One of the best things to happen for Microsoft customers worldwide is the retirement of Bill Gates. Criticize me if you will, and I'm sure the following opinions will be the source of much consternation among my peers and among open-source advocates, but I believe Steve Ballmer will be a positive influence overall for Microsoft and its customers. How much of a positive influence is open to debate, especially since Gates still has a great deal of influence. It's not a slam dunk; any executive decision Ballmer makes could still get vetoed by Gates. But Ballmer is in too comfortable a position to act only a puppet. It's not like Ballmer needs his job, so some of his own ideas are bound to poke through the Microsoft legacy business model.

Before I elaborate on what this means for service-oriented architecture (SOA), let me get this confession out of the way: I like Steve Ballmer, as a man (that's his best bet, anyway). One reason I like him is that he'd probably laugh at that joke. At least he has laughed when I've poked fun at him and at Microsoft in the past. More important, the laughs were genuine, not a pretense of peace with a columnist who has been openly critical of Microsoft business practices. (Say what you will about Ballmer, but he does not disguise his feelings well. He's an easy read; even an amateur can tell when he's faking something.) That's why Ballmer also strikes me as a guy you could enjoy a few beers with. He's genuine enough in person that it would be fun to get to know him even if we disagreed on everything. Perhaps he even has enough of a life that the topic of Microsoft wouldn't even come up in the conversation.

I also respect Ballmer. He has an honest bone in his body; maybe even more than one. I'll never forget the day Steve Ballmer visited me at InfoWorld to convince me that Windows 95 would be the wave of the future. In our conversation, and in front of a room full of editors and skilled technicians, he unapologetically admitted that IBM's OS/2 was superior to Windows 95. He added that Windows NT was superior to OS/2, but that was certainly true even then. I can think of one or two other times when Ballmer spoke the truth even when it was uncomfortable to do so. If you have spent as much time around marketing people and executives as I have, you can appreciate the significance.