Adam Bosworth, Microsoft’s former senior and general manager, told Salesforce.com’s annual conference in San Francisco, California, that online services can be updated much quicker than packaged software, making suppliers better able to meet demand.
Bosworth, who this summer joined Google Inc from BEA Systems Inc, predicted a huge sea change in the way software is delivered, as it moves to become a hosted online service.
Calling the change evolution, Bosworth noted there had been 17 iterations of salesforce.com during the last five years, compared to no new versions of SQL Server since 2000, with a new version of the delayed database now due in 2005.
Seventeen generations would take 85 years, Bosworth said, championing the salesforce.com software delivery model. [salesforce.com] is pretty different. This is about responding month by month and quarter by quarter.
Bosworth said the browser-based front-end to software services helped suppliers quickly learn which features make the end-user productive. You can’t imagine the old Excel and Access getting smarter by watching me, Bosworth said.
Bosworth also believes software delivered as an online service through a browser helps simplify the computing infrastructure, reducing expense and support costs. Quoting Apple Computer Inc chief executive Steve Job’s, Bosworth said: PCs need to be as easy to use as TVs and radios, the browser can help achieve that.
Casting back to his days at Microsoft, Bosworth said he recognized software must evolve whilst still building Access and IE. I work up and realized this was about to become profoundly irrelevant, Bosworth said. He went on to claim Microsoft had lost $200 billion in value since 2000 while Amazon, eBay, Expedia, Travelocity and salesforce.com had increased in value.
It was telling during the keynote that Bosworth failed, even avoided, mentioning his employer prior to Google – BEA. Joined Google in the summer from BEA, at the time many other management big names also quite the J2EE company.
While listing Microsoft, then Crossgain – who he helped co-found and who was acquired by BEA – along with Google. Referring to a BEA offline browser project Bosworth participated in, he said simply: In my prior life I was working to make that, but that was left behind.
