Life is all about change. ‘Change’ in seasons, change in relationships, change within one’s owns self. No single moment is the same in the universe. The planetary bodies are changing their location every moment. The rising sun has never seen the same earth on any two days. Change in state or rather movement is the essence of every nucleus.

The economist is always in search of a perfect ‘ism’ to balance the equation of demand and supply, the business class is obviously trying to find out better means to maximize profits and the ambitious lover is out there to please his beloved by all means. All these are trying to preserve one institution or other in face of a fast-changing world.

This was the sum total of the Microsoft seminar entitled ‘Creating an agile business’ held on May 8th.

According to the opening speaker, the business basics have remained the same. It is only the environment that has changed. He rightly noted that in implementing concepts like e- government, it is the community as a hole that is moving forward for embracing the benefits of technology. Mere IT components will never succeed in shaping a new society. He explained Microsoft’s vision of changing business strategies. It believes that people and partners are the best assets.

Much of the attention was focused on the .Net products – with a view to push the philosophy of – ‘software as a service’. The Internet Specialist of Microsoft GEM, outlined the following reasons for bringing a .Net scenario:

Computing power has increased

Connectivity

Devise proliferation

Emerging standards

Soft wares as a service using technologies such as e-payment etc.

Of all the product reviews, the Commerce Server looked real awesome. And the Windows Media technology, if properly implemented, would be a real push for budding e- journalists.
One interesting fact is that Microsoft has grabbed a larger portion of software pie neither due to their superior programming nor the security features. More attention is paid to the intelligent interface that is what actually makes the end user glued to the application.

However, one aspect, which Microsoft should focus on, is eliminating ‘blue screens’ in all forms. Perhaps then at least the MS demonstrators would not have to keep saying that the products will ‘hopefully wok’.

Computing is all about definite results. ‘Making mistakes’ as such is the birth right of man. No one can take it from him. Not even Microsoft.

This essay was written after a visit to Microsoft Conference, under the theme “Creating an agile business” on, May 8th 2001.