“And, believe me, if we could put the keyboards in this closet we would.” –Ford Motors IT professional describing the best way to reduce complexity of a PC
Great article. As a member of the TCO team, I remember much of this history. Not only did we get to know the OAC members, but they got to know each other. At the beginning there was a lot of skepticism among the members thinking that there is no way that Office will ever get what we do, nor will they ever really understand what our needs are, but we'll go along for this ride to see where it goes.
Toward the end of the cycle when we were presenting the breadth of the TCO features, one of the greatest compliments was hearing that "you guys really do get what we do" and seeing all the heads of the OAC members nod in agreement.
The OAC also helped us create a better version of the next ORK (Office Resource Kit), as well as what we needed to present at the worldwide Office Deployment Conferences. Because of the OAC, we had a lot of confidence in what was created.
These articles or chapters, especially the last two, have instilled in me a sincere and deep admiration for your and to a good extent Microsoft’s commitment to methodically addressing the problems of software development. Whatever the outcome, the process (at least so far in the story!) never seems to slip into reductionism or defeatism. It takes some grit to stare down these issues and dive into these acronyms and situations. I think many younger tech companies could stand more of this sort of direct engagement with customers.
Great article. As a member of the TCO team, I remember much of this history. Not only did we get to know the OAC members, but they got to know each other. At the beginning there was a lot of skepticism among the members thinking that there is no way that Office will ever get what we do, nor will they ever really understand what our needs are, but we'll go along for this ride to see where it goes.
Toward the end of the cycle when we were presenting the breadth of the TCO features, one of the greatest compliments was hearing that "you guys really do get what we do" and seeing all the heads of the OAC members nod in agreement.
The OAC also helped us create a better version of the next ORK (Office Resource Kit), as well as what we needed to present at the worldwide Office Deployment Conferences. Because of the OAC, we had a lot of confidence in what was created.
These articles or chapters, especially the last two, have instilled in me a sincere and deep admiration for your and to a good extent Microsoft’s commitment to methodically addressing the problems of software development. Whatever the outcome, the process (at least so far in the story!) never seems to slip into reductionism or defeatism. It takes some grit to stare down these issues and dive into these acronyms and situations. I think many younger tech companies could stand more of this sort of direct engagement with customers.