Microsoft and Cool

It really has been years since the words Microsoft and Cool have been used in the same sentence.  But, for the last few months I keep reading Microsoft and Cool in the same sentence and how Microsoft is cool again, and I keep hearing it and seeing it over and over.  It’s been a long time since Microsoft was equated with “cool”.  Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant.  In this world perception is reality.  So, if the technology elite, the press and the financial sector believes that Microsoft is now cool it’s going to spawn some interesting momentum for the application developers on the Microsoft Platform. 

Although we really won’t know the real implications of all this cool until the opening day keynotes and announcements of the Microsoft Build conference on April 29^th, let me put some context to the current discussion of Microsoft and cool.  With its “new” CEO Satya Nadella, now almost a year in the CEO chair, and generals like EVP Scott Guthrie, Microsoft has made some major pushes towards cool in 2015.

Hololens

This 3D interactive virtual reality hologram generator will be nothing short of spectacular if it’s programmable in .NET (and/or the universal API) and comes at a cost effective price tag.  This little thing has captured the imagination of the technology elite and the business elite alike. 

SurfaceHub

The Microsoft Perceptive Pixel (PPI) team delivered an enormous touch screen (84”) with industry leading fidelity of touch that met the raves of the hardware and software elite alike.  But, it’s been a year and a half without a product which has made their V1 product a unicorn.  Believe it or not, and no one but Microsoft knows why, but, PPI team sold out of its product over 1.5 years ago.  And there has been a void waiting for their V2 product ever since.  SurfaceHub is the product that who’s bold promise it is to deliver on that promise.  We do know that the SurfaceHub is not just a big touchscreen with amazing 4k fidelity and touch.  We know it is interactive.  With 2d cameras, It “senses” when you walk in the room and wakes up to you.

Windows 10

It’s been a long time since we thought of a Microsoft client OS as cool, but all indications are that Windows 10 just might be that OS.  Spartan is the code name for the new browser and the default way users interact with the Web.  And Spartan is looking like the nail that finally puts IE (the epitome of not cool) into the coffin. 

MSR

Microsof’t R&D budget still leads the industry and has for years hovering around $3 billion a year.  And there is some amazing stuff going on at Microsoft Research (MSR).  We used to call MSR “the place where great ideas are killed by middle managers.”  But, it certainly looks like some of those great ideas are busting out into the marketplace.

Open Source

Open sourcing projects is changing attitudes inside and outside Microsoft. Developers within the Microsoft walls are educating each other about the importance of building a community around their product and changing their mindset from owning projects to shepherding them.

And this is the most important component of “cool”.  All those young developers that left the Microsoft platform a few years back because other platforms were perceived (right or wrongly it doesn’t matter) as more cool are starting to coming back.  And it most certainly looks like those developers are going to flock back in droves if this trend of cool continues.