4TM At Microsoft
Next week I’ll be heading to Seattle to meet up with Microsoft. On the agenda is two full days finding out more about their business, the potential for collaboration and knowledge sharing and, in particular, Enterprise Web 2.0.
Microsoft continues to dominate the enterprise computing market supplying everything from operating systems to email systems to databases to mobile phone software.
In the social media marketplace it has yet to make its presence felt, except perhaps in advertising. Here Microsoft is rivalling Google. In 2007 Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for nearly quarter of a million dollars. This valued Facebook at a less-than-believable $15bn. Analysts were only looking at
the raw stock though: Microsoft wanted to be the supplier of advertising to Facebook, cementing a pre-existing relationship. As one of the more popular social networking sites, Facebook is key terratory in its battle for market share against Google who, despite owning up to 90% of the online advertising marketplace, is also struggling in the social media space and has yet to develop its own products.
Microsoft has a long history of being late to the party, then turning the business around. Its first operating system, DOS was not an new idea, but only Microsoft recognised it was more important than the hardware. Microsoft shunned the Internet as a passing fad, trying to set up its own online network, but switched direction overnight. Microsoft Internet Explorer remains the pre-eminent web browser despite heavy competition from Mozilla’s Firefox and Google.
That’s why I’m so interested in speaking to Microsoft. Most organisaton use at leasr some of their systems for communication and collaboration whether sharing files on a fileserver, delivering web services to clients using Microsoft IIS or indeed, using something as ubiquitous as Microsoft Exchange email.
However, social media is building deeper relationships between people than messaging and data sharing. Those with common interests and common goals can gather around information sharing and networking sites and create new things. The power of this within a company is obvious: those with specific knowledge can come together or help others regardless of organisational boundaries or geographic separation. Understanding by members of staff about each others’ roles and aspirations facilitates understanding as to why some processes are important and actions can have consequences elsewhere in the organisation.
These relationship are not bound by fixed workgroups or organisational charts, which virtually all traditional ICT implemetations are implemented around. They are created by common interest or common need, or the simply human need to communicate and share.
Followers of Wikinomics will know that the extended enterprise is also critical: feedback from clients and customers, understanding the problems those who sell and support our products face. And it’s more than that; it’s bringing these stakeholders into the culture of our organisation. It’s making customers part of research and development and not just passive viewers of our strategy, or people asked to choose from two or three options, none of which suit.
It’s rare for traditional ICT to facilitate that, focusing instead on formal processes like invoicing and dispatch.
Microsoft’s Sharepoint plaform seems like an obvious social media contender, designed to share documents, discussions and information in an enterprise. However, its origins are undoubtably traditionally corporate, and it has yet to offer the sponteniety and attractiveness of modern social media. It seems, sometimes, like it’s more about securing than sharing. Why can’t staff microblog questions, gripes and ideas with a couple of clicks? Why can’t the staff directory have more than a photo and a phone number - these are real people, not just “human resources”.
Microsoft is a dark horse and it may well change the world again. More blogs from the Microsoft campus, right through week commencing 29th September 2008.
The visit is organised and supported by Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
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