6 ms·

Either that or bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple via NeXT. I haven't been following MSFT closely for a while. What are some of the major decisions that Nadella

by vecter 5y ago

Either that or bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple via NeXT. I haven't been following MSFT closely for a while. What are some of the major decisions that Nadella has made to help create this great success over the past 6-7 years?

eganist 5y ago
complete strategy shift to service subscriptions. It's honestly that simple.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Along with playing nicer with open source. The thing I probably find most impressive is that they have been able to do so well as a business while basically losing mobile--which I'm not sure I would have thought was possible.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
HatchedLake721 5y ago
Cloud/Azure
- eganist 5y ago
  yup, and it pervades everything Microsoft does now. Windows, Office, Azure, etc. they've all been packaged as services funded either by consumers or ads.
jonny_eh 5y ago
> Either that or bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple via NeXT. That one move by a board directly caused the biggest positive shift in a corporation's fortunes I can think of.
reilly3000 5y ago
Big focus on internal culture shift, allowing Linux adoption and OSS to flow freely, heavy focus on cloud, building a decent hardware business, and very strategic enterprise partnerships ie Salesforce. Let’s not discount tech stock valuation inflation is nearly unprecedented at this point, some credit is due there. Still, Balmer was driving the company off a cliff with his brutish orthodoxy. Nadella transformed the company based on new assumptions about positioning in the modern digital economy, not the desktop days.
devnull3 5y ago
It was not just strategy but also culture. MSFT internal working dynamics used to be depicted as in the image [1]. This was also corroborated at that time by some of my friends working there. Now the same friends admit that there is a lot improvement in this regard since Satya came on-board. [1] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/500e2d14e4b042e8cb25252f/1520151111136-OF1IZKRE1CZJJ6ATI941/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png?format=1500w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/500e2d14e4b042...
paxys 5y ago
He moved the company away from a Windows-centric strategy to focus on platform-agnostic cloud and subscriptions. Some examples: He ditched Windows Phone in favor of Android. Microsoft had built amazing Office apps for iOS but Ballmer refused to allow their release. Nadella green lit them immediately. He deemphasized Windows releases. Windows 10 was supposed to be the "last" version (no idea what happened after that tbh). Everything Microsoft has released in the last few years has been cross-platform and cross-browser. This seems obvious now but would have been unthinkable a decade ago. He doubled/tripled down on Azure. Internally, he ended inter-division silos and forced teams to cooperate. Lots of old school execs were booted because they refused to give up control of their "kingdom". Engineering teams were also encouraged to use Linux and other non-MSFT tools and to open source their products. Culturally it was big to have an engineer at the helm again rather than a pure business type.
- devnull3 5y ago
  To add: 1. Github acquisition: With already dev-tooling play they have, there is a clear strategy here. I think this will serve them well. 2. LinkedIn acquisition: Not sure how it is faring. 3. Friendly relations with open source projects: It improved developer mindshare
  - paxys 5y ago
    Yup. You can compare them with Ballmer's big acquisitions – Nokia, Yammer, Skype, aQuantive. Almost all of them were completely written off.
  - jslove 5y ago
    - Using MS office pricing to push corporate to MS Cloud. - VS Code as gateway drug - Linux as first class integration -- I would like to see - Office on Ubuntu - Open version of Active Directory
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      You already have Office on Ubuntu via Office 365 and WSL.
sailingparrot 5y ago
> What are some of the major decisions that Nadella I think it's not so much major decisions that Nadella did right (although he did, with cloud, open source etc.), but small decisions, day in day out for years, to transform the absolute behemoth that Microsoft was into what it is today. Both technologically and culturally. Very few companies of that size have been able to successfully steer their ship in a new direction while not suffering immensly in the process.

by vecter 5y ago

eganist 5y ago

complete strategy shift to service subscriptions. It's honestly that simple.

ghaff 5y ago
Along with playing nicer with open source. The thing I probably find most impressive is that they have been able to do so well as a business while basically losing mobile--which I'm not sure I would have thought was possible.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

HatchedLake721 5y ago

Cloud/Azure

eganist 5y ago
yup, and it pervades everything Microsoft does now. Windows, Office, Azure, etc. they've all been packaged as services funded either by consumers or ads.

jonny_eh 5y ago

> Either that or bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple via NeXT. That one move by a board directly caused the biggest positive shift in a corporation's fortunes I can think of.

reilly3000 5y ago

Big focus on internal culture shift, allowing Linux adoption and OSS to flow freely, heavy focus on cloud, building a decent hardware business, and very strategic enterprise partnerships ie Salesforce. Let’s not discount tech stock valuation inflation is nearly unprecedented at this point, some credit is due there. Still, Balmer was driving the company off a cliff with his brutish orthodoxy. Nadella transformed the company based on new assumptions about positioning in the modern digital economy, not the desktop days.

devnull3 5y ago

It was not just strategy but also culture. MSFT internal working dynamics used to be depicted as in the image [1]. This was also corroborated at that time by some of my friends working there. Now the same friends admit that there is a lot improvement in this regard since Satya came on-board. [1] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/500e2d14e4b042e8cb25252f/1520151111136-OF1IZKRE1CZJJ6ATI941/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png?format=1500w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/500e2d14e4b042...

paxys 5y ago

He moved the company away from a Windows-centric strategy to focus on platform-agnostic cloud and subscriptions. Some examples: He ditched Windows Phone in favor of Android. Microsoft had built amazing Office apps for iOS but Ballmer refused to allow their release. Nadella green lit them immediately. He deemphasized Windows releases. Windows 10 was supposed to be the "last" version (no idea what happened after that tbh). Everything Microsoft has released in the last few years has been cross-platform and cross-browser. This seems obvious now but would have been unthinkable a decade ago. He doubled/tripled down on Azure. Internally, he ended inter-division silos and forced teams to cooperate. Lots of old school execs were booted because they refused to give up control of their "kingdom". Engineering teams were also encouraged to use Linux and other non-MSFT tools and to open source their products. Culturally it was big to have an engineer at the helm again rather than a pure business type.

devnull3 5y ago
To add: 1. Github acquisition: With already dev-tooling play they have, there is a clear strategy here. I think this will serve them well. 2. LinkedIn acquisition: Not sure how it is faring. 3. Friendly relations with open source projects: It improved developer mindshare
- paxys 5y ago
  Yup. You can compare them with Ballmer's big acquisitions – Nokia, Yammer, Skype, aQuantive. Almost all of them were completely written off.
- jslove 5y ago
  - Using MS office pricing to push corporate to MS Cloud. - VS Code as gateway drug - Linux as first class integration -- I would like to see - Office on Ubuntu - Open version of Active Directory
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    You already have Office on Ubuntu via Office 365 and WSL.

sailingparrot 5y ago

> What are some of the major decisions that Nadella I think it's not so much major decisions that Nadella did right (although he did, with cloud, open source etc.), but small decisions, day in day out for years, to transform the absolute behemoth that Microsoft was into what it is today. Both technologically and culturally. Very few companies of that size have been able to successfully steer their ship in a new direction while not suffering immensly in the process.