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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 ware

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.
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  Huh, I just found an article [1] which puts Microsoft Azure solidly at #2, behind AWS. It's interesting, I did not realize this was the case. But I do wonder how they calculated that if Azure numbers aren't public. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/azure-revenue-continues-to-slow-down-for-microsoft/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/azure-revenue-continues-to...
  - dmix 7y ago
    > The growth rates for FY19 were, Q1: 76%, Q2: 76%, Q3: 73% and all the way down to 64% this quarter. Must be nice having 64% growth be a worrying number. Microsoft went all in marketing Azure, this isn't too surprising to me. They don't mess around when they launch products/services. Their marketing to corporate CTO/CIOs is a well tuned machine. They even tried to hit up startup devs which didn't go over as well.
  - dijit 7y ago
    it's because they consider o365 part of cloud, and google didn't until this year.

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.

dwaltrip 7y ago
Huh, I just found an article [1] which puts Microsoft Azure solidly at #2, behind AWS. It's interesting, I did not realize this was the case. But I do wonder how they calculated that if Azure numbers aren't public. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/azure-revenue-continues-to-slow-down-for-microsoft/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/azure-revenue-continues-to...
- dmix 7y ago
  > The growth rates for FY19 were, Q1: 76%, Q2: 76%, Q3: 73% and all the way down to 64% this quarter. Must be nice having 64% growth be a worrying number. Microsoft went all in marketing Azure, this isn't too surprising to me. They don't mess around when they launch products/services. Their marketing to corporate CTO/CIOs is a well tuned machine. They even tried to hit up startup devs which didn't go over as well.
- dijit 7y ago
  it's because they consider o365 part of cloud, and google didn't until this year.