R&D Yields True Innovation
Over the next couple of months, Microsoft will launch new operating systems, applications, and upgrades that draw on $20 to $25 billion in research. Now, I must admit I have often been skeptical of Microsoft’s boasts about how much it spends annually on research – somewhere north of $6 billion. The Washington Monthly years ago launched a useful adage about Washington bureaucrats – they talk about inputs because they can’t measure outputs. And Microsoft has been criticized more than a few times for R&D spending that just doesn’t seem to produce much.
This may be a time for skeptics to shut up and watch, listen, and try the new technologies.
Some are already familiar – SQL Server 2005 is such a departure from its predecessor that some in the company argue it should have a new name. It is enterprise capable and loaded with features that make it valuable beyond the IT department to the benefit of end users – reporting, analysis and business intelligence, for example.
Bill Hartnett, a financial services industry manager at Microsoft says that when the new version of the database was being designed, Paul Flessner, senior vice president, server applications, insisted that business intelligence functionality be built into SQL Server to make it a valuable resource for business. Now users can create sophisticated reports from their desktops and import results into Excel and Word, since SQL supports XML, and do it all without calling on IT.
Microsoft blew apart old paradigms more than a decade ago with Office, which offered integration of word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. Anyone remember Harvard Graphics? WordStar? Ami Pro?
Perhaps the result now seems a bit boring (we don’t have to retype info from one application into another) but anyone who recalls switching jobs and having to learn entire new sets of office productivity applications that didn’t connect to each other appreciated the advantages of Office.
Microsoft has built on its legacy in several ways. Excel, which has long been the de facto tool of choice in financial services, has grown to a grid size of one million rows and 16,000 columns.
In the spring issue of Windows in Financial Services magazine, we described the evolution of Excel and the way the development team has worked with financial firms in London, New York, and Tokyo to build a new version of the app to meet their needs. And in our summer issue we let the professional developers explain what these new features would mean: (Read the article) http://www.windowsfs.com/TheMag/tabid/54/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/1179/PageID/922/Default.aspx
A major feature of Excel in the new launch of Office 2007 is a server version that will be housed in SharePoint. Now firms have a way to control Excel that they didn’t before, and a means to protect intellectual property in Excel models that they want to expose to customers for trading. It improves compliance and provides better service to customers through a model that has become a fixture at Microsoft – integration of functionality that previously has resided in silos to produce great value for users.
We will be running more stories on this in 2007, especially on partners who have built great value-add on a Microsoft infrastructure, like GaleForce and Salentica using Microsoft CRM as the base for specific financial services functionality. We have also seen Quicken Loans develop a highly focused CRM system for its business with VS Studio 2005 in just six months with one business analyst and one developer while Q.Know developed a specialized system for the insurance industry, again housed within Outlook (see our Spring 2007 issue).
And we are looking for more Microsoft partners who have taken the foundation of Microsoft’s latest software to create new value for clients. So if you have a story, send me a note and perhaps we will write about it.
Tom Groenfeldt
Tom@windowsfs.com