Vivek Kundra a Problem for Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer has got a lot on its plate already from pressure to keep their desktop business alive with the upcoming release of Windows 7, keeping up with Amazon and Google through their Windows Azure platform, competition with Apple and their never ending battle with Linux on the growing netbooks market.

The software giant has bigger concerns after Barack Obama named Vivek Kundra as the country's first Chief Information Officer responsible for $71 billion USD of information technology budget. Vivek is a big fan of blackberry, Google services and Apple products. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't to be in the equation. Vivek Kundra already said he wants to build Web 2.0 for government and Microsoft might just be shoved aside.

In a short bio (posted here) of Vivek: "Vivek Kundra is the CTO for the District of Columbia where he leads an organization of over 600 staff that provides technology services and leadership for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees, residents, businesses, and 14 million annual visitors. He brings to the role of CTO a diverse record that combines technology and public policy experience in government, private industry, and academia. Previously, Vivek served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the first dual cabinet role in the state's history."

Vivek in his recent comments said the the public sector is behind compared to the private sector and he would look into the private sector's philosophy and implementation guidelines on adopting new technologies and see how it can be applied to the public sector. He also adds that anyone can connect to a local Starbucks store, get a Wifi and have more computing power than an average teacher or police officer.

Vivek seems to have lots of advancements in IT for the public sector and Steve Ballmer should make a case on their ability to provide cloud services anchored by Windows Azure.

It would be an interesting first year for Vivek and we would be looking into this all throughout.

1. Tarry Singh, March 8, 2009 at 5:29 am

   Utter nonsense. Vivek’s appointment is to ensure that a tech savvy person is running the show at the Government and no matter what vendor they are working with, it passes through proper trusted channels who know technology.

   Microsoft is not being shoved aside and we should stop sensationalizing stuff and get on to really working to build the global economy.

   Tarry

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