Innovation from Ballmer?

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 07/28/06

Steve Ballmer to the rescue: he will single handedly take over as Microsoft's "Champion of Innovation." Yet as we discussed not long ago in Research? What Research? examples of true innovation developed by Microsoft are rather rare. Interesting that the one person defending Microsoft didn't have the courage to leave a real e-mail address. Could that be another Astroturf campaign? You know, where companies use fake names to give the appearance of a groundswell of grass roots support?

One reader sent an example of innovation that the Active Directory synchronization was three times faster with Server 2003 than with Server 2000. Sorry, I don't count that as innovation. I don't even count AD as innovation, since I attended the AD launch meeting hosted by Jim Allchin at an InterOp show in Las Vegas in the early 1990s. The only clear innovation I found was the desperate need for Microsoft to catch up to Novell in the directory services race.

I spoke with Allchin directly after the marketing mumbo-jumbo was over. Allchin headed the product development team for Active Directory yet could not answer simple questions of mine about directory changes made by multiple vendor partners corrupting the central AD database. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because my recent adventures with Microsoft automatic updates and video drivers drove home the point, once again, that even Windows XP SP2 can't manage DLL updates from multiple vendors (even Microsoft's own DLLs) on a single system.

Innovation by checkbook: Microsoft buys Whale for an "undisclosed sum." Plug Whale's SSL VPN technology into the next free update of a Microsoft server, and slap at other SSL VPN providers Cisco, Nortel, Juniper, Aventail, and F5. Cut their revenue stream out from under them, decrease their market share, then crow about innovation with a straight face. That's the Microsoft way, and Ballmer can keep that face straight.

All big companies do this – they let smaller companies define new markets or profitable niches in existing markets, then swoop in and buy them. That's why MySpace now belongs to News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, a bizarre pairing if you think about it for a moment.

Many small company founders dream of cashing out rich. During the 1990s the stock market showered you with money. Now, at least in the technology space, large companies sprinkle money on you. Not as much as in the 90s, but we're still talking millions for many small and medium sized company's management teams.

The prize for innovation abuse goes to GTE, the phone company now known as Verizon. I remember commercials where they crowed about "developing the Internet." In reality, they bought BBN (Bolt, Baranek, and Newman), the private firm that actually did much of the early Internet work in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But a Baby Bell crowing about developing the Internet? Sacrilege.

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