I am very optimistic especially after reading this month’s edition of BusinessWeek Magazine. The cover page article outlined Steve Ballmer’s strategy for Microsoft’s value chain. With respect to product development, Ballmer is pushing the product teams to work together instead of operating in silos. We can see this taking place with the new user interface Metro for Windows Phone 7, Xbox, and Windows 8. We can also see this with the voice recognition module that is now native to Xbox Kinect and Windows Phone 7. With respect to the demand chain, Ballmer appointed a new CMO to focus on improving the perception of Microsoft products in the marketplace, and to make sure that there is consistency in messaging and product promotion. We can see this taking place with the opening of the Microsoft Retail Experience Center – a place where Microsoft educates retailers on the products and on how to showcase them in their stores.

This is all very exciting news. I think the next steps would be to appoint a leader whose primary focus is product integration across Microsoft’s plethora of products (i.e. someone who pushes for a consistent UI look and feel across operating systems if it’s proven effective with consumers). Microsoft needs to create a group (or tell us about one that already exists) that is focused on this. This team would be a new stakeholder to many product teams and would have the executive support they need to be effective. Their function would be to identify synergies between different products and services across all product lines (business and consumer), drive marketing research efforts, and contribute to the product requirement backlog. I think Microsoft products have pretty high customer perceived value already (e.g. Zune software and SkyDrive independently). Think of how much it would increase if products were integrated effectively. Here is a post I wrote that can serve as an example.