Oliver Bell’s Weblog

I’m currently preparing for a presentation to the Computer Society of Sri Lanka that will be delivered later this week. As part of that presentation I intend to talk a little about the issue of Interoperability, how companies like Microsoft think about this complex area, and some of the areas where a more collaborative industry is benefiting customers and partners today compared with past years.

There are a number of dimensions to this topic and I plan to go into the detail of a few areas over the coming month as I find the time to do so,  for now I will leave the majority of the story for the presentation and for future posts on this weblog.

As a starting point for the discussion it might be useful to begin by highlighting a guiding text that Microsoft calls the “Windows Principles”.

An important component of providing an interoperable platform for any company, including larger software companies, is the element of being predictable for customers, partners, developers and our own internal product groups.

The predictability is important as it ensures that expectations are set for both users of our technology and for third parties who are developing software or hardware that will interoperate with the Microsoft platform.

With that in mind, a little over a year ago Microsoft announced a set of governing principles that touches on three key areas, delivering important levels of predictability;

• Principle I: Choice for Computer Manufacturers and Customers
• Principle II: Opportunities for Developers
• Principle III: Interoperability for Users

For those who are interested I would encourage to you read the detail behind each of these principles on the microsoft.com website. I had intended to post them here for easy reading, but it makes for a lot of text!

Ostensibly these principles, and the twelve tenants that accompany them, provide a governance structure that ensures that there is predictability in a number of areas that are important to customers and partners - including shared API information, supporting non-Microsoft applications, providing access to technology for companies or communities who have traditionally been competitors and so on.

Obviously these principles cover several aspects of the role of Windows in the wider industry, my experience is that in the context of interoperability alone they provide a great framework for simplifying discussions between industry entities and communities.

There is significantly more to add, but it is Saturday afternoon and dinner is waiting so I’ll draw a line under the topic for now and leave the detail for a later date.

This is probably a good starting point for the discussion, and if you’re attending the session in Colombo I would welcome more conversation on the topic.