Adam Gordon Bell: Today, we have the story of the creation of PowerShell, a tool that transformed Windows system administration forever. And it’s a fascinating story because of all the challenges it took to get it built, especially because at the time that PowerShell was built, the culture at Microsoft was definitely going a different way…The problem was clear. They didn’t understand the server market. Their executives were skilled in the personal computer realm, but they lacked enterprise experience. That’s when they found Jeffrey Snover.

Jeffrey Snover: A Microsoft executive who I met a couple of times before, just an awesome guy, Dave Thompson, reached out and said, ‘Well, Jeffrey, I’d like to talk to you’.

I was like, ‘Well, okay, I’d like to talk to you, Dave.’ Anyway, at the end of that conversation, I ended up having my final interview with Jim Allchin. He wanted to hire me and I said, ‘No, your software is crap.’ And he said, ‘Jeffrey, I know, and I need help.’ And think of it this way: if you do that, if you come here and help me fix this, think of the effect you’ll have on the world.

That was like a laser-guided missile to my psyche. It’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m in’.

[Beat Unix] Adam G Bell: The goal was clear to establish Microsoft NT-based operating systems in data centers and to outcompete Unix vendors like Sun and IBM and HP.

J Snover: How do we do that? And the answer is, we do the same stuff, but with a lot lower cost, right? Same capability, a lot lower cost. One, we have an intrinsic price advantage because we were on Intel and most of the Unix vendors were using it as a mechanism to sell proprietary hardware. So we had Intel, but we also had this like open hardware ecosystem.

So that gave us a structural advantage. So now our software just had to be as good and boom, we win.

A G Bell: But the software wasn’t as good, especially for managing many servers. You are physically clicking a mouse and configuring things on every machine and the setup you need for each business might vary.

Snover: A bank is different than an industrial control process, is different than a, you know, a scientific lab. Everybody’s different. And so basically, if the scenario doesn’t work, then what do you do? And the answer is IBM Professional Services. Or, Arthur Anderson or you know, systems integrators, right?

So now all of a sudden, I say, ‘My hardware costs 10, my software costs 2, and then my systems integrator costs me 40’.

Like, wait a second. In that equation, the hell, we’re right back with these guys. So the key thing was you can’t have systems integrators. Like if you have systems integrators, the whole price equation is broken, and it doesn’t work, and then they get all the value, and then they also own the customer.

So anyway, so you had to get rid of the systems integrators. And so the answer is, well, in-house systems integration, right?

That’s what the Unix model was. Unix guys aren’t going out there hiring IBM Professional Services, right? They were doing it themselves, right? Because they were programmer admins. So that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to develop our own professional class of administrators, people who can do more than just click ‘next’. They become our systems integrators. They’re not going to cost what IBM is going to cost. It’s an upfront thing. It’s a salary thing. And then they can become heroes, and so how do we do that? And the answer is of course, the Unix composition model, right? Have a standard tool chest of small tools that then these people can put together to solve unique problems, automate it, and then go solve the next one, the next one, the next one.

AGB: This plan is what Jeffrey calls a ‘plausible theory of success’. It’s not probable, right? But it’s plausible. There is a path where this could possibly work. And so Jeffrey joins at Microsoft’s Windows Server team to help with this mission.