Constantly Innovating as an Enterprise

Microsoft has announced a Unified Technology Event for Enterprises which will bring SharePoint, Lync, Exchange, Project, TechEd and other conferences under one umbrella. This is meant to bring together the different communities and share the direction of Microsoft's productivity and platform strategy going forward.

As Microsoft announced yesterday the launch of a Unified Technology Event for Enterprises, they also announced that there would be no planned Microsoft led platform specific technology conferences like the SharePoint Conference, the Lync Conference, the Exchange Conference, the Project Conference, and most recently, the TechEd North America conference. I look forward to attending and hope to see you at Microsoft's Unified Technology Event for Enterprises in Chicago during the week of May 4th, 2015.

This wasn't surprising as the SharePoint community (the one I’m most active in) seemed to feel like the last SharePoint Conference and there was a feeling of more integration with Office 365 and the other Microsoft properties based on the content and announced investments. It’s not that the SharePoint platform is dying or already dead by Mark Rackley; far from it.

In the past, there’s been quite a bit of criticism of how big Microsoft is as an organization and how slow they are to respond to the ever changing needs of the connected consumer, surge of mobile platforms, consumerization of IT and most recently the Lean Enterprise. This continued shift, or more importantly, evolution of enterprise software, has challenged Microsoft to change or lose respect among consumers. Apple, while they were close to bankruptcy with nothing to lose, had the ability to shift from being a computer company to a media company and have a huge impact in all of our lives.

Becoming a Lean Enterprise

This transformation at Apple didn't happen overnight. As written in Creativity Inc., by Ed Catmull, Apple’s ability to adapt and create an environment to inspire teams followed the same principle’s as the lean enterprise manifesto. Lean Enterprise principles derived from lean startup principles are focused on eliminating wasteful practices, increasing value producing practices, listening to customer feedback during product development, building what customers want, KPIs and continuous deployment process.

What better principles to follow then those? Whether you look at Uber, Instagram or Yammer - a wave of startups has transformed how organizations are built. It was time for Microsoft to innovate like these challenging startups. Microsoft needed to focus on a shorter innovation cycle than 3 years for products like SharePoint and deliver it as a service. Speaking with my sources at Microsoft, you hear that Yammer (part of the responsive org movement) brought many new perspectives and pushed the other teams to learn from them to become more customer centric, and more responsive. Perhaps it’s these kinds of investments in the product team transitioning to a services team that had the biggest impact on Microsoft on becoming a leaner and more responsive enterprise.

Work Like a Network

We are witnessing a new era as organizations are learning from social networks. For example, reading General Stanley McChrystal’s book My Share of the Task, he talks about how he transformed the global special operations task force – the Force 714 – that he commanded to becoming an elite, hierarchical, sometimes insular special operations units and intelligence agencies into a fast, collaborative, information-sharing network.

If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near. - Jack Welch

The reality is that organizations, whether they are large companies like Microsoft or the US Special Ops Task Force are learning to adapt quicker, react to environmental changes and becoming more efficient. Microsoft is just following suit in the new strategy set out by their CEO Satya Nadella.

Mobile First, Cloud First

With the continuous shift to becoming a platform and productivity organization, Satya Nadella has set out to make sure Microsoft is a lean enterprise with a strategy focused on delivering for a mobile first and cloud first future. What’s happening at Microsoft with the job cuts, internal re-organization and bringing many of the teams together are all positive signs of adapting quickly to the market, and what customers (consumer and enterprise) need. The recent announcement of bringing Yammer, Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync events under a single unified technology event, will give attendees the broadest range of learning opportunities across the breadth of Microsoft’s technologies and solution. It’ll also provide a greater understanding of future technology vision and roadmap to help you be successful. Probably the biggest benefit will be greater community interactions with technology professionals and your industry peers in structured and informal settings

If there’s one moto to live by, that’s “failure is a good thing. But we have to fail forward.” Whether you believe the moves Microsoft is making under Satya’s leadership are a good thing or bad, the innovation, integration, and unification of Microsoft products to services is helping the company move forward. For investors, just have a look at their earnings for FY14 Q4 driven by their aggressive move to the cloud. With Microsoft showing signs that they are willing to constantly innovate, I think it bodes well for customers and partners alike. I, for one, am excited to see what a more unified approach to events, messaging, products and services can do for our customers.

What are your thoughts? Is your organization noticing this change?