10 ms·

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features

by ynniv 9y ago

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they already own a huge part of it. If they don't care, they should sell it to someone who does.

jmuguy 9y ago
They're not abandoning Windows or the ecosystem. This is just the end of it as the tip of the spear/driving force for MS strategy. Nadella is (rightly, imo) focusing more on o365 and Azure. One of the points the article makes is that Ballmer's MS would do things like not release Office for iOS because that would potentially eat into Windows marketshare. That no longer will happen. MS sees its more important to get o365 everywhere they can. From my perspective, switching small businesses over to Exchange Online and other o365 services - The future is bright for MS in that space. These SMBs we've switched over have gone from using a version of Office they purchased forever ago and an old Exchange license to paying 50-100 a month for Office 365.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Not saying that you are wrong, but iOS office was in development long before Ballmer left, so never isn’t as true as “not soon enough.”
- ynniv 9y ago
  I agree that getting Office to run on Android and iOS is a bright future, but that doesn't mean you put Windows in the corner with "some other stuff". Maybe there are too many people on it and they've gotten too comfortable? Spin it out into a company with half the staff and let it soak up its own sun.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    The problem with Windows is operating systems are a commodity. You shouldn't care about it. You are about opening your documents on your desktop and phone - you don't even care what program opens the documents. Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs. Which is to say Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.
    - ynniv 9y ago
      If that were true, Linux on the desktop would have already won and this decision wouldn't be controversial. I think what's preventing this is that making a productive desktop operating system is more difficult than we think.
      - bluGill 9y ago
        No. Linux on the desktop has some specific list of pros/cons. Windows can be better by enough, even if inertia is the only advantage.
        ynniv 9y ago
        Isn't that my argument?
        bluGill 9y ago
        You seem to be arguing that is enough to make windows not a commodity.
      - thanatropism 9y ago
        The desktop matters less and less. The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.
        deleted 9y ago
- blablabla123 9y ago
  > Nadella is (rightly, imo) focusing more on o365 and Azure. Windows is a perfect example of no focus at all. Maybe this makes sense for a true mainstream OS. To be honest, I wonder if Azure, Exchange online or Office 365 can really be their future. Why not use AWS, Scaleway or a local service. It's cheaper and better.
TheForumTroll 9y ago
>No one has an Android device on their desk at work If you mean as in a desktop PC then no, but smartphones is becoming more and more important and Apple is not strong outside the US. Around here almost everyone has an Android phone as a work phone and I see more Chromebooks by the day. I also want to point out that i believe that saying they abandon the ecosystem is missing the point. They don't. They just don't let Windows dictate what the rest of the business does.
djsumdog 9y ago
I agree. I wish Microsoft would focus on Windows 11 and not think of Win10 as the last Windows, thereby flooding it with adware non-sense. There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server. With Android being a clusterfuck of vendor specific bloatware and not having a single concept of a clean install, Microsoft should focus on keeping a clean Windows install equivalent to a fresh Mac install.
- ams6110 9y ago
  How is Android relevant? It's not a PC OS, and doesn't seem like a real Windows alternative in the same breath as MacOS or Linux.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  I agree with what you're saying and I think they need to keep Windows 10 around at least for a little while longer. Everyone hates when Microsoft changes something core and foundational about Windows and thus there has been little change in certain areas of the OS for the last two decades. That build up of cruft has become untenable and Microsoft attempted to address major pain points like the Control Panel with Windows 8, then 8.1, and still in 10. The problem is that rewriting something like the Control Panel would consume 100% of developer resources for an entire OS Dev cycle. Can you imagine if Microsoft announced Windows 11 and the only difference between it and 10 was a new control panel? Windows 10 is the perfect opportunity to start fixing cruft. It's already controversial but not universally hated, they got the majority of people to adopt it through free upgrades, and they've introduced the semi annual upgrade cycle that allows them to gradually introduce foundational changes gradually. With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently. And with every shift towards ads or trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop, they alienate users off of it. I switched to OS X as soon as I saw the writing on the wall with Win8 (and Wine on OS X got stable enough to play GTA San Andreas, tbh). Also, I wonder if it would be possible to get Windows 7 userland to run on a Win10 (and with it, WSL) kernel. Now that's something I'd switch back to Windows for.
ckaygusu 9y ago
> macOS isn't business-level stable. Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.
- ynniv 9y ago
  Business is full of "just good enough" solutions, and loves control. Apple has shown that breaking backwards compatibility doesn't bother them, they're not going to build IT control features to the same level, and ... maybe macOS is going to be sacrificed at the alter of iOS? We're not sure these days. Meanwhile, custom Windows software from forever ago works just fine today, and that's good for business.
- nulagrithom 9y ago
  The enterprise tooling for macOS is woefully insufficient. Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it easier to hire someone to do it as well). What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten really sick of the screwy changes Apple makes to macOS with little warning. Windows goes to great lengths to ensure backwards compatibility between major version upgrades. (For example, did you know VB6 apps still run just fine?) Also, I can get fine grained control of updates to Windows. But maybe most importantly, I can virtualize Windows and create a virtual desktop environment. Now I can hand out toasters to users and they can just log in to their box from anywhere. Windows is simply much better at making desktop units fungible.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Agreed. To get anything close to this with Apple you need to go to third party tools such as Jamf.
  - rconti 9y ago
    I was going to reply to the original thread with [citation needed], but thankfully someone already did it. The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability. That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.
SonicSoul 9y ago
> macOS isn't business-level stable amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook. Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it worked in the past) that would be their Kodak moment. All Nadela is doing here is emphasizing efforts on staying competitive in cloud/o365 which is where he thinks they can continue to grow and stay competitive and bring in revenues from enterprise clients. Less and less companies want to lease/run their own windows/database servers, and with technologies like containers a lot of companies are now going with open source solutions.
- ynniv 9y ago
  Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.
  - SonicSoul 9y ago
    they can still take advantage of existing cloud technologies running on their own servers. And guess what, the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux.
    - cptskippy 9y ago
      This is where Microsoft is going with Azure. Compared to other platforms, setting up a local instance of Azure is pretty painless and allows you to spin up resources locally that are identical to the Cloud.
    - ynniv 9y ago
      You're thinking about your own app servers. No one cares about the cost of Windows when you're running someone else's proprietary desktop software on it.
mbesto 9y ago
The author didn't characterize his position accurately. He meant "Windows Server", not "Windows Desktop". Similar to how IBM sold off it's laptop business to Lenovo, the strategy is basically saying that "We're a business services company, there's no growth left in the end-user ecosystem anymore, because all of that growth is in mobile, which we suck at, so let's just double down on what we are growing at: cloud services and office productivity services". That Windows we all know, both desktop and server side, is not dead. The economics on the server side are diminishing (20~30 year outlook) and Microsoft won't be around if they don't do something about it now. IMHO it's a very smart strategy, people just didn't understand what Ben was saying because he didn't articulate it correctly (which I do find with his content, but it's less often the case)
- ynniv 9y ago
  If that's true, yes, Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time. It wouldn't explain the remapping of Office, though.
  - mbesto 9y ago
    Office is Office365 rebranded - which just means the lock-in is a monthly subscription instead of a license. The lock-in is further exploited because email is the cornerstone of any business productivity suite and it'll be hosted on Azure now (which is a huge lock-in to their ecosystem).
  - majewsky 9y ago
    > Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time. Most definitely not. There are a ton of Microsoft Certified Somethings that will refuse to administrate Linux servers unless their life depends on it. Source: I work at SAP's internal cloud unit. We have to support Windows VMs (begrudgingly, if I may say), even for payloads that could run on Linux.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Inflexible workers will be separated from their jobs eventually, its just a matter of time.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? They aren't abandoning the desktop Windows ecosystem, they’ve just demoted Windows from a single desktop and server org that the rest of the firm orbits to something that serves the areas where there actually is expected to be growth.
tabtab 9y ago
Re: seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of I suspect it's a mere marketing strategy to jack up their stock price and gain a "cool factor". MS will go wherever the market/profits leads them. Their cloud is commercially successful, a rarity for new MS products actually, and that's where they currently see future growth. But if Windows stays a nice cash cow, they'll quietly milk it. "Productivity" applications still need a real GUI, something the Web has yet to do right cross-browser: CSS/JS/DOM is a mess. I believe we need a WYSIWYG standard to get GUI's right. The server side can still scale the window & widgets per device size under WYSIWYG, so it's a myth that WYSIWYG is anti-mobile. The client-side auto-flow approach sucks for efficient UI's.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
manigandham 9y ago
This article is way too long to make a simple point - which is that Windows is not being abandoned but is no longer the flagship. Cloud infrastructure and services are leading the way, so Azure and AI is now the forefront. Sticking with something just because it's a large majority is a great way to fail when that something fades into the background.

by ynniv 9y ago

jmuguy 9y ago

They're not abandoning Windows or the ecosystem. This is just the end of it as the tip of the spear/driving force for MS strategy. Nadella is (rightly, imo) focusing more on o365 and Azure. One of the points the article makes is that Ballmer's MS would do things like not release Office for iOS because that would potentially eat into Windows marketshare. That no longer will happen. MS sees its more important to get o365 everywhere they can. From my perspective, switching small businesses over to Exchange Online and other o365 services - The future is bright for MS in that space. These SMBs we've switched over have gone from using a version of Office they purchased forever ago and an old Exchange license to paying 50-100 a month for Office 365.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Not saying that you are wrong, but iOS office was in development long before Ballmer left, so never isn’t as true as “not soon enough.”
ynniv 9y ago
I agree that getting Office to run on Android and iOS is a bright future, but that doesn't mean you put Windows in the corner with "some other stuff". Maybe there are too many people on it and they've gotten too comfortable? Spin it out into a company with half the staff and let it soak up its own sun.
- bluGill 9y ago
  The problem with Windows is operating systems are a commodity. You shouldn't care about it. You are about opening your documents on your desktop and phone - you don't even care what program opens the documents. Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs. Which is to say Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.
  - ynniv 9y ago
    If that were true, Linux on the desktop would have already won and this decision wouldn't be controversial. I think what's preventing this is that making a productive desktop operating system is more difficult than we think.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      No. Linux on the desktop has some specific list of pros/cons. Windows can be better by enough, even if inertia is the only advantage.
      - ynniv 9y ago
        Isn't that my argument?
        bluGill 9y ago
        You seem to be arguing that is enough to make windows not a commodity.
    - thanatropism 9y ago
      The desktop matters less and less. The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.
      - deleted 9y ago
blablabla123 9y ago
> Nadella is (rightly, imo) focusing more on o365 and Azure. Windows is a perfect example of no focus at all. Maybe this makes sense for a true mainstream OS. To be honest, I wonder if Azure, Exchange online or Office 365 can really be their future. Why not use AWS, Scaleway or a local service. It's cheaper and better.

TheForumTroll 9y ago

>No one has an Android device on their desk at work If you mean as in a desktop PC then no, but smartphones is becoming more and more important and Apple is not strong outside the US. Around here almost everyone has an Android phone as a work phone and I see more Chromebooks by the day. I also want to point out that i believe that saying they abandon the ecosystem is missing the point. They don't. They just don't let Windows dictate what the rest of the business does.

djsumdog 9y ago

I agree. I wish Microsoft would focus on Windows 11 and not think of Win10 as the last Windows, thereby flooding it with adware non-sense. There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server. With Android being a clusterfuck of vendor specific bloatware and not having a single concept of a clean install, Microsoft should focus on keeping a clean Windows install equivalent to a fresh Mac install.

ams6110 9y ago
How is Android relevant? It's not a PC OS, and doesn't seem like a real Windows alternative in the same breath as MacOS or Linux.
cptskippy 9y ago
I agree with what you're saying and I think they need to keep Windows 10 around at least for a little while longer. Everyone hates when Microsoft changes something core and foundational about Windows and thus there has been little change in certain areas of the OS for the last two decades. That build up of cruft has become untenable and Microsoft attempted to address major pain points like the Control Panel with Windows 8, then 8.1, and still in 10. The problem is that rewriting something like the Control Panel would consume 100% of developer resources for an entire OS Dev cycle. Can you imagine if Microsoft announced Windows 11 and the only difference between it and 10 was a new control panel? Windows 10 is the perfect opportunity to start fixing cruft. It's already controversial but not universally hated, they got the majority of people to adopt it through free upgrades, and they've introduced the semi annual upgrade cycle that allows them to gradually introduce foundational changes gradually. With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently. And with every shift towards ads or trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop, they alienate users off of it. I switched to OS X as soon as I saw the writing on the wall with Win8 (and Wine on OS X got stable enough to play GTA San Andreas, tbh). Also, I wonder if it would be possible to get Windows 7 userland to run on a Win10 (and with it, WSL) kernel. Now that's something I'd switch back to Windows for.

ckaygusu 9y ago

> macOS isn't business-level stable. Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.

ynniv 9y ago
Business is full of "just good enough" solutions, and loves control. Apple has shown that breaking backwards compatibility doesn't bother them, they're not going to build IT control features to the same level, and ... maybe macOS is going to be sacrificed at the alter of iOS? We're not sure these days. Meanwhile, custom Windows software from forever ago works just fine today, and that's good for business.
nulagrithom 9y ago
The enterprise tooling for macOS is woefully insufficient. Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it easier to hire someone to do it as well). What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten really sick of the screwy changes Apple makes to macOS with little warning. Windows goes to great lengths to ensure backwards compatibility between major version upgrades. (For example, did you know VB6 apps still run just fine?) Also, I can get fine grained control of updates to Windows. But maybe most importantly, I can virtualize Windows and create a virtual desktop environment. Now I can hand out toasters to users and they can just log in to their box from anywhere. Windows is simply much better at making desktop units fungible.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Agreed. To get anything close to this with Apple you need to go to third party tools such as Jamf.
- rconti 9y ago
  I was going to reply to the original thread with [citation needed], but thankfully someone already did it. The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability. That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.

SonicSoul 9y ago

> macOS isn't business-level stable amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook. Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it worked in the past) that would be their Kodak moment. All Nadela is doing here is emphasizing efforts on staying competitive in cloud/o365 which is where he thinks they can continue to grow and stay competitive and bring in revenues from enterprise clients. Less and less companies want to lease/run their own windows/database servers, and with technologies like containers a lot of companies are now going with open source solutions.

ynniv 9y ago
Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.
- SonicSoul 9y ago
  they can still take advantage of existing cloud technologies running on their own servers. And guess what, the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    This is where Microsoft is going with Azure. Compared to other platforms, setting up a local instance of Azure is pretty painless and allows you to spin up resources locally that are identical to the Cloud.
  - ynniv 9y ago
    You're thinking about your own app servers. No one cares about the cost of Windows when you're running someone else's proprietary desktop software on it.

mbesto 9y ago

The author didn't characterize his position accurately. He meant "Windows Server", not "Windows Desktop". Similar to how IBM sold off it's laptop business to Lenovo, the strategy is basically saying that "We're a business services company, there's no growth left in the end-user ecosystem anymore, because all of that growth is in mobile, which we suck at, so let's just double down on what we are growing at: cloud services and office productivity services". That Windows we all know, both desktop and server side, is not dead. The economics on the server side are diminishing (20~30 year outlook) and Microsoft won't be around if they don't do something about it now. IMHO it's a very smart strategy, people just didn't understand what Ben was saying because he didn't articulate it correctly (which I do find with his content, but it's less often the case)

ynniv 9y ago
If that's true, yes, Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time. It wouldn't explain the remapping of Office, though.
- mbesto 9y ago
  Office is Office365 rebranded - which just means the lock-in is a monthly subscription instead of a license. The lock-in is further exploited because email is the cornerstone of any business productivity suite and it'll be hosted on Azure now (which is a huge lock-in to their ecosystem).
- majewsky 9y ago
  > Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time. Most definitely not. There are a ton of Microsoft Certified Somethings that will refuse to administrate Linux servers unless their life depends on it. Source: I work at SAP's internal cloud unit. We have to support Windows VMs (begrudgingly, if I may say), even for payloads that could run on Linux.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Inflexible workers will be separated from their jobs eventually, its just a matter of time.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? They aren't abandoning the desktop Windows ecosystem, they’ve just demoted Windows from a single desktop and server org that the rest of the firm orbits to something that serves the areas where there actually is expected to be growth.

tabtab 9y ago

Re: seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of I suspect it's a mere marketing strategy to jack up their stock price and gain a "cool factor". MS will go wherever the market/profits leads them. Their cloud is commercially successful, a rarity for new MS products actually, and that's where they currently see future growth. But if Windows stays a nice cash cow, they'll quietly milk it. "Productivity" applications still need a real GUI, something the Web has yet to do right cross-browser: CSS/JS/DOM is a mess. I believe we need a WYSIWYG standard to get GUI's right. The server side can still scale the window & widgets per device size under WYSIWYG, so it's a myth that WYSIWYG is anti-mobile. The client-side auto-flow approach sucks for efficient UI's.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

manigandham 9y ago

This article is way too long to make a simple point - which is that Windows is not being abandoned but is no longer the flagship. Cloud infrastructure and services are leading the way, so Azure and AI is now the forefront. Sticking with something just because it's a large majority is a great way to fail when that something fades into the background.