has become orchestrating carefully for the past few a long time the transition of Bill Gates from Chief Application Architect (CSA) and conventional participant in solution arranging meetings, to “mere” Chairman. (Gates’ actual “last day” is June 30.) it turns out Microsoft may have been preparation this transition far earlier than anyone knew. And Ray Ozzie may not have been the company’s first or only choice to fill the big Microsoft CSA shoes. Darryl Taft blogged on May 27 that Gates approached now-IBM-fellow Grady Booch two years before Microsoft bought Ozzie’s company,
Office 2010, Groove Networks, and hired Ozzie to be CSA. The idea is far from far-fetched: Gates has long been a big backer of the importance of software package modeling,
Microsoft Office 2007 Product Key, one of Booch’s specialties. And Microsoft considered buying enterprise-team tool vendor Rational — a move that IBM ended up making, instead. (Currently, Booch is Chief Scientist for Software package Development in IBM Research.) Gates & Co. had ended up snagging Booch, however,
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, I wonder whether Microsoft’s priorities might be considerably different than they are with Ozzie in the CSA role. Might Microsoft be more business-focused than consumer-focused? Might Microsoft’s Oslo initiative and its forthcoming D programming language be far more visible and high priority? No doubt,
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro, Microsoft would still be transitioning from a software-only to a Software+Services vendor,
Purchase Office 2010, whether Booch or Ozzie was at the CSA helm. But maybe Microsoft might have stuck more to its enterprise knitting and gone off on fewer consumer-based chases with Booch in the driver’s seat. your take? Would Microsoft be on a different technology course if Booch had ended up as Redmond’s CSA?