
Microsoft’s Next Era - jamesjyu
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/microsofts-next-era/
======
mcdougle
As most people seem to right now, until the past few months I thought of
Microsoft as sort of an aging giant. They had gotten lax during their
monopoly, and instead of keeping up with the times they're struggling to keep
up with more "hip" companies like Google and Apple. And in the public space,
this is true -- the average consumer (or the small business/startup rather
than the large corporation) these days is more likely to buy an Apple product
or a Google product if they can. The average consumer has a better mental
image of Apple or Google than Microsoft.

And then I started my job at a large hospital system assisting the guys who do
financial analytics, and saw the other side of the industry. Microsoft is
still the giant in corporate-level big data analytics and providing solutions
for large server farms. Their B.I. stack (SQL Server, reporting software,
Sharepoint, and other data analytics software I won't go into right now) is
worlds ahead of its competition (and from what I understand can be used
interchangably with the other software -- for example you can hook Tableau
into SQL Server and use it as a front-end for an SSAS cube). I would have
never thought about any of this if I hadn't been at this job, but Microsoft is
still a giant in providing software and systems for hospitals, insurance
companies, big banks and others in the financial sector -- big companies that
need to procsess big data. In addition, as the article states, Microsoft is a
leading competitor in providing cloud hosting solutions -- I went to a
Microsoft thing to learn about and test Windows Azure, and it's incredibly
powerful and so easy to use.

The article kind of hints at this stuff -- that, under Ballmer, Microsoft has
actually been successful despite their stock falling and how the general
public perceives them. They're not failing, it's just that the people who buy
the stock are typically the average consumer who see Microsoft in the light I
mentioned above. The stock market isn't always the best indication of a
company's success, just an indication of what the people who buy stock think.

This doesn't mean I like Microsoft. I just wanted to point out something I
don't think many people pay attention to -- they're still wildly successful,
just in a different market segment, and people might not have noticed that if
they weren't actually in that market segment. I still prefer not to use their
products when I can help it, and I think they could do things much better, and
maybe trying to actually compete with Apple and Google and earn the general
public's respect back would be a good thing. Maybe their "next era" will do
this. But then again, I'm the individual consumer, too.

~~~
sirkneeland
At this point only 25% of Microsoft's revenue comes from Windows. And yet if
you asked the average man on the street how big a part of Microsoft is Windows
and they'd probably say between 80% to 600% (nobody said the average man on
the street would be good at math...)

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msluyter
Just curious -- what's the usage profile for Office in the HN world? Where I
work, we use Outlook (on macs), excel on occasion, powerpoint, and that's
about it. Around 10 years ago or so, we'd draw up big honkin' requirements
documents in Word and e-mail them around, but now we use Wikis & Stories
(jira/VersionOne/etc...) for that, so use of Word has plummeted to about zero.

Excel is used a fair bit for columnar data and the like, and frankly, I think
it's not a bad product at all, though for personal use, I'd probably go with a
google docs spreadsheet. And for simple cases, the google docs presentation
software is an adequate powerpoint replacement.

My general question/theory is that a lot of free/cheap/niche products have
been nibbling at the edges of Office, and I'm wondering if/when a tipping
point will occur, at which point it'll become totally irrelevant. On the other
hand, perhaps if there's enough pushback against cloud services due to the NSA
thing then standalone desktop apps will make a resurgence. "Office is Dead.
Long live Office?"

~~~
pcunite
We use LibreOffice and Outlook 2010.

------
brudgers
_" Competitors were stamped out one by one (see Lotus, Word Perfect, Netscape,
Real Networks) along Microsoft’s journey to capture eyeballs and entire
software budgets."_

Microsoft didn't stamp out WordPerfect. It was a brilliant company with
amazing customer service which was acquired, gutted, and lives on as a rusting
hulk. The same was the fate of Lotus - corporate customers could still
purchase the 1990's Lotus Suite from IBM a couple of years ago.

I guess a case could be made about RealNetworks, but it would need to explain
away the relevance of iTunes and Youtube to the space and explain how Windows
Media player was the real force in the space.

Netscape is of course emotionally charged. My opinion is that its multi-
billion dollar sale to AOL aligns its story more closely with that of
WordPerfect and Lotus, than David and Goliath.

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cpleppert
Microsoft's problem is that the marginal advantage of going with its dominant
products (Windows and Office) is very low with cloud and mobile devices as
opposed to PCs.

Microsoft's strategy of trying to leverage its desktop monopoly in
applications to build a similar monopoly(or at least a very strong critical
mass in mobile applications) has two critical drawbacks: 1\. desktop and
mobile applications aren't magically interchangeable, and where they are,
desktop users don't like the new interface 2.mobile applications aren't just
about functionality, they provide value based on the ecosystem they are
connected to. This ecosystem is completely portable among application
platforms 3\. mobile applications aren't as complex as desktop applications

So I think that the Windows 8 strategy is actually counterproductive.

Nothing about Microsoft's troubles is a surprise. It could have moved
aggressively to build new markets but instead it chose to view every
opportunity as a way to extend its core products of Windows and Office. If no
disruptive technologies came along this might have been a good strategy but we
all know the changes in the technology space over the last 10+ years.

Microsoft's core competencies aren't built around blue ocean innovation at
all. So changing the strategy will require significant risk. There isn't a
magical solution here.

~~~
cageface
_Microsoft 's problem is that the marginal advantage of going with its
dominant products (Windows and Office) is very low with cloud and mobile
devices as opposed to PCs._

Perhaps, but I think this has as much to do with the fact that mobile just
isn't a great platform for power user tools. Sure, we now have iPad
spreadsheets, drawing apps, word processors, presentation tools etc, but
they're very simplistic compared to what's available on the desktop. They're
also generally just too cheap per unit to generate anything like the kind of
revenue pro desktop apps can generate. But, as limited as these apps are, they
do meet the needs of a lot of casual users.

This is a problem every desktop software vendor is dealing with right now.

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username42
I think that Microsoft has first grown to become a "monopoly". this has been
done by killing (or buying or copying) concurrency and by providing software
that were cheap or trivial to copy. In a second phase, they have been able to
make a lot of profit by forcing people to buy their products. They are still
in this phase and a lot of concurrency has appeared. If Microsoft does not
want to die, I think they should stop these huge profits and kill again the
concurrency by selling cheap software, easy to copy. The version of Office and
windows that is sold to particular is a striped down version. The full
experience of what could be Microsoft product is only available in enterprise
versions. I think people are fed up of being considered as second class
citizen or like sheep. If Microsoft gives the whole software (with all
languages), for a small price, there would be less motivation to go to
concurrency.

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pcunite
When companies get _big_ they lose empathy for their users. If MS can somehow
get back to caring about the _feelings_ of people who use their products and
not simply follow _charts_ that show increase revenue paths ... well, I for
one would be grateful. To start off this new era they should allow their GUI's
to be more configurable instead of forcing broad changes. They're so good at
supporting binary compatibility ... extend that to include the kinesthetic
investments I've made in their older GUI interfaces while selling me on the
value of the new platform.

