Maarten van Stam - Soft As In Software :-) : Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft Office 14 not this year

maarten — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:16:00 GMT

According to information on Foleys blog Steve Ballmer said during his annual Strategic Update briefing with Wall Street analysts that Office 14 won’t be shipping in 2009.

One of the reason to this would be the option to release it at the same time as SharePoint Server 14.

So what is the impact of all of this? Let’s look ahead and see what is up to be released in the upcoming year and beyond this year:

- Windows 7
- Windows Azure
- Server 2008 R2
- Office 14
- Office 14 Server / SharePoint Server 14
- Visual Studio (Dev 10)
- …

What is related and what is not. Well, if I look at the list you can divide the list into three sections:

- Operating Systems
- Applications (and Server Applications)
- Developer Tools

The first section, Operating Systems, is quite isolated from the other two. No need to release this with the other items of the list. Windows 7 appears to be close to going RTM so there is no reason to think this release will be delayed in any way and with my best guess that will be Q3 2009. There is no information to support this but if you do a little research on the internet you’ll see that the votes are all within this timeframe.

Update: A large hardware manufacturer told Bloomberg Windows 7 to be released late September, early October.

For the next two sections it’s a bit more complicated. These two will have a hard time living without each other. If you release the applications you want to develop against them and if you release developer tools you are looking for applications to target.

For this exact reason the Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 2005 Second Edition (VSTO 2005 SE) was released when Office 2007 released. This released additional features to support the Office 2007 file format and some extra features such as the Application Level Add-Ins.

With this in mind, I tend to think that Dev 10 would be scheduled to be pre-released near the end of 2009 (PDC ?) to MSDN subscribers like they did with the release of Visual Studio 2008 (released Nov. 2007) and call it Visual Studio 2010 in the line of its codename “Dev 10” and schedule the public release simultaneously with the release of Office 14 early 2010.

There are several reasons why I think this could be a proper release schedule:

- Separation of products and operating system
- Releasing products with the developer tools to support the products
- Test driving the developer tools early by a limited group MSDN subscribers
- Secure earnings over a longer period due to spreading releases

For now we only know that Steve announced Office 14 not to make it this year.

If you are in control, what would be –your– release roadmap? Let me know if my guessing here makes sense.

Microsoft 2.0 (part II)

maarten — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:24:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I finally finished reading Mary Jo Foleys book on Microsoft (Is there anything else she is working on besides Microsoft at all?) with the main title “Microsoft 2.0” celebrating the season holidays.

Looking back at my initial posting at the time that I just bought the book I noticed that the blog item was posted somewhere in May 2008. It apparently took me se7en (yes, I watched a rerun of the movie yesterday –again– …) months to complete.

Not that I need seven months to finish reading a book, but that has to do with the fact that I always read a pile of books at the same time. All over my house there are books with post-it thingies tagged somewhere in the middle to remind me where I stopped reading the book.

Besides the fact that I read a lot of books simultaneously I also was asked to ‘tech-read’ two books (read book manuscripts and check if the information is correct, code is working) on VSTO and I never would have guessed how much time that takes to check every detail and test all the code provided by the author of the book.

Anyway, I finished reading Microsoft 2.0 and I must say that I enjoyed reading the compilation of columns, memos and notes collected by Mary Jo to get an overview of Microsoft’s infrastructure and people. The list of names in the book is huge.

If you follow the Mary Jo writings on her column you should recognize her style of writing. As always I was impressed by her skills to collect the inside information from sources internally or externally and bringing it all together in a readable form for you to consume.

The book is not only easy to read but it also contains links and pointers to the facts and memos to support her thoughts. In the back of the book, the appendix, you can find most important memos published to the internet or intercepted by Mary Jo while doing her research.

A few sections in the book are already outdated (they were in fact already outdated when publishing the book) but that is the risk of writing on a dynamic subject such as Microsoft. Everyone can guess that these sections are about the Yahoo merger that never happened (yet?).

I can only say that if you would like to get an excellent overview of Microsoft’s organization interpreted by Mary Jo, read about all the big names within the Microsoft organization … this book is a must-read for everyone who hates or loves the work of Microsoft.

I enjoyed it and I am looking forward to read a follow up on the book. Most likely at her blog, but maybe in “Microsoft 3.0 – A reaction to an economic crisis”?

Now go to the bookstore or go to an online reseller and get the book to read it and let me know what you think … Do you think she is right? Will Microsoft survive without Bill Gates?

Microsoft 2.0

maarten — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:59:00 GMT

Today I received the book that I bought at Amazon last week written by Mary Jo Foley on "How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era". The main title of the book is Microsoft 2.0.

While I was buying the book I decided to buy two more books, VSTO and Office development related, from Amazons 'used & new' service. Three great books for only a small amount of Euro's. Half of the price did go to shipping the books but compared to Dutch pricing still very cheap. I love the US $/Euro € conversion rate!

I once had the privilege to be contacted by Mary Jo to provide some comments on one of the VSTO versions to be released. VSTO is now completely integrated into Visual Studio but at that time it was a 'standalone' product. The questionaire I received wasn't a small one, she wanted to know everything there is to know about that product.

The message you hear a lot when that happens is the warning:
"Be careful with what you say if you are talking to Mary Jo, she will quote you and never think something you say is off the record!"

I don't know what to expect from the book, but I'm sure it will be fun to read. I'll get back to you on this whenever I finish reading the book.