Malek's Moorish Tales

Ok, I have disappeared in the last 2 years. Actually I have been extremely busy for most of it. There have been both personal as well as professional aspects.

On the personal side, I have returned to Morocco, and it was (and still is) a very difficult adaptation process. I am used to a modern, indivisulistic life. Living close to family and relatives has not been easy. More serious is the way most Moroccans approach life and business:

• I don't know if I have forgotten, or if Morocco is becoming a more judgemental society... Most people think it is their business to get their noses in other people's personal lives, and fight those that live differently... Also, religion is taking a much stronger hold on people...
• I am convinced that the level of competency in all professions and industries is getting much lower. Close sightedness and close mindedness has grown to the extreme during the years I lived abroad. The general approach of most "professionals" is to avoid any kind of formal process, and to simply throw the can a bit further on the road... Just tinker the thing so that the problem at hand disappears, regardless of how seriously it impacts the overall working of the thing; any problems caused will be delt with later....

On the professional side, I found myself almost immediately upon my return dealing qith some of the largest and most critical projects in the country. I actually had to diversify my competency, not because there wasn't enough to do with narrow specialization, but because there was a great need for many aspects I wasn't necessary well versed in, but nobody else was, and I had the capacity to get into rather quickly... So I deepened my knowledge and expertise, and I now work as an independent expert on :

• Solutions Architecure
• Integration and interoperability
• Cryptography
• Application and code security
• Business Process Management and organization strategy
• Business Intelligence

At the same time, I have spend much time building a Business Process Management Solution. Initially, I was to have it owned and managed by a company I was to create with some friends. I have recently decided that that company wouldn't work, and I am creating a new company by myself. More to come on that front ...

Any now, I am just now becoming more structured in dealing with both the professional and personal aspects of my new life here... I hope I will be much less invisible to my friends and on my blog....

Microsoft is doing something very interesting these days. By changing the way the end user sees windows so dramatically, they are taking the risk of alienating the very users that have been faithful for so many years. Why are they doing it in such a disruptive way ?

I believe Microsoft, like the rest of us, are seing the end of the PC as the inevitable outcome of the gadget frenzy of the past few years. I think they believe the Apple gadget revolution has made people more inclined to go for different devices for different usages. The tablet browsing is becoming the standard browsing experience at home and while traveling, and the phone browing is becoming the standard for browsing while commuting. What Microsoft is trying to do is to push an extremely simple user experience that includes everything the user has come to expect from a PC into a tablet or a touch screen all-in-one.

Basically, instead of having their business killed by a disruptive change in hardware, their want to accelerate the change and be part of it.

The issue is that the end user, generally, when he goes buying, will look at the devices in a stand, and start comparing the devices. He is not concerned by the vendors (except for the perceived quality of the vendor's products), and is even less concerned by the operating system, except for its familiarity. On the familiarity front, the normal end user will not find Windows 8 familiar (they even would find the iPad and the various android devices more familiar). Most end users are not aware that the tablets they are looking are of different kinds, and have different levels of technology in them.

Basically, if the new user interface impresses, it would gain a good market share of the tablets as well as replacing current desktops and laptops, and as the users start expecting all Windows can do in the devices, it would give Microsoft an edge on all kinds of devices. But if it fails, it would endanger Microsoft's PC market itself.

In short, this could give Microsoft a new begining, with the potential to dominate the new computing markets, but it could also break Microsoft completely...

I am restarting a blog... again. I will be restoring my old blog posts gradually in the coming weeks.

All the people who know me know that I like Microsoft technologies. That is something that can hardly change.

However, my trip through the arcane rows of Microsoft employees have opened my eyes to other dimensions. I now believe that Microsoft has some fatal weaknesses, and that anyone who, like me, is a technologist, has an imperative to open up to alternatives...
The issues and problems started long ago (I would think that sometime in the late nineties Microsoft started behaving like they owned us, but they actually did then, so it is only surfacing now that real alternatives are slowly starting to make sense). As someone that was internal to Microsoft not long ago, I think Microsoft is behaving exactly as it shouldn't... Microsoft has lost track, and is now lead by people that have little if any understanding of their customer and partner base. The main problem with Microsoft is not technology, it is leadership. To make myself clear, let me give some examples :

- I had been envolved with mobile development since 2002, and Microsoft basically created the concept of smart phones back then. Everything the iPhone or even android are doing was already there then. What pisses me off the most is that Microsoft didn't miss on "ergonomy" or as my US friends like to call it "user friendliness"... They mostly missed on timing. And as the world was starting to embrace it, Microsoft stepped down on R&D in this field because the US was not reacting... The need was there, just not in America, and the technology was there... and we were there to do the field work... but because there were no strong case studies in NY or Chicago, it was left to die...

- Integrating systems from multiple vendors has always been a nightmare. Microsoft started trying to tackle the problem since Biztalk 2000 and started getting it right since around 2002/2003 ( Biztalk 2004, SFU 3.0 ...etc.) However, Microsoft managed to make it so low key that it didn't make any difference...

- You may have noticed (depending on geography, you may have noticed a huge difference or none at all) that Microsoft Marketing has switched in the last few years to a pure online communication model... Back in the days ( up to about 5 years ago) we used to quantify and bet on a person's reach and influence. Now Microsoft treats audiences as the same be it online or in person, and to value the reach in terms of audience rather than actual real influence. A conference speaker that impresses you on his speech and as you go to him at end of session, resolves a problem that you have been having for the last couple of years is seen as an equal to a blogger that happens to talk about Microsoft Tehnologies (and eventually incite you to look at something you didn't know existed)... The level of influence went drastically down...

Although there are so many other things I think Microsoft is doing wrong, I am trying not to exploit anything I only know because I was inside it, so I will not say anything about the sales or marketing strategies, but there is plently in that area that shows extremely bad management...

I remember back in the late 80s how I felt about "prolog" and "ada". They were languages that offered the best technology could do at the time, but had a lot to prove "business wise" before they became viable. Microsoft, with all it has in terms of brand and knowhow, is unfortunately getting itself into the same spot...

Can it recover ? in theory it can, but I strongly doubt the same people that got it so low will fix the problem... So, will there be a Microsoft in 20 years ? well, only if it is lead by different people...

Just that, I am leaving Microsoft...