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NO ONE KNOWS better than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that, as the .Net
platform evolves, the success of Microsoft depends on how well the
company coordinates its tool, server, and client strategies and how well
it communicates that vision. In an interview with InfoWorld Test Center
Director Steve Gillmor and InfoWorld Editor at Large Ed Scannell at
Microsoft Fusion 2002, Ballmer discussed the progress of .Net, changes
in the company's approach to product development, and Microsoft's
efforts to simplify product licensing and inspire trust in customers and
partners.

> Last time we talked was two years ago, at the beginning of the .Net
> era. So where are we now in the .Net evolution?

Let me start by talking about where I think we are in the XML revolution
first, and then [I will] talk about where we are with .Net. I believe
that the IT industry collectively decided over the last three or four
years that the world was going to be replatformed with XML as the key
foundation. It's not like anyone ever got together to decide this, but
it's like magnetic north, where it's been clearly indicated that
everyone is rallying around the concept. But I think the degree to which
[XML] is pervasive might still be underestimated. A lot of partners,
even at this conference, see it as b-to-b for big companies. But it is
really about the way software in general is designed. It is all about
the way security should work. Management -- everything is changed.

So to answer your direct question, two years ago I might have said the
jury is still out about whether [XML] was going to happen. We were
questioning if it was going to be a legitimate competitor to Java. But
now the world has decided to embrace [XML] as the basis for the next
generation of technology. And there are a lot of benefits that come with
it. Could it have been something other than XML? Sure it could have. It
wasn't the specific technical implementation; it is merely the fact that
it comes out of Internet standards. It has deeper semantic abilities. It
is all about interoperability and connection.

So in that context, where are we with .Net? I'll say a couple
things. No. 1, I would say we have some momentum in the market. We have
customers using the .Net product line, like Merrill [Lynch], Credit
Suisse, Marks & Spencer, CitiBank, and a variety of others. People who
are doing some things for real. I feel like the degree we are out front
is in some ways smaller and in some ways larger.

> How so?

Smaller in the sense that everyone is talking the XML talk, even Sun;
bigger in the execution sense: We've delivered. We delivered the first
batch of products that really were built XML to the core -- Visual
Studio .Net and BizTalk Server -- and we are getting traction. So I feel
good about where our execution is relative to everyone else. That is not
to say that other people aren't doing some reasonable bolt-on XML
support for the stuff they have.

> You have some heavy lifting to do to convince your customers and
> partners to follow along. What do you have to do to set the standard
> for adoption and upgrading to this next generation?

We have to present the picture that we are behaving consistently within
the framework of focusing on customer issues and customer satisfaction
and trustworthy computing, which we have articulated. Now there are some
things I would have done differently, in 20-20 hindsight. I would have
increased the focus on not just security but deployment, because a lot
of the security problems are actually deployment problems. We have the
fix, but sometimes we can't get the tools in their hands to deploy those
fixes fast enough. Licensing -- I know I would have given more time, and
there are better ways to plan around the kinds of changes we made. We
are still going to have to get smart about the full ramifications.

> Do you expect any changes to be made between now and July 31 to
> Licensing 6.0? There is a lot of push-back on this.

No, there is nothing that will happen between now and July 31. And we
will continue to learn over time what we need to do to earn our
customers' trust and earn their business. I think many of the people who
are pushing back really don't even know the new terms.

> Isn't that your fault for not educating them?

Yes, it is our fault. But you meet with plenty of customers whose
companies already have licenses, and they are saying, 'I think there's a
problem.' I don't deny there are some problems. I am sure there are some
issues we will have to work on over time.

After July 31 we are going to see what the real issues are. I was
talking to a customer at the show who was saying he thought there would
be a problem, and I told him that we just completed a deal with his
company and that he is now universally licensed and that total costs to
his company are now lower than they were before. And he said, 'Oh really?'

So we'll go through July 31. We have a lot of customers who have signed
licenses, and I am sure we are going to find some issues. My bigger
concerns today are probably not in the larger accounts, but there may be
some issues we need to address among the smaller-size companies, and we will.

> How does the .Net initiative change the way in-house client and server
> developers work together? 

What we are trying to do for the health of .Net and the health of the
company and the sanity of the people who work there and the quality of
the products we produce is to have a more orchestrated, ¸ber-road map
of where we are going.

Now there are two things a road map can be. One is just a piece of paper
that tells what everyone is doing and records a bunch of bottom-up
plans. Or it can be something where we impose more broadly our vision
from the top. We are not going to try to get everything shared. ...
That's a path for getting everything stopped up. But at the same time we
are trying to take the top four or five things we are trying to do in
the Longhorn wave, Yukon wave, or the .Net wave and really have enough
time to have some cross-cutting discussions about how we make that happen.

Bill [Gates] is dedicated full-time to being chief software
architect. He also happens to be chairman of the company, but he spends
most of his time being chief software architect. We have a body now that
meets every month -- the SLTT [Senior Leadership Technical Team],
basically the top people involved in the product-creating strategy --
and we present and discuss the issues. Bill is driving a process for
each of these waves. For instance, [he will ask] what are the
cross-cutting scenarios that I want, and then [he will] get all the
right product groups together and bring these things in front of the SLTT.