Microsoft is learning from Amazon.com, borrowing some of the company’s guiding principles in a competition to provide web-based technology services.
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Scott Guthrie [pictured above], who leads Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise unit, said Microsoft in recent years has based more of its decision making on data-driven experiments, as well as what it thinks customers want, rather than what competitors might be doing. Both traits are hallmarks of Amazon’s hard-charging culture.
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I think partly because we are based in each other’s backyards, there is a bit of cross-pollination between both organizations, Guthrie said at a GeekWire technology conference Wednesday in Bellevue.
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A bit may be an understatement.
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Washington state’s two largest technology companies didn’t compete much during their early years, with Microsoft working on personal-computer software and Amazon focused on online retail.
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But as Amazon built out a massive business-technology arm — Amazon Web Services — and Microsoft moved to match those capabilities, the companies found themselves as rivals for both customers and job recruits.
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Résumés of technologists, salespeople and marketers in the Seattle area increasingly include stints at both companies, which are widely seen as the leaders in the business of providing on-demand processing power and software services delivered over the internet.
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It’s not just Microsoft that has borrowed from Amazon, Guthrie said. At Amazon, he sees signs that the company is learning from Microsoft’s expertise in selling to business customers and building a network of partner companies that help sell its product.
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The cultures probably have gotten closer together the last several years, Guthrie said.
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Asked at the GeekWire conference about Google, viewed by many analysts as the No. 3 cloud-computing provider behind Amazon and Microsoft, Guthrie said he takes the California company’s challenge seriously.
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There’s a risk in technology to focus on leaders in a market and pay less heed to the upstarts, he said.
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Those are often the people…