KEY POINTS:
Heard the one about Bill Gates' journey to the afterlife?
God met the Microsoft founder at the Pearly Gates and declared himself to be in quandary as to whether to admit the squillionaire into heaven or send him down to hell.
"On the one hand you brought computing to the masses," the Almighty mused. "On the other hand your crash-prone Windows operating systems delivered endless frustrations to countless millions."
So God told Gates he could decide for himself - after a tour of both facilities - whether to spend eternity in heaven or hell.
First Gates was shown around hell, which appeared to be a Club Med-style paradise of tropical beaches and beautiful women. Next it was back up to heaven which he observed to be a tranquil cloud-lined haven for harp players.
"Nice," Gates declared, "but hell seems a bit more interesting, I'll stay down there, thanks."
A couple of weeks later God decided to pop down and check on the new arrival's progress. He found Gates chained up in a fiery pit being whipped by Beelzebub.
"This is nothing like the hell you showed me!" a forlorn Gates protested.
"Ha," chuckled the creator. "That was the demo. This is the release version."
God would not be alone in finding himself in a Microsoft quandary. For better and/or worse, Microsoft's ubiquitous technology tends to pervade our lives whether we want it to or not.
The extent of the company's impact across the IT sector was reinforced last week by the release of research Microsoft commissioned itself.
The study, by IT research firm IDC, surmised that "Microsoft-related activities" are responsible for 26,000, or 39 per cent of New Zealand's 66,000 IT sector jobs.
The revelation that the "Microsoft ecosystem" is such a significant part of the local IT sector is probably not a surprise to most people. Some may wonder, however, why an often-loathed dominant player has chosen to highlight its dominance.
The answer is that the research also found that for every dollar Microsoft generates in New Zealand, companies working with it generate more than $13, and this is the message the company wants to disseminate: that local businesses are doing well by creating and selling products that run on Microsoft platforms.
Admittedly, it can be argued that if Microsoft wasn't around there would be a similarly thriving industry distributing IT products to run on other IT platforms.
But to Microsoft's credit it has a global corporate culture which recognises that its own growth depends on fostering a healthy ecosystem. It has significant programmes in place around the world aimed at supporting that ecosystem.
According to IDC, overall IT spending in New Zealand will hit $5.4 billion this year and is set to grow 4.3 per cent a year between now and 2011.
We often hear that software development is a prime export industry we should be investing heavily in.
The IDC research backs up this view with a finding that IT spending on software "creates a disproportionate share of the skilled job growth".
It says while spending on packaged software will account for only 13 per cent of New Zealand's total IT spending this year, 52 per cent of IT sector employment is software-related.
These are some of the statistics that would have been sitting on the Viaduct Harbour desk of Kevin Ackhurst when he started work this week as Microsoft New Zealand's new country manager.
While a number of local software companies have done reasonably well in global markets riding on Microsoft's coattails, I don't get the impression Microsoft NZ has done anything spectacular to push this country as a software hub. Hopefully Ackhurst can raise the bar in this regard; his CV suggests he should be able to.
A Zimbabwean, Ackhurst is familiar with New Zealand, having been a regular visitor here while he was Microsoft Australia's public sector director between 2003 and 2006.
In a press release Ackhurst said he was looking forward to harnessing the potential of this country's thriving software industry "and ensuring that our customers, partners and the wider community in New Zealand are advantaged by Microsoft's global network".
Sounds good. Let's just hope that's an output from what turns out to be a fully functional and locally compatible final release version of the Ackhurst package, rather than some over-hyped and ultimately disappointing demo version.
