Three Days in June

In the past month, three of the world’s largest technology companies held major events. Apple and Google both held developers conferences with keynotes full of announcements and surprises. Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference takes place in early July, but rather than waiting for that event they held a special presentation in Los Angeles that had the industry buzzing. A look back at the three events reveals some interesting insight into the future of technology.


First, a quick recap of the individual events:

• Apple started things off with their Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). The keynote opened with a refresh of the MacBook line, bringing improvements to MacBook Pro and MacBook Air and introducing a new model of MacBook Pro with Retina display. Undoubtedly these lines will converge in the future, since Apple is known more for eliminating SKUs than adding them. Apple also ran through features for the upcoming releases of OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6. While there are many nice features, including tight Facebook integration, Apple did not appear to be shining quite as brightly after the other companies’ events. However, this is largely due to getting ahead of the market with the iPhone launch five years ago; the other companies are taking bigger steps to catch up, and Apple’s improvements are more incremental.



• Microsoft announced their Surface tablet as a portable hardware option for Windows 8 systems, and I covered that announcement as it happened. There is a significant point that was only touched on in that original post: the departure from Microsoft’s traditional approach to using OEM hardware to run Windows. This move generated a great deal of discussion in the week following the event, from harsh questioning to a viewpoint that this was a move the company had to make. Regardless of the opinion, the fact remains that this is a game-changing move for Microsoft.



• The Google I/O developer conference closed out the month in spectacular fashion. Google also announced new hardware—the Nexus Q (a media center competing with Apple TV) and the Nexus 7 (a 7 inch tablet competing most directly with the Kindle Fire). They showed off the features of the next version of Android, Jellybean. There were also announcements on their entry into cloud computing and updates to Google+. But the show-stealing moment belonged to Project Glass, Google’s wearable technology. A demo involving skydiving, BMX, and rappelling down the side of the building had the crowd in a frenzy. Whether or not this technology will take off is still an open debate, but it’s interesting to note that there was a line for pre-orders of the developer version coming out next year, even at a $1500 price point.

The immediate takeaway from the three events is that along with following the lead on mobile devices and operating systems, Microsoft and Google are taking another page from Apple’s book in attempting to build fully integrated hardware and software. The strategic motivations of the companies are clearly changing—a company built on software and a company built on search and advertising are beginning to understand that the world is changing, and so they are becoming general technology companies. To some extent, this lack of narrow focus may cause confusion, but all three businesses are trying to meet their goals by building a portfolio of devices, software, and services.


That portfolio serves to create an ecosystem, something that has always been an advantage for technology vendors but is increasingly important as content, processes, and collaboration are digitized. As devices and operating systems gain features (sometimes destroying third-party apps in the process), the way to get the most out of those features is to be aligned with a single vendor.  With Facebook and Twitter integration, it feels like Apple has an advantage in building a consumer ecosystem. On the enterprise side, it feels like Microsoft has an opportunity to retain a large part of their current install base and utilize their enterprise knowledge to build a modern enterprise ecosystem.

This is the crux of the BYOD issue. Employees who are familiar with cloud storage or social options in their personal ecosystem want to apply that familiarity to their business processes. There are a number of hurdles to this, including security and the ability to transform the behavior of an entire organization to use new technology. The challenge for solution providers is to help their clients build an ecosystem that is flexible enough to satisfy the needs of their employees, but secure enough to satisfy the needs of the business.