

Microsoft desperately needs a damn good new strategy  - bbraakman
http://www.brambraakman.com/blog/comments/microsoft_desperately_needs_a_darn_good_strategy/

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nadam
If we take the mantra: "Create something that people want and want to pay for"
what would be the application you would create if there were no competitors?

As far as I am concerned it would be the Office suite. People at every company
want to edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and companies can pay for
such software. Companies buy (hundreds of?) millions of MS Office licenses.
For me Microsoft = MS Office. Microsoft will remain a huge and profitable
company until no one can really compete with MS Office. Most of the things the
tech media speaks about is irrelevant in this respect. People will not want to
edit documents on smart phones and touch-screens. It is really not sure that
people want to edit their documents using an Ajax app and want to host all of
their documents remotely at Google.

I would say that other big companies seem to have bad strategies: If they
wanted to kill Microsoft they would just have to compete with MS Office
directly. The problem what MS Office solves is an essential one. It is
incredible that Microsoft has almost monopoly at such an important market.

~~~
bbraakman
Yes, it is amazing what they achieved with MS Office. Yet, there are plenty of
companies who actually are trying an Office-free life as the licences are
actually quite expensive. Compatibility between various Office programs
(alternatives) has increased and for basic stuff Google Docs works actually
nicely. I found the relationship between MS Office and MS Windows the most
interesting. How strong will MS Office be, without Windows. Office is the
Killer app that Windows has. But a lot of people are steering away from
Windows. This is not going to happen overnight, but it might happen sooner or
later. Also - plenty of companies are still working with Office 2003 (or even
2000). The cost op upgrading is pretty significant, so companies wait longer
and longer for that. That is very bad for innovation (as you keep being stuck
with older software) but good for the companies wallets.

Editing of documents (albeit simple editing) is something people want on their
iPads (and to some extend on other smaller devices too). Do not agree with you
there.

~~~
Silhouette
> Office is the Killer app that Windows has. But a lot of people are steering
> away from Windows.

Really? Do you think next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop? Or
that desktop Mac sales will suddenly jump by orders of magnitude?

> The cost op upgrading is pretty significant, so companies wait longer and
> longer for that.

I'm not sure it's a cost issue as much as a value for money issue. Companies
used to pay a fortune to upgrade to new versions of MS Office, but aside from
changing the UI around, to mixed reviews, what major innovation has there
really been since the early 2000s to justify the upgrade fees now?

There are plenty of pain points in MS Office where, for example, the usability
could be significantly better or some potentially useful functionality is
still missing. However, since alternatives such as OpenOffice or Google Docs
tend to lag so far behind on these counts anyway, there hasn't been much
incentive for MS to improve their product, and the stagnation you alluded to
is the result.

> Editing of documents (albeit simple editing) is something people want on
> their iPads (and to some extend on other smaller devices too).

Sorry, I don't buy it. If I'm in a meeting with a bunch of other guys and
we're working through something, it's painful enough watching the guys taking
the notes when they are writing them up on a laptop/netbook with a real
keyboard, connected up to the projector/TV on the wall. I can only imagine how
tedious it would be if they had to fix all the typos and navigate around their
document using only a touchscreen.

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GHFigs
Oh, Microsoft has a strategy--it's just different in every division.

~~~
bbraakman
Good one :) - In that light, do you think the Office for the Mac division has
a strategy for Office for iOS (but is just not allowed or funded to develop
that product)?

~~~
glhaynes
I think iOS is a really tough problem for them - porting Mac Office to iOS
would be a _huge_ undertaking and, when finished, would be going up against
Apple's iWork apps.

Apple's apps have massive advantages from being produced and sold by the
hardware/software/store vendor (can't say I have a lot of sympathy for
Microsoft's plight on this particular point!), a narrower feature focus (which
is in many ways more desirable on touch platforms), and the mostly-impeccable
Apple taste that Microsoft isn't known for.

In my opinion, though, the most difficult hurdle to overcome is that Apple
sells the iWork apps for $9.99 a la carte. I can't imagine Microsoft selling
Word/Excel/PowerPoint a la carte for even twice that price; they'd be reaping
far lower margins than they're used to getting for Office. And I don't think
they can do a heavily stripped-down version, either: it'd still take a ton of
work and would be even more directly going up against iWork. What's the point?

But if I were the head of the Mac Business Unit, I wouldn't want to tell
Ballmer that we have no plans whatsoever and are just going to cede what's
been one of our very most profitable markets on what appears to be one of the
most important platforms going forward.

And, of course, they're about to run into a somewhat similar issue with the
Mac App Store: Mac iWork apps appear to be going a la carte with on-demand
instant gratification on what I expect will be the primary channel for users
to get Mac apps within a couple of years. Will be interesting to see
Microsoft's response on that one, too... Mac Office has been a big cash cow
for them.

~~~
makecheck
That's the thing, though...on a mobile device (even as big as the iPad), who
can use all the bells and whistles? This isn't supposed to be a huge effort.

Take PowerPoint, for example. It would be a step forward to be able to _view_
any presentation file, but only edit certain things (like adding or editing
titles and bullets). And have something like a template importer so that new
presentations aren't completely plain. This would be worth downloading for a
few bucks, and it wouldn't have 99% of the features of the original. Microsoft
has to look beyond the, er, list of bullet points enumerating features, and
focus on what's actually needed.

~~~
glhaynes
What could they do, though? Make PowerPoint Viewer (with a few editing
features) and sell it for, what, $2.99? That seems like a tough sell against
$9.99 Keynote, though it could have some limited success. Still _really_ not
where I want to be on this platform if I'm used to dominating the office suite
market with huge profits.

------
nailer
Sameas the author, I was pretty shocked to find out MS Office Live (the Office
web app) doesn't work on iPad, when Google Docs obviously does.

MS's corporate customers have iPads, and Blackberry devices, and whatever
else. They can and will want access to their documents remotely, via real
mobile web apps rather than RDP style kludges that don't work on small
displays. And Microsoft does _nothing_ to support these guys?

~~~
bbraakman
So what mobile platform does MS Office Live work on then? Only on Windows
Phone (or Windows Mobile)? Are they making these things web-standard browsers
incompatible on purpose? Or do they really only know/want to develop for IE
browsers, ActiveX or Silverlight or .Net technology based stuff? Is there
anyone from Microsoft out there who can explain??

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kia
I am a linux fan. But I must admit that C#/.net/VS is one of the best
development platforms available. Besides that they have just released F# with
VS2010 which is kind of 'Language for Geeks' in MS world.

~~~
slantyyz
Agreed. I'm a Mac fan who misses having a native VS style IDE.

I've been using Netbeans, which has a bit of the user experience I'm looking
for, but seems a little slothlike to me.

~~~
rbanffy
I regard NetBeans as a very capable IDE. Consider that VS has, probably, lots
of hand-tuned x86 assembly in its guts while NetBeans is nice and portable
Java. You could probably run it on an Azul box.

I know. It's an excuse for a perceived lower performance, but it's better to
progress slowly in the right direction than to rush at warp speed into the
vendor lock-in you seem to have escaped ;-)

~~~
slantyyz
I like the Netbeans user experience, but at times I do wish it was a native
app. The 'swinginess' of it can make it a bit of an eyesore.

IIRC, Netbeans was the first editor on the Mac that I found where I could just
select and hit tab to indent the selection block without having to change any
settings. All the other Mac apps I tried would just replace the text with a
tab. Coming off of Windows text editors, it was a huge nuisance to me.

~~~
rbanffy
> The 'swinginess' of it can make it a bit of an eyesore.

Come on. It's not that bad. Doesn't it default to native look and feel on
Macs? I think it does in Windows and it did last time I used it on Linux.

~~~
slantyyz
Esthetically, it definitely is a notch below Coda, another native IDE I use.

It really doesn't look very Mac-like. It's tolerable, or I wouldn't use it,
but that's as kind as I can get in describing it.

------
metamemetics
Microsoft is making a ton off of Xbox Live subscriptions. So much that it has
made their entire entertainment division profitable (even though they lost
money on xbox and xbox360 hardware sales).

Let's not forget that Microsoft was the first to build the modern
comprehensive online console gaming experience. In addition to being a big
revenue stream, monthly subscriptions also have the advantage of being very
sticky: there are no sudden movements in this stream of revenue, but gradual
trends.

~~~
bbraakman
@metamemetics - I agree. With the Xbox - though seemingly unprofitable for
years (in the beginning) - Microsoft has deployed a successful strategy (or at
least the product turned successful). I decided to not venture into that area
of MS business (and have left many other sides of their business undiscussed
as well). Even in the entertainment area though - casual gaming and handheld
gaming (two very important businesses) have been largely left untouched by MS.

~~~
slantyyz
I also agree. The XBOX and newest generation of Zune/Windows Phone 7 are
probably the most innovative things to be -released- (Courier is therefore
discounted) from Microsoft in quite some time. You can also argue that they
are the Microsoft platforms with the best user experiences. Even MS haters are
hard pressed to say that they outright suck.

Where MS has stumbled, in my minds and of my colleagues' minds, is the dumbing
down of Windows and Office products. In terms of usability, Windows XP and
Office 2003 were a good balance of function and learning curve.

I'm of the view that Windows and Office have been around long enough to be
quite pervasive, at least in the first world. With such high PC penetration in
the marketplace, excessive tweaking to the Office and Windows GUI to make it
more palatable to non-computer users was probably unnecessary effort, but I'll
also concede that the new chrome probably sold a lot of upgrades.

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uast23
Its high time Microsoft opened up IE for Linux, Mac and developers. This step
alone could get a bit of attention back to Microsoft in app arena.

Microsoft is such a big name that people tend to try out it's product just out
of curiosity, with the expectation that something might turn out to be good;
given all the money and talent MS has. The company just needs to launch things
at a faster pace.

~~~
bbraakman
Why did they actually discontinue IE for the Mac (years ago) or did they never
release IE for Linux. One of the reasons IE is losing market share
(relatively) must be that people who are coming from other platforms, tend to
stick with the browser they like. IE 4 was great at the time (and won the
browser war with Netscape). I do not understand why they (MS) seem so fearful
of embracing the open standards/multiple platform approach.

~~~
uast23
It's never too late if you have a mammoth no users already in one or other
form (OS, Windows phone et al.). If MS still opens up the browser and start
giving some goodie bags to the developers, something similar to other app
stores, we might see some share of the pie going to MS.

------
rbanffy
They may need it, but I think the world would be a better place if they never
find it.

