RAY OZZIE is the software developer Bill Gates most admired — even though the 50-year-old has worked at Microsoft only since last April.
The industry veteran spent most of his life competing against Microsoft, creating the groundbreaking office e-mail application Lotus Notes and running his own business.
Yet relations between the two men have always been good. “Ray has never really been an outsider,” Mr Gates said in an interview last year. “Even when he was developing Lotus Notes, he was helping us improve Windows. Moreover, Ray is super well-respected inside Microsoft, just as he is throughout the industry.”
Mr Ozzie’s challenge will be to maintain Mr Gates’s authority. Mr Gates’s iconic status throughout the company meant that he was able single-handedly to change its direction, as he did in 1995 when he insisted that Microsoft embrace the internet.
Over the next two years, Mr Ozzie will become ultimately responsible for the technical development of all Microsoft’s software and eventually report to Steve Ballmer, whose own techical background is limited.
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Mr Ozzie left Lotus two years after its $3.5 billion acquisition by IBM in 1995, setting up his own software company, Groove Networks. Microsoft acquired Groove last year and immediately named him chief technical officer, a foretaste of his promotion to Mr Gates’s role of chief software architect.
Shortly after the acquisition of Groove, the Microsoft founder said: “I had said to Steve [Ballmer] for a long time that Ray was the best guy in the industry who didn’t work for us. And Steve would always respond: ‘Well, let’s get him.’ ”