Microsoft: Web at the center, not PC

For years, Microsoft has maintained that the PC is the center of the digital home and office.

But Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said Tuesday that it's time for the company to acknowledge a new reality.

"Over the past 10 years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the Web is at the center of our experiences--experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions, cars, and more," Ozzie said in a memo to be sent to employees on Wednesday.

In the memo, Ozzie outlines three principles to guide the company in this new era. Chief among those is the notion that "the Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh." The notion of a Mesh is one that Ozzie has been working on for some time and has culminated in the Live Mesh service that Microsoft detailed on Tuesday.

He notes that this transformation has been a challenging one for Microsoft to embrace.

"More than two years ago when I wrote the memo entitled The Internet Services Disruption, much of the company was still focused on bringing our Office 2007 and Vista products to market," Ozzie said. "Aside from MSN, IE/IIS and our tools groups, it was truly 'software', not 'services', that was top of mind."

But, he said, "since then, we've made tremendous progress in our expansion toward 'software+services'--from the long-term quests we've undertaken and customer scenarios we now envision, to the great services and service-enhanced software we've begun to bring to market, and the amazing projects at various stages within our development pipeline."

The question for me is not how far Ozzie's thinking has evolved, but just how far his vision has spread within the company and where the pockets of resistance lie. In his latest memo he talks about this new world order affecting every area of the company, from Windows to developer tools to entertainment devices. That means he's going to need a whole lot of people to buy in to his philosophy for the vision to be made real.

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