4 ms·
The problem is Ballmer point blank completely utterly failed to successfully transition Microsoft in the single biggest revolution in the Computing Industry in
by apalmer 10y ago
The problem is Ballmer point blank completely utterly failed to successfully transition Microsoft in the single biggest revolution in the Computing Industry in the last twenty years. He also utterly failed to successfully transition Microsoft in the second biggest revolution in the Computing Industry in the last twenty years.
Ask microsoft right now, they would probably trade 50% of their windows and office business to have a strong 25% share in the mobile market. They would also probably trade the other 50% of their windows an office business for 50% of the worlds cloud computing business.
He had no CEO vision, he was an excellent COO who streamlined and improved margins, but absolutely failed to make any of the moves necessary for Microsoft to continue to be at the top of the software industry over the long term.
CEOs need the vision to recognize, and the cajones to go after the big 'bet the company' moments...
- dragontamer 10y agoCompare Microsoft with their 90s peers: IBM, Sun, and Oracle. Tell me who you'd rather be among the major forces of the 90s. My bet? I'd rather be Microsoft. The responsibilities of an enterprise-level deployment mean that Microsoft was ill-suited for the changes that occurred in the mid-2000s, just like its other enterprise competitors. Still, despite being handicapped by Enterprise customers, Microsoft performed okay in the transition to cloud. I mean, Azure actually exists and arguably is a bigger platform than Google's Compute Engine. Microsoft's track record is that it's 2nd best at a lot of things. Microsoft is 2nd best at cloud (Azure), 2nd best at Bing (remember: Yahoo uses Bing as a backend), 3rd best at web browsers (Edge / IE). 2nd best at gaming (PS4 > Xbox > Wii U in terms of this generation's sales). They're not really in a bad position at all. They're just not a dominant giant.