KDB Systems

Through the Microsoft MVP pro­gram I’ve been involved with many dif­fer­ent prod­uct groups over the past few years. I’ve always thought that the com­pe­ti­tion for resources between prod­uct groups was some­times coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Some­times it gets down­right ugly. As I’m just on the periph­ery it’s been hard to get the big pic­ture and fully form my opin­ions as to exactly what’s going on. Here’s an arti­cle by a for­mer Microsoft employee that paints the big pic­ture quite well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html

My hope is that Microsoft will change. I’ve met some bril­liant peo­ple dur­ing my vis­its there. Because they are stuck in a silo most of their ideas seem to fall by the way­side or when imple­mented get changed so much in order to get accepted by the other silos they bear lit­tle resem­b­lence to the orig­i­nal idea. I think Microsoft realises this and is strug­gling to change. Let’s hope it hap­pens. Despite Microsoft’s many detrac­tors I believe they were at one time an inno­v­a­tive leader of the com­puter indus­try and did much more good than harm.

Update: Here’s Microsoft’s response.

http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/02/04/measuring-our-work-by-its-broad-impact.aspx

I’m at the 2009 Microsoft MVP Sum­mit. Around 2000 MVP’s descend on Microsoft’s Red­mond Cam­pus for four days of ses­sions with var­i­ous prod­uct teams. The ses­sions include a lot of two way feed­back, which can be bru­tal from both sides. It’s a lot of fun. Today I went to sev­eral secu­rity ses­sions. I got to hear Steve Riley talk and then answer ques­tions from an audi­ence that included Jes­per Johans­son. It was amaz­ing. At one ses­sion Ziv Mador and Steve Adeg­bite were talk­ing about the Con­ficker worm and Microsoft’s response to the vul­ner­a­bil­ity the worm ini­tially used to spread itself. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to hear the process they went through to iden­tify the vul­ner­a­bil­ity and patch it then have to wait and see the exploits devel­oped when the bad guys reverse engi­neer the patch. Dur­ing the ses­sion Steve Adeg­bite said some­thing that really res­onated with me. He said “Secu­rity is like a never end­ing marathon.” I think that is one of the best state­ments I’ve heard regard­ing secu­rity. Secu­rity is hard work. You have to give it 100% all the time. There are no short­cuts. You will never be fin­ished. To some that sounds depress­ing. Steve Adeg­bite said it was a chal­lenge he and his team rel­ished. I got the sense that almost every­one in the room agreed. I realised I was sit­ting in room full of the cream of the crop in the Win­dows secu­rity world. It was fun hob­nob­bing with the cream of the crop. Thank you Microsoft.