Welcome to tfosorciM.org where I hope to discuss a broad range of issues relating to Microsoft software and wider issues which impact on that software.
I am aware of many blogs which relate, directly or indirectly, to Microsoft software. To my mind many are either of the sycophantic type which imply, without ever stating it directly, that Microsoft can do no wrong. It seems to me that blogs of that type are unrealistic and fail their reader who may be struggling with limitations or unreliability of some piece of Microsoft software that they are using.
At the opposite end of the spectrum of views are blogs which seem to emanate from a mindset that Microsoft is ultimate evil and that it is a given that nothing that Microsoft does can ever be good. In parallel with that attitude there is occasionally a hint that users should be grateful that there is non-Microsoft software available. Usability and documentation of such open-source software often, in my view, leave a lot to be desired.
Whether I can achieve a blog that avoids the pitfalls I mentioned remains to be seen.
Neither approach seems satisfactory to me. I will aim to produce a blog that is informative, realistic and entertaining. And, hopefully, consistently honest. And, perhaps not rarely, a little provocative.
From time to time I have access to Microsoft software under NDA. If you are visiting this blog to glean information that I am not free to disclose then you will be disappointed.
I take as my starting point in this blog that the customer is, genuinely, king. I see the next several years in the software universe as a battle between Microsoft and its competitors, including the open-source movement.
To my mind, at the present time both Microsoft and its competitors, to a significant extent, pay lip service to putting customers first. It seems to me that many software developers put their own perspective first rather than the perspective of their actual or hoped-for customers.
My view is that any software that gives insufficient weight to customers' needs in an increasingly competitive software market does its users a disservice and does strategic harm to the corporation or organisation which created it. Relevance of software to customer needs and careful attention to the usability of that software is of enormous importance.
It is customers' money which keeps software companies in business.
In the coming years in the software universe the customer will be king. Those corporations and organisations which produce software which genuinely recognises the importance of customers and give great attention to customers' needs will have a significant competitive advantage and are likely to grow. Those organisations which fail to give adequate weight to customer needs will shrivel.
Time will tell which category Microsoft belongs to.
Posted by Andrew Watt at October 4, 2003 02:10 PM