The Wizard of Ozzie

Microsoft's entry into the world of SaaS (what they call "server=service") certainly got plenty of press coverage, but the thing that really caught my eye was Dave Winer's posting of Ray Ozzie's internal memo to Microsoft around the whole thing.

Doing a little document digging, one can find statements like:

Software that Just Works
"It is now 2005, and the environment has changed yet again – this time around services. Computing and communications technologies have dramatically and progressively improved to enable the viability of a services-based model. The ubiquity of broadband and wireless networking has changed the nature of how people interact, and they’re increasingly drawn toward the simplicity of services and service-enabled software that ‘just works’. Businesses are increasingly considering what services-based economics of scale might do to help them reduce infrastructure costs or deploy solutions as-needed and on subscription basis."

On Achieving Scale
"And the work of these startups could be improved with a ‘services platform’. Ironically, the same things that enable and catalyze rapid innovation can also be constraints to their success. Many hard problems are often ignored – the most significant of which is achieving scale...Intuitively there seems to be a platform opportunity in providing such capabilities to developers in a form that retains the speed, simplicity and loose coupling that is so very important for rapid innovation."

Ozzie then goes on to outline hints for the division within the company - ways to think about "service-enhanced software."

The letter ends by emphasizing the "disruptive potential of services."

more on the forces that make SaaS disruptive in the coming days....