interaction.”
Imagining a Post-PC World
Ozzie suggested that Microsoft close its eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might look like. He went on to say that those who can envision a plausible future that’s brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead because if you can imagine it, you can build it.
“Connected devices beyond the PC will increasingly come in a breathtaking number of shapes and sizes, tuned for a broad variety of communications, creation and consumption tasks,” Ozzie predicted. “Each individual will interact with a fairly good number of these connected devices on a daily basis …”
Ozzie predicted we’ll see decades to come of incredible innovation from which will emerge all sorts of “connected companions” that we’ll wear, carry and use on our desks and walls and the environment all around us. He pointed to service-connected devices going far beyond just…