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In an interview with eWeek late last week Ray Ozzie was asked if he is a personal supporter and proponent of Microsoft’s shift to more interoperable technology, his reply;

So, have I been a proponent?  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  And not in interoperability for interoperability’s sake—interoperability because that’s what customers do, that’s what customers want, that’s what customers need.

There was an allergy in some sectors within Microsoft interop because they thought it was a code word for “do what people don’t want us to do. … Do what people are telling us to do, and we’re required to do.” But coming from my background, it’s what people do, it’s what they need.  And we should be comfortable in our own skin with who we are.  Like, what’s the big deal, why be so insecure?  We are Microsoft; it’s OK.  We can actually have connections – Ray Ozzie, eWeek Interview, October ‘08

Earlier this week I was exchanging email with one of the bloggers here in Asia. We got to talking about some of the recent announcement around Azure, and a pretty significant piece of that announcement that I personally do not think caught enough attention.

I’m talking about the SDKs that were discussed at PDC, not only for .NET (as you would expect from us) but also for Ruby and Java. The Microsoft I joined fifteen years ago would not have contemplated such thing, I’m not even sure we would have come close five years ago.

His response, which I think without insight into what is actually happening inside the company was probably valid;

 “That is real cool. Pity it has to be bottom up and not a top down decision.”

I’ve talked a lot about the grass roots changes that have been happening inside the company for the last few years, for both interoperability and a general understanding of open source software, so I might have fueled his view a little.

With that in mind, it was pleasing to see the public quote at the top of this article from Ray.

I don’t know that a decision to commit to interoperability and understand the benefits that it brings to our customers and to our company could come from much higher up in the organization.