3 ms·

Microsoft may not last as long as we (I) have always assumed — on the PC front at least it seems to be bad news and more bad news. Mobile sales already dwarf de

Microsoft may not last as long as we (I) have always assumed — on the PC front at least it seems to be bad news and more bad news. Mobile sales already dwarf desktop, and installed base will soon follow. Even if MS is successful in mobile, there's far less fat to play with — it can't sustain licensing costs (netbooks already dinged it) either for OS or applications, and its network effect lockin is pretty much broken. Interesting times.

evandena 14y ago
Their enterprise division is huge, and Office is still a cash cow. They may have to trim some fat at some point, but they aren't even close to hurting.
- slurry 14y ago
  And beyond Office, if you're a non-technical business with employees in the low dozens, pretty much no one is even interested in selling you a full stack of software + support besides Microsoft and its approved partners. Pretty much any office with like 25 people that's not in design or tech is top to bottom Microsoft, not just Windows and office but inventory, HR software, whatever else all running on MS and sold by either a Microsoft subsidiary or might-as-well-be-a-subsidiary channel partners. That's the vast majority of offices. And the lower number that are large/savvy enough to be pickier on backend systems still buy Windows and Office licenses anyway. On the flipside, it's hard not to see mobile platforms eventually cannibalizing Windows from below, the way PC platforms (like Windows and GNU/Linux) eventually cannibalized minicomputer platforms, which in turn had cannibalized mainframe platforms.
jacquesm 14y ago
The Titanic took two hours and forty minutes to sink. Long enough for someone to make a motion picture about it. Microsoft is a lot larger than is readily apparent. That's because in the enterprise they're about as entrenched as can be. Take away excel and the impact would be about as bad as taking away google would be (or maybe even worse). MS will be around in some form or another for a long time. The question is more whether or not they'll be able to leverage the remains of the old into something new. My guess is not as long as Ballmer is still around.
- AlexDanger 14y ago
  >Take away excel and the impact would be about as bad as taking away google would be (or maybe even worse). I work for one of the largest companies in the world and this is absolutely true. If Google went offline it would be a minor inconvenience. Taking away Excel would grind the company to a halt. I tried converting a few of our hefty xls files to Google Spreadsheets but its not yet robust enough for the task. And thats just the worksheets themselves - VBA and macros are another level entirely. That said, I cant help but see trouble on the horizon for Microsoft's enterprise offerings. We recently transitioned to a MS hosted Sharepoint 2010 and its absolutely woeful. Office 365 is ok but not a killer app. MS can afford to make some fuckups in this area but if they lose traction in the enterprise then I think its the beginning of the end. I guess the xbox division can keep them alive for a while.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    Insofar as Excel is needed my question is how badly are new copies of Excel needed? Excel isn't rented out — you can keep using it as long as you need to and it won't do MS a lick of good.
    - AlexDanger 14y ago
      A very good point. And currently Office 365 isnt a value proposition for upgrade. It wont even load most of our department's important spreadsheets. But dont the big corps work on volume licensing that is renewed regularly? In any case there clearly isnt a rush of new customers.
      - Tloewald 14y ago
        And MS could see itself in the position of Apple circa 1995, when desktop publishing departments had a few aging macs running pagemaker or quark.
        AlexDanger 14y ago
        Heh, I can see that. We already have some legacy IE6 internal webapps running on Citrix.

evandena 14y ago

Their enterprise division is huge, and Office is still a cash cow. They may have to trim some fat at some point, but they aren't even close to hurting.

slurry 14y ago
And beyond Office, if you're a non-technical business with employees in the low dozens, pretty much no one is even interested in selling you a full stack of software + support besides Microsoft and its approved partners. Pretty much any office with like 25 people that's not in design or tech is top to bottom Microsoft, not just Windows and office but inventory, HR software, whatever else all running on MS and sold by either a Microsoft subsidiary or might-as-well-be-a-subsidiary channel partners. That's the vast majority of offices. And the lower number that are large/savvy enough to be pickier on backend systems still buy Windows and Office licenses anyway. On the flipside, it's hard not to see mobile platforms eventually cannibalizing Windows from below, the way PC platforms (like Windows and GNU/Linux) eventually cannibalized minicomputer platforms, which in turn had cannibalized mainframe platforms.

jacquesm 14y ago

The Titanic took two hours and forty minutes to sink. Long enough for someone to make a motion picture about it. Microsoft is a lot larger than is readily apparent. That's because in the enterprise they're about as entrenched as can be. Take away excel and the impact would be about as bad as taking away google would be (or maybe even worse). MS will be around in some form or another for a long time. The question is more whether or not they'll be able to leverage the remains of the old into something new. My guess is not as long as Ballmer is still around.

AlexDanger 14y ago
>Take away excel and the impact would be about as bad as taking away google would be (or maybe even worse). I work for one of the largest companies in the world and this is absolutely true. If Google went offline it would be a minor inconvenience. Taking away Excel would grind the company to a halt. I tried converting a few of our hefty xls files to Google Spreadsheets but its not yet robust enough for the task. And thats just the worksheets themselves - VBA and macros are another level entirely. That said, I cant help but see trouble on the horizon for Microsoft's enterprise offerings. We recently transitioned to a MS hosted Sharepoint 2010 and its absolutely woeful. Office 365 is ok but not a killer app. MS can afford to make some fuckups in this area but if they lose traction in the enterprise then I think its the beginning of the end. I guess the xbox division can keep them alive for a while.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  Insofar as Excel is needed my question is how badly are new copies of Excel needed? Excel isn't rented out — you can keep using it as long as you need to and it won't do MS a lick of good.
  - AlexDanger 14y ago
    A very good point. And currently Office 365 isnt a value proposition for upgrade. It wont even load most of our department's important spreadsheets. But dont the big corps work on volume licensing that is renewed regularly? In any case there clearly isnt a rush of new customers.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      And MS could see itself in the position of Apple circa 1995, when desktop publishing departments had a few aging macs running pagemaker or quark.
      - AlexDanger 14y ago
        Heh, I can see that. We already have some legacy IE6 internal webapps running on Citrix.