When it pays to lower expectations

Two juggernauts, Microsoft and the UK government, veered off in new directions last week hoping to disprove the theory that the bigger you are, the slower you turn. Both want to move on, even at the price of accepting a reduced set of objectives.

Whatever its faults, Microsoft is a rare example of a large firm willing to scrap a wrong strategy, no matter how public the previous commitment. The greatest example of this came 10 years ago when the Microsoft Network plan for a proprietary service to beat AOL and CompuServe was scrapped in favour of a web-based service.

Over the past year, Microsoft's plans for the next version of Windows have been uncharacteristically messy but the firm is attempting to repeat its small turning-circle manoeuvre. In line with strategies passim, Microsoft pumped out a codename, Longhorn, long before product was ready. It's a way of keeping customers sweet - "if you don't like this release, the next one's great" - and it has proven effective because Microsoft has done a good job of communicating roadmaps and staying reasonably close to projected feature sets. But with Longhorn, Microsoft has been no meat, all bull - until now anyway.

First, in its big coming-out event, the company said that Longhorn would use a new file system called WinFS that would make it easier to browse files and data that appear in multiple folders or in unstructured fields such as emails and address books. Longhorn would also be the first OS based on the NGSCB security architecture better known as Palladium, and would offer a 3D user interface.

Last week Microsoft said WinFS will not be in the first Longhorn client. It added that the client release would appear in 2006 while the Avalon graphics layer and Indigo communications engine will also go into Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft will get flak for pulling features in order to have a release that suits its push towards a subscription model of software licensing based on regular releases, but its decision is pragmatic, allowing developers and buyers to phase in new technologies. What was becoming a mess is suddenly a lot clearer.

The same combination of realpolitik and reduced expectation chimes with the appointment of Ian Watmore, who begins his tenure as head of e-government this week. Watmore's role is a shadow of that envisioned in the late 1990s when Peter Mandelson wanted to make the UK a hub of e-commerce. Since then the focus has faded to today's inward-looking strategy that is all about putting government services online.

Oftel has morphed into Ofcom but BT remains the 600-pound gorilla in business communications and it's no easier to set up in e-business under Labour than the previous administration. Watmore can be expected to bring experience to the task of reducing public-sector contract calamities but there is little evidence of an ability to magic up Gordon Brown's promised IT pixie-dust that could make up for thousands of civil service job cuts. As for taking a wider role in ensuring the UK is a great place from which to conduct e-commerce, that's no longer his department, guv'nor.

Cutting a corner to get somewhere fast isn't ideal - but Microsoft and the government clearly think it beats waiting on a prayer.