« Customers and users | Main | Entities for Developers. (Whither the future of MDM?) »
June 17, 2006
Tales of Two Bills
This week I was in Boston at the Microsoft TechEd conference - our premier education event. Normally, that alone would provide material for a dozen posts: I could (and do) talk for hours about partners and customers, casual conversations, presentations given and questions encountered. However, this week, what I personally got up to is hardly the most interesting topic, even for me.
For one thing, Bill Baker's team announced Microsoft Performance Point Server. As readers of B-EYE Network know, this has caused a splash in the BI market. Then, to top it all, I returned from Boston on the Thursday, and after a quick lunch at home, headed to the office, only to hear that BillG announce his transition out of his role at Microsoft.
Well, other folks have given their views MS Performance Point Server, so I will not say too much here. Only that I am energized to see us take on Business Intelligence for the Information Worker with so much vigour and passion. Bill Baker - now guiding that stratagem - was previously General Manager of BI in SQL Server. There, he delivered a foundation for a BI platform: a platform that has proved so undeniably successful that even Microstrategy and Hyperion have, in their ways, embraced it as a mutual advantage. Bill Baker's passion for serving the benefits of BI to the greatest number is sometimes misunderstood, but it should not be underestimated. The masses are going to have their BI. Their capacity to make fully-informed decisions in their work will be transformed by that. I do not doubt that they will have this capability in great part through the initiatives currently fizzing in Building 31 at Redmond.
Nevertheless, exciting though Performance Point is, even on B-EYE network another Bill at Redmond has made the big headlines this week. I have been fortunate at times to see the "two Bills" in action, and it was always quite an experience. Product or strategy reviews, even with a room full of smart and confident vice-presidents, frequently became a 1:1 conversation between them.
You'll have read plenty this week about BillG's technical depth or about his ability to remain focussed on detail for hours and hours at a time. These characteristics are certainly what make us nervous when preparing for reviews and meetings with him, but I think what is most significant about BillG is that these traits are not abstract, but are rooted in something deeper that really does make him exceptional. There is, so far as I could tell, less of the geek or nerd about him than is commonly claimed.
What BillG seems to have, more than anyone else, is a truly comprehensive vision of information technologies and the roles they should play. When he pounces on a technical detail it is generally not the case that he has grokked the technology so thoroughly that he can find a technical flaw in the smallest detail. Rather, it is as if something has jarred or perturbed a more unified conception of what the technology is for. Bill often appears to grasp that picture both broadly and more holistically than others.
Another characteristic of BillG that I have admired in contrast to other things you have read about him, is that he has his own manner of modesty. I don't mean that he can't be arrogant, or brusque, or ill-tempered with those around him. But I do think he has a sense of his place in something bigger than him - that his causes, whether Microsoft, or the wider fields of technology, or his charities, are causes to which he contributes, not causes delineated only by his interest in them. I don’t keep emails, but I remember one, directed to Bill Baker as it happens, where we were struggling to clearly define a particular strategy. BillG wrote, as accurately as I can remember, that "I need us to have an answer to this soon. Steve is repeatedly pressuring me for this and the business review is approaching." You can't imagine Larry Ellison writing that mail with that tone.
So, a big week at Microsoft. There has been plenty of other things to blog about too and I hope I get round to them … My presentation on metadata at TechEd, where over 90 people turned up at 5.30 (dedicated souls) and where I probably learned more than they did! Sybase buying Solonde (yet another database has ETL as standard.) And more thoughts on the distinctions that designers need to make between users and customers. Watch this space ...
Posted by Donald Farmer at June 17, 2006 6:30 PM
