The Alpha Marketer
We talk here about the need to simplify for our eventual end-user: our customer.
With the appointment as Bill Gates successor, Ray Ozzie as the head of the world's most powerful software development organisation, he already has sized up a major problem that Microsoft and many of us have, and is looking at ways to combat it.
I'm talking about making our products or services far too complex for our customers. This particular complexity has stiffled Microsoft's (MSFT) progress, which has been the major reason for the new Windows being delayed for so long. Yet he understands with the huge projects, there can only be occasional new product releases or upgrades.
"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."
As a result of this outlook, he is pushing for quicker innovation and not trying to always hit home runs with their projects, but to develop much narrower targets but with very focused goals. This was also the style he used at Groove.
This is something that all of us online marketers need to take to heart. This is why product after product has been introduced by its competitors and not Microsoft. Microsoft has been focusing on huge projects that are only rolled out once in a while, as its competitors have been developing all sorts of interesting smaller projects that many end-users love.
If he gets his way and they start churning out new, smaller, niche products, their competitors are going to be in for a surprise. It would be a mistake to count Microsoft out of the race if these things begin to take shape; and I think they will.
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