Oracle and SAP may still be bigger in enterprise applications, and Oracle in databases. Both IBM and Hewlett-Packard may reap more IT dollars overall. But in the ways that really count, Microsoft remains the king of the IT industry.
As the dynamic duo steering Microsoft together for the past 28 years, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been a near-unstoppable team, combining Gates's technical vision and will to power with Ballmer's salesmanship and rousing, if polarising, personality.
It's fitting that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates delivered his final publicly scheduled speech as a full-time Microsoft employee to a roomful of software developers.
The press is abuzz with speculation about Bill Gates’s “impending” departure from Microsoft. As InfoWorld editor-in-chief Steve Fox rightly points out, no other company could announce executive turnover in two years’ time and have it called news. What lends gravitas to this non-event, however, is an idea that’s been growing within the industry and which is beginning to find its voice: it’s time for change.
Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates says he will step out of his daily role at Microsoft in July 2008 so he can take on a full-time role at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity organisation he runs with his wife.
Bill Gates had an audience of thousands rolling in the aisles last week at the 2005 Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference at the sold-out (and occasionally power-outaged) Los Angeles Convention Centre . The software giant’s chairman did this by dressing up even nerdier than usual, getting dragged on roller skates behind a bicycle, doing the grand mal dance and, at the end, receiving a geek-slap after an argument over who had the fastest reflexes.
It's also a business opportunity, Microsoft chairman says
Among the dozens of software architects gathered for breakfast with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in Sydney last week was a coterie of New Zealand architects from EDS, Cap Gemini, Datacom, Gen-i and Fonterra.
Linux guru welcomes Microsoft announcement