Microsoft Ignite approaches!
For me its always a time of excitement and more recently reflection. I have been working in IT for the last 10 years now, starting off in a small computer repair shop in my hometown, working at the college help desk at Spring Hill College, graduated into desktop support at a fiber company, and then eventually moving from onto a junior system administrator role at Auburn University. The industry feels like it has changed so drastically since even I got into computers. I cannot imagine how people who have been in industry 20, 30 years feel now. My Apple-using exterior really hides a Microsoft fanboy at heart, after all its been where I’ve made my money so far in my career. I think its Andy Ihnakto who refers to Windows as the “Gears of industry” and while that is true in a corporate environment, the progression of Unix-based systems like Apple’s iOS in the form of the iPhone and iPad as well as Google’s Android and now ChromeOS has changed the endpoint game entirely. I find myself working less and less on Windows client than I did 10 years ago and more into providing services to whatever client an end-user happens to be using. At the college I work at, we still hover at around 40% Windows machines the last time I checked, but the majority of our clients are now non-Microsoft based operating systems. We still use Microsoft Windows Server and Office365 heavily for our backend services, but the world of 2018 is a lot less monolithic than the Microsoft-heavy world that I grew up in. It all feels strange, but exciting. I know I live in a design bubble, but its weird to think that there is an entire generation of people around the world that their first computing experience is on iOS or Android or ChromeOS. It did make me a little sad last year that I did not see any Windows Phone news at Ignite. I saw a handful of basic Windows Phones being used by Microsoft staff to scan people into talks for reporting purposes, but I think I only saw one person in the sea of IT professionals using one as their daily driver. We all laughed at that guy because it was 2017 and Windows Phone is a dead platform, but at the same time it did make me yearn for the Microsoft that I grew up with who was more present in my daily life than they are today. I go to work and maintain Windows software for 8 hours a day, but when I get off I don’t touch a single Microsoft product or online service as a consumer. I do yearn for the days that I would get exited about Microsoft consumer news: Windows Phone, Xbox, Zune, OneDrive, Windows client, etc. I know that this is probably the most profitable route for Microsoft, but it feels like they cleaved off half of the company that I loved growing up. I just few for the future of the company as Unix continues to take over the world and less and less of Microsoft is the Windows stack. While on one hand I do applaud the more open and welcoming Microsoft, I do morn the loss of their vision directing the technology world. It feels like Microsoft has always had a focus on productivity and doing more with technology. With the bigger eye on personal data and privacy I wonder if there could be a business in a company like Microsoft who provides world-class consumer software across a plethora of hardware choices without having to give up all of your personal data to the highest bidder or losing it to the least secure companies. Maybe this is not the way of the world anymore, maybe it dates me, but I would welcome Microsoft or maybe a new company with a new name and branding to re-enter the consumer sphere. Bring that focus on helping people get the most out of their technology to the consumer sphere and provide them an option that protects their personal data without them having to pay an arm and a leg for that. I don’t know if we’ve reach the point that people start to value their personal privacy in the same way that tech geeks do today, but the more that comes to light about government around the world that are using technology to spy and manipulate people’s lives (China feels more George Orwellian every year). I don’t know if the market has the appetite anymore to pay for software that’s more private, but maybe we could get to that point as hardware get cheaper and more commoditized. Maybe the scales will tilt back into the direction of paying for software and services and an end-user getting to keep their data and lives private. I know that Google and Amazon will never serve this role because their businesses are based on having access to all of your data. I just wish that there was somebody else other than Apple that made consumer software that respects my privacy. I feel like privacy is just something that once you’ve lost it, you can’t get it back.
Anyway, the death of consumer Microsoft aside, I am looking forward to seeing, reading, and talking all about enterprise Microsoft next week. The IT geek in me can still get excited about that. I’ll just be toting my iPad Pro with me from session to session in hunt for knowledge and Ninjacat socks.
