3 ms·

Microsoft is trying to deliver the entire white collar productivity experience and I have to say I appreciate the vision but I hope a closed platform and single

by Dwolb 10y ago

Microsoft is trying to deliver the entire white collar productivity experience and I have to say I appreciate the vision but I hope a closed platform and single value chain doesn't win this battle. There's little bits of Trello (the main Planner functionality), Google Drive (MSFT competitor Office365), and Slack (auto notifications). I want the diverse value chain to thrive to increase innovation and extensibility on each link in the space.

Analemma_ 10y ago
I'm not sure what you want Microsoft to do in that case. When a new product (Trello, Slack) appears and it turns out tons of workers and enterprises like it, Microsoft has 3 options: 1. Ignore it, and hope it turns out to be a fad. 2. Buy them and rebrand it 3. Try to launch their own competitor version 1 isn't really an option, and between 2 and 3, I'd rather Microsoft did 3, so we can have more competition. The fact that it's a closed platform and tied in to all their services is just kind of unavoidable; it would be kind of silly of them to launch a new product and not tie it in to O365.
- cwyers 10y ago
  There is a fourth choice, not mutually exclusive with 3: offer integration between their services and the other tools. They're doing this with Dropbox to an extent, for instance, while still competing with Dropbox.
hguant 10y ago
The problem is that enterprise doesn't want 10 different services/apps that innovate and increase extensibility. Innovation means change. Far simpler to have one vendor with a reliable time table of updates, one product suite that can be installed and administered remotely. Why go through the trouble of having X different vendors with X different support chains, when you can have one help desk that's always there and will never change, with a massive legal and contracts team that speaks business the way you do? Aesthetically and morally I agree with you. It's ugly and bad to have one company holding all the links of the chain. However, I don't think it's likely the open innovative ecosystem you're talking about will come into being because all the selling points are for the benefit of the software user, not the entity employing those users.

by Dwolb 10y ago

Analemma_ 10y ago

I'm not sure what you want Microsoft to do in that case. When a new product (Trello, Slack) appears and it turns out tons of workers and enterprises like it, Microsoft has 3 options: 1. Ignore it, and hope it turns out to be a fad. 2. Buy them and rebrand it 3. Try to launch their own competitor version 1 isn't really an option, and between 2 and 3, I'd rather Microsoft did 3, so we can have more competition. The fact that it's a closed platform and tied in to all their services is just kind of unavoidable; it would be kind of silly of them to launch a new product and not tie it in to O365.

cwyers 10y ago
There is a fourth choice, not mutually exclusive with 3: offer integration between their services and the other tools. They're doing this with Dropbox to an extent, for instance, while still competing with Dropbox.

hguant 10y ago

The problem is that enterprise doesn't want 10 different services/apps that innovate and increase extensibility. Innovation means change. Far simpler to have one vendor with a reliable time table of updates, one product suite that can be installed and administered remotely. Why go through the trouble of having X different vendors with X different support chains, when you can have one help desk that's always there and will never change, with a massive legal and contracts team that speaks business the way you do? Aesthetically and morally I agree with you. It's ugly and bad to have one company holding all the links of the chain. However, I don't think it's likely the open innovative ecosystem you're talking about will come into being because all the selling points are for the benefit of the software user, not the entity employing those users.