Since the early days of his development of Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie has competed vigorously with Microsoft while working closely with Redmond as a leading ISV on the Windows platform. Now, with Microsoft's significant investment in Ozzie's Groove Networks, the collaboration has broadened. In the aftermath of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Ozzie spoke about Longhorn and Groove with eWEEK Contributing Editor Steve Gillmor.
SG: What are your gut feelings about Microsoft's Longhorn Wave?
Ozzie: If anybody had any doubt that the rich client is alive and well, this should extinguish any of that doubt. They are pouring billions into keeping the rich client alive and well and healthy, and there are just an amazing number of very smart people working on the stuff. Yeah, it's early, but all I can hope is that a lot of people pay attention to it. And at the appropriate time, sensitive to how people can make investments over long periods of time, I hope we see a lot of new interesting stuff come out, because there are a tremendous number of new services that are going to be available on the client side. I'm pretty psyched about it.
SG: You spent all week at the PDC.
Ozzie: Yes. We're a Longhorn design partner so we're very familiar with it, but what I was absorbing more than anything else was how Microsoft was positioning how it works to the developer community. That's very important.
News source: eWeek
