Microsoft's Ozzie to head another new Microsoft lab
You may have heard of Microsoft's Live Labs, Office Labs, adCenter Labs. Get ready to add one more Microsoft incubator that is designed to speed up the delivery of Microsoft-created innovations to market: Startup Labs.
Startup Labs falls under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's organization. Like the other aforementioned Microsoft Labs, Startup Labs will incorporate multiple product-development projects. Unlike Microsoft's other incubators, some of the Startup Labs projects will be in early prototype stage, while others will be in beta and beyond. As with Microsoft's other labs, the focus is on building a commercial product, rather than on research for research's sake.
One other tidbit -- which won't be surprising to folks who are watching Ozzie's focus areas since joining Microsoft -- the new Startup Labs seemingly will be heavily focused on building "consumer-facing" products and services, rather than on business-focused wares. And, as noted in a Microsoft job description for a position on the Startup Labs team, "experience with large scale web technologies and distributed multi-tier architectures are a plus." The job is based in Cambridge, Mass., Ozzie's other home town.
From the job posting:
"We are looking for a developer who will be a member of the technical team working on several early and mid stage projects. As part of the development team you will work with other developers, program managers and designers to implement and design new concepts and new features. We are looking for someone who has demonstrated a passion for developing and delivering high quality code while working on shipping commercial software....
"Experience in front-end web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, and perhaps Flash, and backend web technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, SQL and especially Microsoft technologies such as C#, .Net are required. Strong design, debugging, communication, and cross-group collaboration skills are needed. Experience with large scale web technologies and distributed multi-tier architectures are a plus."
The goal of Microsoft's Live Labs, Office Labs and adCenter Labs is to help Microsoft more quickly turn ideas into commercial products. It will be interesting to see what Startup Labs delivers on this front... and when.
Update: Sounds like one of the first deliverables from the Startup Labs group will be a set of applications for Live Mesh that the team is building using the Live Mesh software development kit (SDK) that is slated to be unveiled at the Professional Developers Conference.