Monday, 18 October 2010 13:53 by
SyntaxC4Earlier today, I caused some commotion on twitter when it was announced that Ray Ozzie has stepped down as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect (CSA). It’s not hard for a message which is constrained to 140 characters or less to create such controversy especially when keywords are taking out of context. The keyword in this such tweet was innovation.
The Achievements
Obviously, if you review my blog and look at all of my posts on Windows Azure and SQL Azure you can’t contest that Ozzie did an excellent job at an incredibly hard task of choosing a winning team for Microsoft’s venture into Cloud Computing. Windows Azure is a great success and creates a rather unique offering for .NET and Open Source Developers for a fully integrated cloud solution.
Other than Windows Azure, Ozzie was responsible for FUSE Labs which is supposed to be an outlet for Innovation. Out of which came Kodu which is basically a simple game level builder, which could be compared to level builders such as the ones shipped with the original version of Star Craft.
Last but not least is Windows Live Sync, a cross platform synchronization tool. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you the different types of synchronization tools have been developed over the years.
Conclusion
I’m sure Ozzie may have had his hand in other things in Microsoft over the past 5 years, I have outlined three achievements, none of which are truly innovative per say. Innovation aside, I am glad that Ray Ozzie has stepped down, with the success of Windows Azure in the past 2 years, it is great to see Ozzie leave on a high note.