Microsoft and Open Source: From Saul to Paul!

Not so long ago, Microsoft was seen as the ultimate evil when it came to open source. And at the end of the Steve Ballmer era, it sometimes felt as if Microsoft was being completely left behind. If you look at Microsoft today, you see a company that is transforming its business model and adapting amazingly well to the changing needs of its customers. And in terms of open source, Microsoft has made a U-turn in recent years and has already made some products and technologies publicly available. An interview with Andreas Urban, Open Source Lead in Germany.

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Andreas, could you briefly explain what your role at Microsoft is and what your work actually looks like?

As Open Source Lead, I have an overall view of Microsoft Germany’s open source business. The aim is to support our customers in operating their preferred open source technologies simply and efficiently on the Microsoft platform. My responsibilities include promoting the use of open source technologies at Microsoft, exchanging ideas with open source communities and providing locally relevant open source solutions via the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Microsoft has changed enormously in recent years. Such a change is a huge feat in such a large company. How was this change initiated?

From my point of view, this change happened smoothly. I have had the opportunity to observe this journey over several years. The first milestones I remember were the announcement of the Microsoft OSS management platform Codeplex in 2006 and immediately afterwards the recognition of two Microsoft open source licenses by the OSI in 2007. Then in July 2009 there were headlines like “pigs can fly” or “hell freezes over” when Microsoft contributed 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. And finally, this journey culminated in the availability of Linux VMs on Microsoft Azure. So, step by step, we met our customers’ demand for open source technologies on the Microsoft platform.

For many, Microsoft is still the “Developers, Developers…” shouting Steve Ballmer. Little by little, the image is changing – is there a strategy in this regard?

I often see at customer meetings or events that Microsoft’s new openness has been very well received. A few years ago, nobody would have expected that we would launch Office 2016 for the Mac first, that we would support Linux so strongly or that we would make many of our repositories available on GitHub. In the meantime, it is becoming more and more commonplace in the community. We will continue and expand this openness strategy.

What role does open source play in Microsoft’s overall strategy?

Support for open source technologies and the provision of Microsoft source code such as .NET Core is now an integral part of Microsoft’s strategy. We are investing heavily in this area and are building up internal and external capacities with our partners. Cloud services such as HDInsight are in-house implementations of open source projects in which further developments are returned to the community. OSS content management systems are available to our customers as a platform-as-a-service on Azure, with solution providers making their open source images available in the Azure Marketplace. New partnerships with well-known open source providers are constantly coming to fruition, such as the recently announced collaboration with Red Hat. And there are many other examples that make the role of open source within Microsoft’s cloud offerings very clear.

What does that mean in concrete terms? What initiatives are you pursuing?

The initiatives in this area are very wide-ranging. We support communities with sponsorships and code contributions. Open source developers can find various open source development kits or cross-platform tools for Azure, such as the x-plat Command Line Interface, a command line tool written in JavaScript for Linux or Mac that is installed with the Azure SDK for Node.js and provides cross-platform commands and functions for managing cloud services or virtual machines. For our open source partners, we have created an OSS Partner Community, which we offer closer access to our engineering teams. We offer workshops on Linux on Azure for our customers. The initiatives in the open source area are just as broad-based as the availability of open source technologies on Azure.

How do you see and segment the Microsoft community?

From my own open source perspective, I no longer segment. Internal cloud architects today often come from the Linux and open source environment. External Microsoft community members such as MVPs or student partners publish blog posts on OSS technologies on Azure, Microsoft Gold Partners have a partner status with Linux providers. In the cloud world, traditional segmentations are becoming increasingly blurred.

In the meantime, open source is being taken away from Microsoft more and more. What doors does this open?

Today, we are working more and more with customers, partners and communities that were previously less on our radar. One example of this is digital agencies. With open source on Azure, but also with services such as Azure Media Services, we offer agencies attractive and familiar technologies as highly scalable and secure services in order to be successful in the agency business. In combination with co-selling activities, this opens doors for both sides.

Where do you see Microsoft in terms of OpenSource in 3 years?

The journey of cooperation will continue. Due to the rapid growth of the public cloud market, the key role of open source in this area and the ever-shorter product and innovation cycles, I am curious to see whether there will still be any differentiation at all in three years’ time.

Thank you very much, Andreas, for your time.