Meeting Jennifer Perret
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Sadly, I couldn’t make it to Tech.Ed 2007 at KLCC - really sad. All MSPs were invited to dinner though, at Madan Kuan’s. The highlight was of course, getting to meet with 2 new SPs (don’t exactly remember their names :p) - their energy and passion were really amazing! Also, we got to meet Jennifer Perret, who is the Program Manager for the MSP Program. Yeah, so basically, she was like my “GM”.. haha..
I did get to hear some interesting points, straight from a 10 year plus Microsoft employee - firstly of course, is that the unfortunate fact that Google (and Apple) are the media’s darling. People keep idolizing Google, thanks to all it’s free products. But the thing is, Microsoft and Google have largely different business models - Google is an advertising company (no, the “Web 2.0″ part is still part of it’s advertising business plans), Microsoft’s simply not. It’s major cash cow is still Windows and Office. It’s major audience? Enterprise users.
Jen did tell us about her take on the Microsoft monopoly issue (quite a long time back, was it in 2000?). Microsoft was so busy building their products, so busy making them good, that they didn’t even realize they have gotten that big. She was a developer on the SQL Server team, and I guess that’s what all the developers were doing - busy creating great products.
And enough already with the Windows is insecure thing.. it’s a total myth! Windows has such a huge market share, so it’s a natural target. It’s just like McDonalds - they get all the blame for obesity and health problems, as if that’s the only place people can get Coke, as if nasi lemak isn’t fatty. A senior SP who’s working at ExxonMobile did tell me, Windows XP has plenty of security features, it’s just that Microsoft didn’t enable them (by default). People complain that XP isn’t secure. But when Microsoft took drastic steps in Vista, they whine like a bitch. Common!! If you can slap on extra locks on your car/home and not complain about the hassle, why whine about UAC?
I’m not saying that Microsoft’s products kick-ass - for one, GMail does load slightly faster than Live Mail - just don’t blame them for every single thing..
Anyway, after dinner, we headed back up to Microsoft’s offices to continue the “1 on 1″ session with Jen. The worst news of the night came at the end, when my dear boss Vico, announced that he was leaving Microsoft to take a few months off and pursuing his MBA. Thank you Vico, for everything, and all the best to you!
