10 ms·

Is it just me, or does any technology that Microsoft supports late in the game give you sort of a queasy feeling?

gokhan 10y ago
Easy to see their motive. This is good for their cloud business, they already know their monopoly days are over, they're making money with Azure and growing that front (127% [1]). Whatever your platform is, you can host it on Azure. And big data will be more lucrative each day. Spark is a cluster computing framework and clusters lead to cloud. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-vs-aws-revenue-2016-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-vs-aws-revenu...
- sargun 10y ago
  "But there's no way to tease out how much of that $5.1 billion is Azure versus the older products. We also don't know if Azure is profitable, althoug the overall business segment earned $2.58 billion in profits — down 1% from a year ago." Servers and tools did $4.5B of revenue in FY12, Q3 (https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/SegmentResults/ServerAndTools/FY12/Q3/performance.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Ear...). This was before Azure really had any footprint. You do the math.
elliotec 10y ago
Why, and what exactly do you mean?
- adventured 10y ago
  The parent is probably having flashbacks to a time now long gone, in which Microsoft was widely regarded in tech circles as the evil empire. They would attempt to 'embrace and extend' potentially threatening (to them) technology that they didn't control, as a means to hijack or kill it. Many people - including internally at Microsoft - often called it: embrace, extend, extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    I don't know if Microsoft's management still considers E-E-E to be a viable strategy or not. However, even if they don't, I haven't seen any indication that they've repented of their past scummy tendencies. The Windows 10 rollout is perhaps the most obvious case in point. I'm curious if you've seen something that makes you more optimistic than I am.
  - hansjorg 10y ago
    Whether or not you consider their actions evil, they were demonstrably an extremely destructive force, provenly using very untoward methods, much more so than most of their peers. It's mind boggling to consider how many years their shenanigans have probably set back computing as a field. As for trusting them now, I don't believe an organization like that can truly change in such a short time.
    - elliotec 10y ago
      I'm not sure they can change fully in this short a time, but they've definitely demonstrated some healthy changes under Nadella, including "embracing" open source, VS code, proper handling of the Mojang acquisition, and others.
  - hh2222 10y ago
    They just bought Xamarin and killed Robovm.
dethswatch 10y ago
No, but I view MS as a collection of employees desperate to learn what they need for the next job now. Hence, the total apparent lack of desire to do anything new and innovative ("Let's copy AWS! Genius!").
- sargun 10y ago
  Funny story from my time at Microsoft (this wasn't representative of the entire population, just a few folks). This was circa 2013: We were in a meeting talking about infrastructure and testing. I said that we used EC2 for some of our infrastructure, and we were thinking of moving some of our local dev infra to AWS. Someone in the room asked me what that was. I responded with "Amazon web services" and they countered "you mean the company that sells books and stuff?" -- they had never heard of AWS, nor EC2 This comes from someone who had been with the organization for some time. He was very well respected by a lot of folks. He had more awards in his office than I could count. I still think he's a great guy. The Microsoft monoculture hurt quite a bit.
  - logical42 10y ago
    Why wouldn't you use azure instead?
    - lallysingh 10y ago
      If I were to guess, to avoid having to go through the meetings and internal bureaucracy for it. It'd literally be cheaper (after counting in person-hours of time) to just pay for an external vendor.
      - kevinstubbs 10y ago
        There's no extra meetings or internal bureaucracy for using Azure internally. It's painless to get an internal subscription for Azure that can be used by your team.
        10y ago
sickbeard 10y ago
I think Nadella doesn't know what he's doing. They are doing a lot of "cool" stuff but it seems like a disorganized mess.
- hyperbovine 10y ago
  Reminds me of the Jonathan Schwartz days. At least we don't have to worry about Nadella growing a ponytail.
- simonswords82 10y ago
  What part of it seems disorganised? Not trying to be a dick, their roadmap seems clear and detailed and well received by their target audience (primarily MS developers). I've seen HN light up with joy at news of all the open sourcing and enhancements MS are undertaking in recent years. I don't see the disorganised mess but perhaps I'm missing something?

Easy to see their motive. This is good for their cloud business, they already know their monopoly days are over, they're making money with Azure and growing that front (127% [1]). Whatever your platform is, you can host it on Azure. And big data will be more lucrative each day. Spark is a cluster computing framework and clusters lead to cloud. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-vs-aws-revenue-2016-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-vs-aws-revenu...

sargun 10y ago
"But there's no way to tease out how much of that $5.1 billion is Azure versus the older products. We also don't know if Azure is profitable, althoug the overall business segment earned $2.58 billion in profits — down 1% from a year ago." Servers and tools did $4.5B of revenue in FY12, Q3 (https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/SegmentResults/ServerAndTools/FY12/Q3/performance.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Ear...). This was before Azure really had any footprint. You do the math.

elliotec 10y ago

Why, and what exactly do you mean?

adventured 10y ago
The parent is probably having flashbacks to a time now long gone, in which Microsoft was widely regarded in tech circles as the evil empire. They would attempt to 'embrace and extend' potentially threatening (to them) technology that they didn't control, as a means to hijack or kill it. Many people - including internally at Microsoft - often called it: embrace, extend, extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  I don't know if Microsoft's management still considers E-E-E to be a viable strategy or not. However, even if they don't, I haven't seen any indication that they've repented of their past scummy tendencies. The Windows 10 rollout is perhaps the most obvious case in point. I'm curious if you've seen something that makes you more optimistic than I am.
- hansjorg 10y ago
  Whether or not you consider their actions evil, they were demonstrably an extremely destructive force, provenly using very untoward methods, much more so than most of their peers. It's mind boggling to consider how many years their shenanigans have probably set back computing as a field. As for trusting them now, I don't believe an organization like that can truly change in such a short time.
  - elliotec 10y ago
    I'm not sure they can change fully in this short a time, but they've definitely demonstrated some healthy changes under Nadella, including "embracing" open source, VS code, proper handling of the Mojang acquisition, and others.
- hh2222 10y ago
  They just bought Xamarin and killed Robovm.

dethswatch 10y ago

No, but I view MS as a collection of employees desperate to learn what they need for the next job now. Hence, the total apparent lack of desire to do anything new and innovative ("Let's copy AWS! Genius!").

sargun 10y ago
Funny story from my time at Microsoft (this wasn't representative of the entire population, just a few folks). This was circa 2013: We were in a meeting talking about infrastructure and testing. I said that we used EC2 for some of our infrastructure, and we were thinking of moving some of our local dev infra to AWS. Someone in the room asked me what that was. I responded with "Amazon web services" and they countered "you mean the company that sells books and stuff?" -- they had never heard of AWS, nor EC2 This comes from someone who had been with the organization for some time. He was very well respected by a lot of folks. He had more awards in his office than I could count. I still think he's a great guy. The Microsoft monoculture hurt quite a bit.
- logical42 10y ago
  Why wouldn't you use azure instead?
  - lallysingh 10y ago
    If I were to guess, to avoid having to go through the meetings and internal bureaucracy for it. It'd literally be cheaper (after counting in person-hours of time) to just pay for an external vendor.
    - kevinstubbs 10y ago
      There's no extra meetings or internal bureaucracy for using Azure internally. It's painless to get an internal subscription for Azure that can be used by your team.
      - 10y ago

sickbeard 10y ago

I think Nadella doesn't know what he's doing. They are doing a lot of "cool" stuff but it seems like a disorganized mess.

hyperbovine 10y ago
Reminds me of the Jonathan Schwartz days. At least we don't have to worry about Nadella growing a ponytail.
simonswords82 10y ago
What part of it seems disorganised? Not trying to be a dick, their roadmap seems clear and detailed and well received by their target audience (primarily MS developers). I've seen HN light up with joy at news of all the open sourcing and enhancements MS are undertaking in recent years. I don't see the disorganised mess but perhaps I'm missing something?