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I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out (https://images.app.goo.gl/

I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out (https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7 https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7) but I agree with Linus. The landscape has changed and the money today is in SaaS and Cloud. MS missed the mobile revolution but they appear intent on ensuring their slice of the "cloud" pie through Azure. Making sure they support the linux ecosystem is a no brainer (and I think they're far too late to embrace and extend). Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too.

cure 7y ago
> I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out And XBill, don't forget about XBill! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill
lbotos 7y ago
Yes, but now Microsoft owns: - VSCode - GitHub As well. They are fighting for the hearts and minds of the next generation of developers. They might win.
basch 7y ago
>I think they're far too late to embrace and extend Isnt that exactly what their new android phone will become? Android that also runs Windows apps? >Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too. In this case, Cloud is saas and iaas/paas. On the saas side, they have a huge industry lead with exchange/sharepoint, and transitioned with a similar playbook to Adobe. Theres too many customers that wont leave Outlook/Excel, and having hosted Outlook/Excel storage native to the programs themselves, is enough for many companies to make an overall vendor choice. Because of Ballmers licensing genius, once you buy Outlook/Excel, bundle pricing makes piecemealing with competitors products prohibitivly more expensive. Winning iaas is mostly just about how much money they dump into capital. Winning paas, if one can win and become the defacto api standard, isnt something Microsoft needs to survive. They could "lose" to aws, adopt all its conventions, and be a drop in replacement. I dont think that would happen, but winning the paas battle, as the only survivor isnt essential to Microsofts survival. Microsoft also has one other push that few others have brought a challenge against, and that is corporate identity. With AD transitioning to AzureAD, and Office 365 being that gateway drug, companies will be invested into Microsoft's Identity services for decades to come. Transitioning to a higher priced product would net nearly zero gain. Okta might be nice if you dont already have anything, but it wont outgrow msft. At least second place and thrown into a bundle is the msft motto. Time will tell if that model translates to Azure paas pricing.

cure 7y ago

> I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out And XBill, don't forget about XBill! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill

lbotos 7y ago

Yes, but now Microsoft owns: - VSCode - GitHub As well. They are fighting for the hearts and minds of the next generation of developers. They might win.

basch 7y ago

>I think they're far too late to embrace and extend Isnt that exactly what their new android phone will become? Android that also runs Windows apps? >Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too. In this case, Cloud is saas and iaas/paas. On the saas side, they have a huge industry lead with exchange/sharepoint, and transitioned with a similar playbook to Adobe. Theres too many customers that wont leave Outlook/Excel, and having hosted Outlook/Excel storage native to the programs themselves, is enough for many companies to make an overall vendor choice. Because of Ballmers licensing genius, once you buy Outlook/Excel, bundle pricing makes piecemealing with competitors products prohibitivly more expensive. Winning iaas is mostly just about how much money they dump into capital. Winning paas, if one can win and become the defacto api standard, isnt something Microsoft needs to survive. They could "lose" to aws, adopt all its conventions, and be a drop in replacement. I dont think that would happen, but winning the paas battle, as the only survivor isnt essential to Microsofts survival. Microsoft also has one other push that few others have brought a challenge against, and that is corporate identity. With AD transitioning to AzureAD, and Office 365 being that gateway drug, companies will be invested into Microsoft's Identity services for decades to come. Transitioning to a higher priced product would net nearly zero gain. Okta might be nice if you dont already have anything, but it wont outgrow msft. At least second place and thrown into a bundle is the msft motto. Time will tell if that model translates to Azure paas pricing.