Microsoft 2.0

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

Praise for Mary Jo Foley and Microsoft 2.0 Mary Jo Foley is 'Ms. Microsoft.' She seems to know everyone and everything that's going on at 1 Microsoft Way in Redmond, WA. — Robert Scoble, A-list blogger (scobleizer.com/) and author of Naked Conversations When I want to know what's going on inside Microsoft, I turn to Mary Jo Foley. She knows more about what's going on in Redmond than most insiders. —Ed Bott, award-winning technology writer (blogs.zdnet.com/bott) Mary Jo Foley has the correct scoop on everything Microsoft does, usually long before everyone else is repeating their press releases. I'm ordering copies of Microsoft 2.0 for everyone at my company, and if your career has anything to do with Microsoft, I suggest you do the same. —Scott Braden, author of Microsoft License Secrets (netnetweb.com) On July 1, 2008, a new chapter begins for tech-industry giant Microsoft. On that day, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will no longer be involved with the daily goings-on of the company he founded more than 30 years ago. Microsoft's official message is that nothing will change; it will be business as usual. But as anyone who has studied Microsoft knows, a Microsoft without Gates participating in product reviews and articulating Microsoft's strategies and priorities is going to be a very different company. This year marks a new period for Microsoft -- its 2.0 phase, if you will. It comes at a time when some industry watchers characterize Microsoft as a has-been which will never be able to regain the same level of industry dominance as it once enjoyed. Others believe Microsoftwill never be toppled from its perch, simply due to its size and its history. Mary Jo Foley, the author of Microsoft 2.0, falls somewhere in between these two extremes. She has spent almost all of her 25-years as a journalist watching and writing about Microsoft. Throughout the pages of Microsoft 2.0, Foley provides a unique vantage point from which to speculate on how Microsoft might write its next chapter. Identifying signposts and interpreting clues she knows well, Foley offers a thought-provoking view of the software giant’s post-Gates game plan -- and challenges to it. This is a book about Microsoft's future, not its past. The coming years will be challenging ones for the Redmond software kingpin. Many of the executives currently leading the Microsoft charge are likely to go their own way. Technology will continue to advance at a breakneck pace. Microsoft will forge deals of the size and scope it previously never envisioned in order to keep pace. Foley doesn't claim to possess a crystal ball, allowing her to predict flawlessly what Microsoft plans to do in the next few years … or even few months. But based on the many Microsoft executives, partners, customers and competitors with whom she converses regularly, she is sitting in a good spot to make some fairly educated guesses that will be most interesting to her readers. This book, Microsoft 2.0, describes the Microsoft people, products and strategies that will be key for the next-gen Microsoft. Foley uses her professional experience to piece the puzzle together in order to reveal a reasonable, educated guess as to what Microsoft 2.0 will look like as it enters the next decade and beyond.