The Internet Services approach

A leaked e-mail from Bill Gates and the attached memo from Roy Ozzie (CTO) has generated some buzz recently and it sheds light on Microsoft’s vision about the “Internet Service approach”. Just goes out to show that Google has not only made its presence felt but it’s an early adopter of the so called Internet Services approach, which seems to have got Microsoft worried for a while now.

Bill Gates E-Mail:

Five years ago we focused our strategy on .NET making a huge bet on XML and Web services. We were a leader in driving these standards and building them into our products and again this has been key to our success. Today, over 92% of the Fortune 100 are utilizing .Net ….. We will build our strategies around Internet services and we will provide a broad set of service APIs and use them in all of our key applications ….. I’ve attached a memo from Ray which I feel sure we will look back on as being as critical as The Internet Tidal Wave memo was when it came out. Ray outlines the great things we and our partners can do using the Internet Services approach. The next sea change is upon us. We must recognize this change as an opportunity to take our offerings to the next level, compete in a manner commensurate with our industry responsibilities, and utilize our assets and our broad reach to reshape our business for the benefit of the users of our products, our customers, our partners and ourselves.

Ray Ozzie’s Memo

[via HyperCamp]