5 ms·

What a lot of people here do think is that Microsoft has lost the technology leadership role that they once had. I've been programming for two+ decades, and the

What a lot of people here do think is that Microsoft has lost the technology leadership role that they once had. I've been programming for two+ decades, and there was a time when Microsoft could allude to something and the entire industry would race to try to not be left behind. A lot of people on here are too young to remember this, but it cannot be overstated how absolutely dominant Microsoft was in tech. Their earnings were much less, but their influence was absolute, and those technet and MSDN discs were the holy information conduit for the industry. Now...the company has its corner, but that's it. They provide a lot of valuable products that obviously make them a tonne of money, and they've been executing fantastically, but if you're a Linux or Mac developer who never touches a single Microsoft product, and pays no heed to whatever Microsoft is talking about or doing, you're probably perfectly fine doing that. IBM created the PC, and was influential in a lot of critical areas. Now they are just...there. They make revenue pushing up towards Microsoft levels, but you can safely completely ignore them.

wvenable 7y ago
> Now...the company has its corner, but that's it. Microsoft is the most diversified tech company of the top tech companies. They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools. > if you're a Linux or Mac developer who never touches a single Microsoft product, and pays no heed to whatever Microsoft is talking about or doing, you're probably perfectly fine doing that. The interesting thing now is that you can be a Linux or Mac developer and actually be able to use many Microsoft products. VS code is my favorite editor or any platform (actually I use it more on Linux than on Windows). I'm working on a project right now in .NET that will run as well on a Raspberry Pi as it does on Windows. I think that the market grown so significantly that no company is ever going to have the tech leadership that Microsoft had in the 90's and early 2000's. But I think Microsoft is positioning themselves to great things after fumbling though the last 5-10 years.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Microsoft is the most diversified tech company of the top tech companies. They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools. And none of those make significant amounts of profit besides cloud, Office, and Windows
  - wvenable 7y ago
    https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-tech-giants-make-billions/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-tech-giants-make-billio... Bing and gaming alone makes almost as much as Windows. Devices and LinkedIn makes half as much as Windows and a 1/3 the revenue of Office. These aren't peanuts.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      That’s revenue not profit....
      - wvenable 7y ago
        When we're talking about diversification, I think revenue is a reasonable metric.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Why? Revenue without profit is meaningless. If their profitable segments stop making money then what is there to fund operations or the none profitable segments? Anyone can sell $1.00 for $0.95 as long as they have a means of getting money from other sources.
        basch 7y ago
        If linkedin revenue means they have a third of all marketshare in that vertical, and they use linkedin to add value to their core services, and attract people shopping for bundles, linkedins worth to microsoft is more than just revenue. It could easily be a loss leader just like roast chicken, to get you in the grocery store, and away from shopping at Salesforce.
        scarface74 7y ago
        I wasn’t questioning LinkedIn as much as gaming and Bing. But diversification based on revenue doesn’t decrease risk. If in the unlikely event that Windows and Office profits crater, revenue without profit won’t help.
- endorphone 7y ago
  By corner I didn't mean niche. I meant that they're a vendor at the market, they aren't the vendor, or a central vendor. You might go over and peruse their wares, or maybe you won't. "They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools." IBM did exactly the same thing. And FWIW, the overwhelming bulk of Microsoft's revenue comes from enterprise sales of Office and Windows. They make money on exactly the same things they made money on 20 years ago, but the pie is so much bigger they make a lot more of it.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    > I meant that they're a vendor at the market, they aren't the vendor, or a central vendor. Depends. In corporate environments, which is still a massive market, they are the central vendor. At it seems they're actually making even more headway there. Microsoft hasn't really lost influence, it's just the market is so much bigger now that influence isn't total. And they're making in-roads in those other markets. Microsoft missed out on mobile but that's a new market rather than a loss of their existing market. And now that's a growth opportunity for them. > IBM did exactly the same thing. I think you're point is to say that Microsoft is the new IBM but I don't think that follows. IBM has always been IBM even when they owned much more of the market. Even Microsoft hated working with them. > And FWIW, the overwhelming bulk of Microsoft's revenue comes from enterprise sales of Office and Windows. Less than 50% now (see my other comment).
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Presumably 1st gen IBM wasn't such a punchline. Most of their dysfunction seems to be driven by monetizing legacy products, but there was a time when they didn't have any legacy products.
  - aliswe 7y ago
    Are you saying that Microsoft is not a central vendor for cloud? If so, how? And about the overwhelming bulk of their revenue veing from the same sources as 20 years ago, it seems their operating revenue is 60% cloud services, admittedly a lot of that is office 365 but let's not forget azure revenue which although lumped together in statements must be huge.
- dgemm 7y ago
  > Microsoft is the most diversified tech company of the top tech companies. They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools. I think Amazon is probably far more diversified than Microsoft. Unless they are so diversified that they aren't even considered a "tech" company anymore.
elorant 7y ago
Everyone has its corner. Apple is irrelevant in web. Google in enterprise. Oracle in mobile. We can't expect one company to dominate all markets. That's not possible, not to say unhealthy for innovation.
la_barba 7y ago
Well, MS makes the platform/tools so that others can do cool stuff with it. So even if you don't touch a MS product, because of the massive scale of the platform, you're probably right in the middle of stuff created using MS tech. Maybe your company accountant does taxes on windows or your ATM runs some gimped version of Windows (shudder! :)), or maybe the movie you saw was post processed on some windows machine, or maybe the factory that built stuff you use daily uses windows software for their SCADA system, or in our case all of our equipment (biotech) is controlled through windows software, etc. I think that "technology" especially languages and toolkits and such are super overrated. They're just a means to an end. The functionality contained in the executable in what matters to the actual end-user, not the technology or the platform. And all this is ofcourse super obvious and many companies get this. And yet I don't think any company comes close to providing the level of backwards compatibility and platform stability of Windows. Just a couple of months ago, one of our older WinXP PCs shit the bed, and we replaced it with a W10 box. I was kinda half-expecting the software compatibility for 20 year old software to be a complete shitshow, but we ran the setup and everything just worked out of the box. Thats just once anecdote of course, and there is nothing technical that prevents other platforms from doing the same, except that people don't want to work on boring tasks like keeping stuff working and ticking along, because it doesn't challenge them. But I think that is the secret sauce that makes them the big bucks.
moksly 7y ago
I don’t know, I work in the public sector where we have been in bed with Microsoft for decades and I don’t think their monopoly on non-tech enterprise has ever been stronger. There is really no alternative to Office365 that wouldn’t cost us billions in non-tech areas because our 5000 users don’t know how not to use it and we don’t know how to manage them without Active Directory and ADFS. I think your description of them on the development front is accurate. But I think that’s on purpose. With Azure they don’t really care if we use .Net anymore because that’s not what they need us to do to sell us cloud. Node very quickly became a first class citizen in Azure for instance, integrating well with stuff like application insights and other Azure DevOps features. Sure we could take our Node apps to AWS, but that doesn’t really make sense when we’re already buying into the Microsoft cloud with Office365. I’m sure tech-heavy companies can afford to ignore Microsoft, but the public sector of Europe is a billion dollar industry for tech companies and Microsoft owns it.
- tracker1 7y ago
  What I do appreciate is how much effort MS has put into improving various application platforms and making sure they run well everywhere (mostly). I use Windows, Mac and Linux regularly and appreciate everything that runs everywhere mostly the same. As to Azure cloud, they are okay and probably worth it in some circles. I think AD and O365 in Azure are absolutely worth it. I'm, however, unsure if Azure as a whole is as worth it. It looks like k8s is winning the core infrastructure war and allows you to do things wherever you want. And while I think Azure Storage services are absolutely great to work with compared to competing cloud offerings, they are all a bit of a lock in. Best to stay as close to open and portable as possible, or go all in on a single cloud. Everyone's use case is different.
  - basch 7y ago
    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kubernetes-service/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kubernetes-servic... Microsoft is a clear number two in marketshare, you really cant discount how much of enterprise america would rather do business with Microsoft than other vendors. https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/CIS_Q119.jpg https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/CIS_Q119.j...
ci5er 7y ago
> IBM created the PC, and was influential in a lot of critical areas. Now they are just...there. They make revenue pushing up towards Microsoft levels, but you can safely completely ignore them. You can? I assume you don't work in Global2000 Enterprise IT?

wvenable 7y ago

> Now...the company has its corner, but that's it. Microsoft is the most diversified tech company of the top tech companies. They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools. > if you're a Linux or Mac developer who never touches a single Microsoft product, and pays no heed to whatever Microsoft is talking about or doing, you're probably perfectly fine doing that. The interesting thing now is that you can be a Linux or Mac developer and actually be able to use many Microsoft products. VS code is my favorite editor or any platform (actually I use it more on Linux than on Windows). I'm working on a project right now in .NET that will run as well on a Raspberry Pi as it does on Windows. I think that the market grown so significantly that no company is ever going to have the tech leadership that Microsoft had in the 90's and early 2000's. But I think Microsoft is positioning themselves to great things after fumbling though the last 5-10 years.

scarface74 7y ago
Microsoft is the most diversified tech company of the top tech companies. They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools. And none of those make significant amounts of profit besides cloud, Office, and Windows
- wvenable 7y ago
  https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-tech-giants-make-billions/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-tech-giants-make-billio... Bing and gaming alone makes almost as much as Windows. Devices and LinkedIn makes half as much as Windows and a 1/3 the revenue of Office. These aren't peanuts.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    That’s revenue not profit....
    - wvenable 7y ago
      When we're talking about diversification, I think revenue is a reasonable metric.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Why? Revenue without profit is meaningless. If their profitable segments stop making money then what is there to fund operations or the none profitable segments? Anyone can sell $1.00 for $0.95 as long as they have a means of getting money from other sources.
        basch 7y ago
        If linkedin revenue means they have a third of all marketshare in that vertical, and they use linkedin to add value to their core services, and attract people shopping for bundles, linkedins worth to microsoft is more than just revenue. It could easily be a loss leader just like roast chicken, to get you in the grocery store, and away from shopping at Salesforce.
        scarface74 7y ago
        I wasn’t questioning LinkedIn as much as gaming and Bing. But diversification based on revenue doesn’t decrease risk. If in the unlikely event that Windows and Office profits crater, revenue without profit won’t help.
endorphone 7y ago
By corner I didn't mean niche. I meant that they're a vendor at the market, they aren't the vendor, or a central vendor. You might go over and peruse their wares, or maybe you won't. "They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools." IBM did exactly the same thing. And FWIW, the overwhelming bulk of Microsoft's revenue comes from enterprise sales of Office and Windows. They make money on exactly the same things they made money on 20 years ago, but the pie is so much bigger they make a lot more of it.
- wvenable 7y ago
  > I meant that they're a vendor at the market, they aren't the vendor, or a central vendor. Depends. In corporate environments, which is still a massive market, they are the central vendor. At it seems they're actually making even more headway there. Microsoft hasn't really lost influence, it's just the market is so much bigger now that influence isn't total. And they're making in-roads in those other markets. Microsoft missed out on mobile but that's a new market rather than a loss of their existing market. And now that's a growth opportunity for them. > IBM did exactly the same thing. I think you're point is to say that Microsoft is the new IBM but I don't think that follows. IBM has always been IBM even when they owned much more of the market. Even Microsoft hated working with them. > And FWIW, the overwhelming bulk of Microsoft's revenue comes from enterprise sales of Office and Windows. Less than 50% now (see my other comment).
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Presumably 1st gen IBM wasn't such a punchline. Most of their dysfunction seems to be driven by monetizing legacy products, but there was a time when they didn't have any legacy products.
- aliswe 7y ago
  Are you saying that Microsoft is not a central vendor for cloud? If so, how? And about the overwhelming bulk of their revenue veing from the same sources as 20 years ago, it seems their operating revenue is 60% cloud services, admittedly a lot of that is office 365 but let's not forget azure revenue which although lumped together in statements must be huge.
dgemm 7y ago
> Microsoft is the most diversified tech company of the top tech companies. They have cloud, software, hardware, game consoles, search engine, development tools. I think Amazon is probably far more diversified than Microsoft. Unless they are so diversified that they aren't even considered a "tech" company anymore.

elorant 7y ago

Everyone has its corner. Apple is irrelevant in web. Google in enterprise. Oracle in mobile. We can't expect one company to dominate all markets. That's not possible, not to say unhealthy for innovation.

la_barba 7y ago

Well, MS makes the platform/tools so that others can do cool stuff with it. So even if you don't touch a MS product, because of the massive scale of the platform, you're probably right in the middle of stuff created using MS tech. Maybe your company accountant does taxes on windows or your ATM runs some gimped version of Windows (shudder! :)), or maybe the movie you saw was post processed on some windows machine, or maybe the factory that built stuff you use daily uses windows software for their SCADA system, or in our case all of our equipment (biotech) is controlled through windows software, etc. I think that "technology" especially languages and toolkits and such are super overrated. They're just a means to an end. The functionality contained in the executable in what matters to the actual end-user, not the technology or the platform. And all this is ofcourse super obvious and many companies get this. And yet I don't think any company comes close to providing the level of backwards compatibility and platform stability of Windows. Just a couple of months ago, one of our older WinXP PCs shit the bed, and we replaced it with a W10 box. I was kinda half-expecting the software compatibility for 20 year old software to be a complete shitshow, but we ran the setup and everything just worked out of the box. Thats just once anecdote of course, and there is nothing technical that prevents other platforms from doing the same, except that people don't want to work on boring tasks like keeping stuff working and ticking along, because it doesn't challenge them. But I think that is the secret sauce that makes them the big bucks.

moksly 7y ago

I don’t know, I work in the public sector where we have been in bed with Microsoft for decades and I don’t think their monopoly on non-tech enterprise has ever been stronger. There is really no alternative to Office365 that wouldn’t cost us billions in non-tech areas because our 5000 users don’t know how not to use it and we don’t know how to manage them without Active Directory and ADFS. I think your description of them on the development front is accurate. But I think that’s on purpose. With Azure they don’t really care if we use .Net anymore because that’s not what they need us to do to sell us cloud. Node very quickly became a first class citizen in Azure for instance, integrating well with stuff like application insights and other Azure DevOps features. Sure we could take our Node apps to AWS, but that doesn’t really make sense when we’re already buying into the Microsoft cloud with Office365. I’m sure tech-heavy companies can afford to ignore Microsoft, but the public sector of Europe is a billion dollar industry for tech companies and Microsoft owns it.

tracker1 7y ago
What I do appreciate is how much effort MS has put into improving various application platforms and making sure they run well everywhere (mostly). I use Windows, Mac and Linux regularly and appreciate everything that runs everywhere mostly the same. As to Azure cloud, they are okay and probably worth it in some circles. I think AD and O365 in Azure are absolutely worth it. I'm, however, unsure if Azure as a whole is as worth it. It looks like k8s is winning the core infrastructure war and allows you to do things wherever you want. And while I think Azure Storage services are absolutely great to work with compared to competing cloud offerings, they are all a bit of a lock in. Best to stay as close to open and portable as possible, or go all in on a single cloud. Everyone's use case is different.
- basch 7y ago
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kubernetes-service/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kubernetes-servic... Microsoft is a clear number two in marketshare, you really cant discount how much of enterprise america would rather do business with Microsoft than other vendors. https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/CIS_Q119.jpg https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/CIS_Q119.j...

ci5er 7y ago

> IBM created the PC, and was influential in a lot of critical areas. Now they are just...there. They make revenue pushing up towards Microsoft levels, but you can safely completely ignore them. You can? I assume you don't work in Global2000 Enterprise IT?