But that’s not my major point today.  One of the things that came up again on this trip is the notion that for the first time in my career Microsoft is just plain not in the game.  Irrelevant.  No show.

Now, I’ve been at this game awhile.  I wrote my first code in 9th grade in 1979 (on a TRS-80 Model 1) well before Microsoft mattered.  But my first real development came during the period when Microsoft was trying to get Windows to be real.  In those days Digital Research had a great DOS called DRDOS that was the cats meow.  And in my opinion, Microsoft did everything in their power to make sure DRDOS failed.  Fast forward through all the history with Microsoft, the anti-trust cases, the clear outright dominance of the market, the flailing attempt of my beloved Linux to get some kind of toe-hold, the Microsoft funded SCO debacle… for most of my professional life Microsoft has been the bruiser, the 600 pound gorilla, the Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Not any more.  When was the last time you heard something about Microsoft that mattered?  Thought so.

The reality is that in the consumer space it’s now Apple and Microsoft.  The shift to mobile-oriented computing is well documented (I won’t elaborate here).  For most people the computer they use most is their mobile phone.  The innovation and the new markets are in mobile.  The interaction with the cloud will be primarily mobile.  In short, the MARKET that MATTERS will be mobile.  And Microsoft has a pathetic attempt with Windows Mobile 7.  It’s late, it’s not as good as what shipped by Apple or Google/Android last year, and it has no compelling EXTRA VALUE.  I’m not the only one who says this – just read here (disaster) , here (doomed), and here (unimpressive) (your own search will return hundreds more like this).   On the desktop market, which still has a place, the only market I see Microsoft in is the old Enterprise.  And if the Oracle momentum is not stopped, that will matter less and less to Redmond too.  That’s a whole different post though.

I want to point out what I mean by EXTRA VALUE.  Android provides compelling value by being free to the handset vendors allowing for a cheaper phone, and it supports the Google ecosystem giving free access to email and navigation.  The only think my wife really misses from her Android phone (I bought her an iPhone) is the navigation in Google Maps.   Microsoft has NOTHING to compare.  Apple has the cool factor, of course, but they also have the Apple ecosystem around iTunes.  Serious extra value is there from an integrated suite of tools that just work.  Microsoft has NOTHING to compare. They simply don’t.  Their software is crap, they have no extra value, and they don’t offer a price advantage.  They still exist on the echoes of their former monopoly power.

As Om Malik points out the shift in mobile is Apple and Android taking market from RIM and Nokia.  Microsoft is not even mentioned.  I could write much the same about RIM and Nokia – they suffer the same problems that Microsoft does.

The bottom line is that we are entering a new era, and it’s going to be one where Apple, Google, Oracle, and Amazon are the new gorillas.  I’ll save it for later why I think Amazon will be in that list, but the most important thing on my mind today is that for the first time ever in my career, Microsoft is simply not in the game.  And I don’t think they ever will be either – they are too big, too bloated, and as described in the The Innovator’s Dilemma they are getting eaten from below.  And as I reflect on the years of their bullying, I can’t say it bothers me all that much.  Long live the new era.  I think it’s rules will be different, but no less cut-throat!

But businesses mature and adapt and PRN is no different.  The only constant is change, rolling stones gather no moss, and those who stand still die… and all that.  So my role changes.  My incredibly capable team managers are now going to step up and take on the long-term challenge of taking the core PRN video platform to the next level.  And I get to move on to what I love to do, what I think I’m really good at:  sniffing out the next thing, the next set of technologies, the next advances, the next partners with solid technology that we can leverage to build value for our customers and stock holders.  It’s time to build something new – using parts of the old if it makes sense, or inventing it from whole cloth if not.  It’s my comfort zone.  I’m incredibly energized by the prospects.

I’ll be writing about some of the ideas and technologies here.  Stay tuned.  You never know what I’ll get interested in.  Some of the things on my horizon:  3D technology, wireless, mobile devices, noSQL.  It should be fun!

But a few failed startups along the way – and stories from many others – have taught me is that the technology only matters a little.  I’ve built some really cool stuff, and my friends have built even better cool stuff, and yet few of those cool things are real products you can buy or use today.   They nearly all vanished.  I’ll say it again:  few of those cool things are real products you can buy or use today.  Cool does not generate revenue, which means that eventually the folks building the cool have  go do something that does generate revenue if they want to keep eating, paying rent, or goodness, feed the kids or pay the mortgage (yes, even you young single, all-nighter amazing hacker programmers will eventually want kids and want to buy a house – yes, it will happen).  So somewhere along the way I started thinking really hard about how to make money and not just build cool tech stuff.

And I have learned that the first and most important question to ask is this:  who is your customer?  Some people will tell you that the first question is “what burning need are you solving” or “what value are you creating?”  I don’t grok things that way.  In my mind, I ask “who is my customer?”  And by customer I don’t mean partner or enabler or contributor or user… I mean who will pay me money for the product or service I’m offering?  Money.  Cash.  At the end of the day, that’s the core of it.  Someone pays money for something.  Who?  Really, that’s important.  Who will PAY?  What direction is the money flow?  Once you know that you can start to answer other questions – most of which are necessary before you can work out the data model behind it anyway.   And it’s certainly a fist step to getting the next set of answers:  what exactly are they paying for?  How much will they pay?  What’s the channel to get that product to the customer (if any)?

For example:  today I spent an hour on the POPAI Technical Standards Committee talking about inter-server communications.  The question at hand was how to model the information needed for various digital signage operators to book or sell advertisements on others networks.  It quickly became apparent that there were many ‘customers’ being discussed.  The vendors who sell equipment have one set of customers.  The companies who sell ads have another set of customers.  The vendors who sell aggregation have yet another set of customers.  There’s some controversy about which ‘customers’ will actually buy certain things.  It was a great start to an effort to identify and model the kinds of metadata needed between the vendors and the customers.   At one point some on the call were tempted to ditch the hard topic of the business issues and focus on the technology aspects… but that would have been a mistake.  The technology part is the easier part!  The hard part – the most important part – is to get clarity about the customer, the needs of the customer, and the product offering.

This whole notion that it all starts with the customer is not new.  It’s everything that Steve Blank has taught about for years.   I’ve only just learned about his writings and I’m really loving every word.   The general notion is that you start with customer discovery, then move to customer validation, then customer building and then company building.  It’s quite different than the normal product development cycle.  It just rings true to my own experiences.  Expect to read more about this in coming posts.  In the meantime, what are your thoughts?