My new role

A week and a half in, I thought it was about time that I explained what it is that I’ve joined Microsoft to do.

I’m working in a group based in Microsoft UK’s Reading HQ that is called Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE). The mission of the group is to spread the word about the Microsoft tools that people can use to develop software (things like Visual Studio), and the platforms on which software can be developed and deployed (Windows (obviously), Windows Phone, Xbox and the server platforms including the Cloud-based Azure). DPE isn’t (generally) focused on just selling boxes, but more on building up a better impression of the services that are available from the organisation.

We have a number of audiences that we are trying to reach – the academic world, Microsoft’s partners (both systems integrators and consulting firms like Accenture, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who use our products and services to produce their own software products). The final broad audience is the one that my team have focus on – non-partner software developers (both those currently using our products, and also those who don’t), and IT Professionals (a broad group of people who don’t develop software, but have to manage it in organisations in one form or another).

We are entering the final quarter of the business year at the moment, so there is a lot of focus on closing out the targets set for 2011 (metrics around Windows Phone, Windows server, audience reach on our trade blogs in places like MSDN and TechNet, and positive sentiment about Microsoft and our platforms in the UK trade press amongst other things), and the planning process we are now undertaking for the financial year that ends in 2012 will set priorities for our future efforts.

On the surface, it’s a big change from IT management that has been the bread and butter of my career for the past nearly two decades (ahem). However, I hope that the experience that I have built up in the client-side of the IT world in the past 18 years will hold me in good stead for helping to make sure that the conversations that we spark and promote from within the DPE team are ones that people in the UK IT industry are happy to engage in. I think it’s also fair to say that much of my work in the last five years or so has been more about winning hearts and minds than it has been about managing bits and bytes.

It’s a remarkable time of change in the IT space. There is competition on IT departments the like of which has never been seen before. The twin forces of consumerisation and commoditization are making it an increasing challenge for old models of IT management to just plain work. Technology is only a part of what is going on in that change, though – mostly it is being driven by news forms of communication and collaboration. It’s an exciting time to have joined a company that has such an impact on the day-to-day use of IT for so many people, but also one that is faced with its own challenges in adapting to the new world of Cloud and whatever comes next…