There will be plenty of time between now and 2008 to lament (or cheer) the departure of Gates' day-to-day involvement at Microsoft. His contributions to the industry are legendary and we'll hear much of them in the coming months. It's Ozzie who is in the spotlight now and deserves our attention. IT professionals are anxiously waiting to see what he will do to affect change in Microsoft's data center, desktop and Internet strategies.

And we can expect change. Big change.

That's because Ozzie has no emotional stake in Windows and its DOS underpinnings. They're not his babies as they have been Gates'. He'll be less reluctant to to perform radical surgery on Microsoft's operating system than his predecessor. He'll also be more inclined to adopt standards more quickly -- as opposed to Microsoft's history of "improving" standards by breaking them and then offering proprietary alternatives that are "better."

That's not Ozzie's history. He's a proponent of collaboration (as befits the inventor of Lotus Notes), which in our new Web-based world demands a rigid adherence to standards.

He's also a big believer in Software as a Service (SaaS). The SaaS model intrigues him and we'll be seeing even more from Microsoft under his direction. Again, it takes a commitment to standard to play in the SaaS world.