The Grill: Microsoft's Chris Capossela

Computerworld - Chris Capossela's career path is a throwback, just like Dom's, the Italian restaurant in Boston's North End that his parents ran for 45 years. Capossela has been at Microsoft Corp. ever since he graduated from college some 18 years ago, working his way up from being Bill Gates' speechwriter to head of the Microsoft Project business, to his current role running marketing for some of Microsoft's most lucrative products: Office, SharePoint and Exchange, as well as their as well as their new hosted equivalents. He recently talked to Computerworld about how his family background prepared him for Microsoft, how Microsoft plans to beat Google Apps, and how the company is adding Twitter-like features to SharePoint.

You've basically worked at only two places in your life: your family's restaurant and Microsoft. Tell me about your first job. I grew up in Boston with two older brothers in an apartment over the restaurant my parents opened when they were 22. The apartment was just for sleeping -- everyone was always downstairs. When I was a teen, I worked three to four nights a week during the school year, and six to seven nights a week during the summers.

How similar was working at a restaurant to working with Microsoft? My dad was very smart about having the boys do all of the jobs in the restaurant. It was good preparation for Microsoft, where I've had a really different set of jobs, sometimes walking in the first day and literally knowing nobody inside that part of the company. I worked as chief of staff to the European president for Microsoft for several years. Some people advised me not to take it and work my way up. But because of my upbringing, I was comfortable with nontraditional lateral moves.

After some hesitation, Microsoft is jumping headfirst into software as a service. Are you worried that your revenue will dip as enterprises switch to SaaS versions of your products? I don't think so. I think if we do a great job of innovating in areas adjacent to where we are strong and naturally grow into new areas, customers will pay us for the value we provide. Voice is a good example. If we can help you make phone calls from within Outlook, or let you IM or call a name you see in a Word document, or make that phone call cheaper, then businesses are going to pay us more than they did before.