In a recent interview with Business Week, Microsoft's CEO stated

We certainly have the best pipeline of new innovation [over the next 12 months] we've ever had in our history.

I was thinking about that line on my drive back from work yesterday and I think he has a point. Over the next year or so Microsoft is going to ship Windows Vista, Office 12, IE 7, Visual Studio 2005, BizTalk Server 2006, SQL Server 2005, .NET Framework v2.0, Windows Communications Foundation (Indigo), Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon), Xbox 360 as well as the next iterations of various offerings from the MSN division including Hotmail, MSN Spaces, MSN Messenger, MSN Virtual Earth, Start.com, etc. That's a lot of stuff and is probably more stuff than has ever shipped in a 12 - 18 month time period in the company's history.

I suspect that one of the interesting consequences of this will be a significant diffusion of talent across the company and perhaps across the industry. A lot of people have been working on a big pieces of software for several years and will be looking for something new. The most restless have already started moving around (e.g. I went from the XML team to MSN, Joshua went from the XML team to Internet Explorer via the Passport team, and Michael went from the XML team to XBox). I've started having more conversations with folks interested in a change and I expect this will only increase over the next 12 months. Definitely interesting times ahead.

On an unrelated note, I have updated the track of the week from my high school days on my space. Just click on the play button on the Windows Media player module to hear this week's track.