5 ms·

> They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into apple ideology already had apple. Agreed. Their enterprise offering is strong. And

> They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into apple ideology already had apple. Agreed. Their enterprise offering is strong. And one day they will realize it is IBM that is their destiny, and drop out of consumer market.

arethuza 13y ago
"IBM that is their destiny" Which means becoming a company built around professional services which will mean a lot of unhappy Microsoft partners.
- Shorel 13y ago
  I have always thought that being a Microsoft partner is already a corporate suicide note. They are ruthless when trying to earn more money from existing business lines. Here we were customers of some company who sold Exchange hosting, now we login into outlook.com. And all this without having into account the discontinued products because of internal politics. Think XNA Game Studio.
  - serge2k 13y ago
    Their setup works well with companies that are willing and able to pay tons for a setup that works well top to bottom. Last job used MS for everything, but they got a setup which worked well and anyone they hired could use. Plus it's well supported (although they were stuck on XP still, that's going to be lots of money).
astrodust 13y ago
Microsoft has no hope of becoming an IBM. IBM manufactures lots of hardware, produces new technology it licenses, and has an enormous software consulting division. Microsoft does none of these things. If anything, Microsoft will become like Computer Associates (CA Technologies), a company that milks products enterprise is hooked on and can't quit, squeezing money out of these things for decades to come.
- kyllo 13y ago
  Consulting, not so much, but they have an integrated, whole-enterprise stack that includes: Office (especially Word / Excel / Outlook trifecta which practically everyone uses at work for documents, scheduling, e-mail) Lync (text, voice, video chat that is integrated w/ Outlook contacts) Sharepoint for intranet portals, content management, collaborative documents with version control Dynamics ERP & CRM for accounting and sales SQL Server, which has a sophisticated BI stack for reporting & analytics Visual Studio for developing custom applications that can interface with the APIs of all above products Now they have or are working on cloud versions of basically all of these products so you don't even need any hardware if you want to go that route. Personally I am not a huge fan of Microsoft for a lot of reasons, but no other company, including IBM, comes even close to offering such a comprehensive enterprise stack. They're the only company that has a product for everything (except hardware).
  - riskable 13y ago
    The biggest (of many) problems with these offerings is that they only work in and of themselves and only on Windows. I cannot run any of them on my Linux desktop, an Android device, an iPad, etc. Microsoft will not port any of these things to alternate platforms because Windows is their religion. So the less people use Windows the less appeal there will be for these products. They are all anchored to the same sinking ship. Also, SharePoint sucks. I had to say it. It's a worst-in-class product in a sea of vastly superior web application and document sharing platforms. I can't believe you included it in your list. I severely dislike many of those other products (Outlook, Exchange, and SQL Server, specifically) but even I'll admit that those products actually do what they're supposed to. SharePoint is nothing but a black hole where documents, time, and energy go in but nothing useful ever comes back out.
    - kalininalex 13y ago
      And why specifically do you dislike, say, SQL Server? (except for price; obviously Microsoft wants to make money off of it).
Zarathust 13y ago
I see Microsoft in a position similar to RIM 5 - 8 years back. They have tons of revenue from big business that are kinda locked in to their stack. There is no need for large innovation in those very mature markets and they innovate by pushing more of the same. I may not be an office power use, but I see very little significant changes in Office since 2003, only small features tweaked.
- kryten 13y ago
  It's even worse than that. If you are a power user and turn off the toolbars etc, excel 97 isn't that much different to excel 2013.
  - mark_integerdsv 13y ago
    If you can say this then you are not a power user. If only by one MASSIVE measure and that is the row limit increase between these two versions, but there are plenty others.
- kvb 13y ago
  Office has changed dramatically since then. The ribbon, while a superficial change, apparently has a huge impact on discoverability of Office features and usage. There's now an online version of the applications, and integration with Skydrive/SharePoint. There are tons of smaller additions that are very useful, too (e.g. Flash Fill in Excel, multi-monitor support in PowerPoint, etc.).
- mark_integerdsv 13y ago
  The BI stack is growing steadily. Lots happening in Excel/PowerPivot/Data Explorer land.

arethuza 13y ago

"IBM that is their destiny" Which means becoming a company built around professional services which will mean a lot of unhappy Microsoft partners.

Shorel 13y ago
I have always thought that being a Microsoft partner is already a corporate suicide note. They are ruthless when trying to earn more money from existing business lines. Here we were customers of some company who sold Exchange hosting, now we login into outlook.com. And all this without having into account the discontinued products because of internal politics. Think XNA Game Studio.
- serge2k 13y ago
  Their setup works well with companies that are willing and able to pay tons for a setup that works well top to bottom. Last job used MS for everything, but they got a setup which worked well and anyone they hired could use. Plus it's well supported (although they were stuck on XP still, that's going to be lots of money).

astrodust 13y ago

Microsoft has no hope of becoming an IBM. IBM manufactures lots of hardware, produces new technology it licenses, and has an enormous software consulting division. Microsoft does none of these things. If anything, Microsoft will become like Computer Associates (CA Technologies), a company that milks products enterprise is hooked on and can't quit, squeezing money out of these things for decades to come.

kyllo 13y ago
Consulting, not so much, but they have an integrated, whole-enterprise stack that includes: Office (especially Word / Excel / Outlook trifecta which practically everyone uses at work for documents, scheduling, e-mail) Lync (text, voice, video chat that is integrated w/ Outlook contacts) Sharepoint for intranet portals, content management, collaborative documents with version control Dynamics ERP & CRM for accounting and sales SQL Server, which has a sophisticated BI stack for reporting & analytics Visual Studio for developing custom applications that can interface with the APIs of all above products Now they have or are working on cloud versions of basically all of these products so you don't even need any hardware if you want to go that route. Personally I am not a huge fan of Microsoft for a lot of reasons, but no other company, including IBM, comes even close to offering such a comprehensive enterprise stack. They're the only company that has a product for everything (except hardware).
- riskable 13y ago
  The biggest (of many) problems with these offerings is that they only work in and of themselves and only on Windows. I cannot run any of them on my Linux desktop, an Android device, an iPad, etc. Microsoft will not port any of these things to alternate platforms because Windows is their religion. So the less people use Windows the less appeal there will be for these products. They are all anchored to the same sinking ship. Also, SharePoint sucks. I had to say it. It's a worst-in-class product in a sea of vastly superior web application and document sharing platforms. I can't believe you included it in your list. I severely dislike many of those other products (Outlook, Exchange, and SQL Server, specifically) but even I'll admit that those products actually do what they're supposed to. SharePoint is nothing but a black hole where documents, time, and energy go in but nothing useful ever comes back out.
  - kalininalex 13y ago
    And why specifically do you dislike, say, SQL Server? (except for price; obviously Microsoft wants to make money off of it).

Zarathust 13y ago

I see Microsoft in a position similar to RIM 5 - 8 years back. They have tons of revenue from big business that are kinda locked in to their stack. There is no need for large innovation in those very mature markets and they innovate by pushing more of the same. I may not be an office power use, but I see very little significant changes in Office since 2003, only small features tweaked.

kryten 13y ago
It's even worse than that. If you are a power user and turn off the toolbars etc, excel 97 isn't that much different to excel 2013.
- mark_integerdsv 13y ago
  If you can say this then you are not a power user. If only by one MASSIVE measure and that is the row limit increase between these two versions, but there are plenty others.
kvb 13y ago
Office has changed dramatically since then. The ribbon, while a superficial change, apparently has a huge impact on discoverability of Office features and usage. There's now an online version of the applications, and integration with Skydrive/SharePoint. There are tons of smaller additions that are very useful, too (e.g. Flash Fill in Excel, multi-monitor support in PowerPoint, etc.).
mark_integerdsv 13y ago
The BI stack is growing steadily. Lots happening in Excel/PowerPivot/Data Explorer land.