Philip Richardson

Most people only briefly fantasize about writing a NY Times Opinion Piece about their former employer. Dick Brass lived out that fantasy today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html. To me it smacks of ‘old news’. Yes; Microsoft is a competitive tribal environment. Yes; Microsoft makes lots of $$. Yes; Microsoft is currently capturing the public imagination. What Brass fails to see is that imagination doesn’t always translate into $$. Microsoft has evolved it’s business (and perhaps in doing so left money on the table for Apple). I find it curious that not dominating every market is perceived to be a sin for Microsoft. Isn’t it OK to simply compete and make a solid profit at the same time. Does Microsoft always have to dominate every market (and in doing so incur the wrath of those who will inevitably cry ‘Monopoly!’).

Brass’ piece is indicative of America’s confusion about what their capitalist icons should be. He seems to imply that to be successful today a corporation needs not only have enormous marketshare, revenue, profit and a cult like following. I’ll skip the cult thanks…. and I’m sure most of Microsoft’s customers would be happy to do so as well.

Many people will view the iiNET victory today as pure piracy related decision. For me the success of iiNET is a victory for the ‘internet as a utility’. I believe that an open internet is essential to the economic advancement of this country. The openess of the internet seems to be under constant attack around the world: blacklists, deep packet inspection and copyright policing.

In this era of utility de-regulation we must recognize the internet for what it is: a critical piece of our national infrastructure.

Now to piracy. I’m by no means an advocate for piracy. I’m also moderately offended by these ‘pirate parties’ who have spread their naive brand of idealism here to our shores. However I’m also no fan of the music/media companies who stick to an unpopular business model. I’d spend more money on their products if they would deliver them in modern and respectful ways. Since they generally refuse to do that (especially in this country) I simply don’t consume their product.

What the applicants in the iiNET action did is disgraceful. They targeted a utility provider in a effort to defend their dead business models. I can only hope that this victory is cast in the right context: the defense of the internet utilities. I will no doubt loathe the response of the techno-anarchist ’spokespirates’ and their inevitable celebration of the court victory.

In my case the Rubicon was the duty free bottle shop right before immigration at Sydney Airport. Only Australians could put an upmarket booze outlet as the first sight a foreign visitor sees.

So for those that might have missed the news: I’m back in Australia (for the next few years at least). I still harbour an archetypical colonial desire to live, for a time, in the mother country. To live a near-legendary life in a small English village: with a pub, a second hand book shop and a vicar. For now I have made my home again in the Leviathan.

I’ve been back now for almost a month and it’s been one of the more interesting experiences of my life: immigrating to the city of my birth.

For living we’ve settled on the Bilgola Plateau. We bought the house over the internet (with invaluable assistance from kind relatives). I’m really happy with what we have – it’s not perfect – but no house is. But it’s a really great fit for us.

For career I’m now the Lead Architect (CRM) for Asia Pacific at Avanade. It’s been two weeks now in my new job and I am loving the return to the CRM space. I enjoyed my sojourn working the cloud at Microsoft and I learned a great deal from some top technical talent there. But my passion is line of business systems and this role is a great opportunity to indulge it.

For the next few posts I’ll focus a little on my social re-integration experiences. I’ll likely also begin to cover some CRM stuff. I have to figure out the style/rules of my new employer and whether I should be giving away my advice (after all my employer sells my advice). But “a rising tide floats all boats” so here’s a free one: Don’t use this feature. It’s really bad and bad things will happen to you, your CRM system and your family. It was removed from CRM 4.0 for a good reason (trust me – I was there – it’s really bad).

Dominic Pouzin recently launched his new startup: Data Applied. See here for some great coverage on Read Write Web. Dominic was one of the senior developers on MSCRM and one of the smartest engineers I’ve ever met.

There is definitely disruption beginning to occur in the ‘data space’. The next 2-3 years will be very interesting with respect to end user visualizations (eg. RIAs, Officer 2010, Google Docs etc) and back end sources (government data, Microsoft Codename Dallas, Amazon’s public data sets etc etc).

Hi there. Just a quick announcement.

December 11th 2009 will be my last day at Microsoft. After 5 1/2 years in the US it’s time for my family and I to move back to Sydney, Australia. I’ve accepted an exciting position (in the CRM space) in Sydney working for a global systems integrator.

Over the next few months I’ll be blogging about my re-integration into Australian society. I’m hoping that there will be enough amusing anecdotes and social observations to satisfy the reader.

With respect to CRM content I’ll have to have a discussion with my new employer…