>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

>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.