A Perspective on Openness

by Peter Galli on July 06, 2010 04:47pm

 

Late last week, Jean-Philippe Courtois, the President of Microsoft International, gave a talk titled "A Perspective on Openness" at the Universite du SI in Paris.

 

Jean-Philippe Courtois

Courtois' speech explored the various definitions of openness, and how "open" and "closed" technologies can effectively coexist. "In particular, though, I shared a couple of the lessons we have learned on our journey toward greater openness. The first lesson is that choice is critical. The second lesson is actually one that transcends all of our business, which is that when the software ecosystem succeeds, we succeed," he said in a blog post.

Courtois also discussed how Microsoft's commitment to openness has influenced its approach to cloud computing. "I believe that these two lessons I discussed - choice and ecosystem - are fundamental to the success of any player who wants to lead in the cloud computing space. Choice is important because when it comes to openness, one of the concerns we hear is a fear of vendor lock-in. Choice is critical to adoption. This underlines the fact that the cloud creates both opportunities and responsibilities," he said.

You can read the full blog post here.