Is it too late for Microsoft?

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/microsoft-new-company/

by gabriel34 • 12 years ago

22 24 12 years ago

mantrax4• 12 years ago

So this is not exactly news, is it.

It's just the ramblings of a blogger, based on a bunch of hypotheticals and old info (i.e. again "not news").

Which part of this "editorial" is actionable here? Should Microsoft have thought "hey, if it's too late we better just give up"?

Does it mean you should abandon all Microsoft products because it's "too late"? Office is still a good product, and becoming better, and available on more platforms. There are challengers, but Office is keeping up.

What exactly does "it's too late" mean anyway? Too late for what? Is Microsoft about to go bankrupt? No. Is it too late for it to be 1995 again? Who cares?

Kuytu• 12 years ago

It is hard to imagine anything is too late for a company that made over 20 billion profit last year. Even if Windows has done worse aren't Office sales increasing on OS X for example. Microsoft is a company that sells Office first and foremost.

acchow• 12 years ago

The high tech industry moves fast, and the giants fall fast.

RIM had $3.4bn net income on $20bn revenue in 2011. Now they are hemorrhaging.

jmartinpetersen• 12 years ago

Microsoft has a large client base that does not move fast. Even if all the consumers goes the way of the interwebs, Microsoft is making huge amounts of money from enterprises that have no easy migration paths. I certainly can't imagine a measurable number of their enterprise customers ditching them in three years.

shmerl3• 12 years ago

No, that's actually quite easy to imagine. MS reputation is severely ruined by years of crooked behavior (which still continues into the present really). They are now seen as a dangerous thug which can not be trusted. To change that perception they'll have to work really hard. So these new developments are steps in the right direction but they are way not sufficient yet.

danieltillett2• 12 years ago

I think that Microsoft realise this and they will be going out of their way over the next few years to be on really good behavior.

ssully• 12 years ago

I get that Microsoft has made some missteps lately, but I find it insane that there seems to be this mindset of Microsoft being on some big downward spiral to oblivion.

They are still making boat loads of cash, they are still making things people want and do use, and they are making a lot of exciting changes. No, it is not too late for Microsoft.

TwoBit• 12 years ago

That mindset of them being on a downward spiral is based on the idea that they don't lead any more, they only follow. And in the long run followers are irrelevant.

craigvn• 12 years ago

Azure leads. AWS is good but Azure is better.

gkoberger• 12 years ago

There's no way Microsoft could have created Office for the iPad since Satya Nadella took over as CEO; same goes for a lot mentioned here. I bet he'll be great for the company, however we can't give him credit for everything.

simplyinfinity• 12 years ago

You are 100% right, those changes described in the article take months if not years of planing and hard work. I hate to give Ballmer a credit, but it's all his doing. We are yet to see Satya in action .

ZeroGravitas• 12 years ago

Several news stories claimed it was ready and that its release was being blocked for political/strategic reasons, so he could well be responsible or, at least symbolic of, the change in politics/strategy.

rhizome• 12 years ago

Classic transition/change-management launch-the-new-guy technique.

hboon• 12 years ago

It's impossible that it was created after Satya Nadella took over. But at least he has the good sense not to can the project.

vivekbernard• 12 years ago

Surely Satya can't be given full credit, but he was not exactly an outsider before he was elected the CEO.Some if not most of the new stuff could very well be because of his direct/in-direct push, especially around open sourcing numerous dev stuff.

einhverfr• 12 years ago

I think that the larger problem is not "too late" so much as the trap of success. Let's assume that corporate growth can be modelled on a sigmoid curve, with small companies growing exponentially and large companies growing asymtotically in mature markets. There are a couple of really big problems that large companies necessarily face:

1. Real, disruptive innovation is never worth it. Not only do you have the issue that exponential growth in small units will not contribute to exponential growth to the business as a whole but if you disrupt your support structure, you lose on the whole. So, large companies have to be conservative and only acquire disruptive players when they reach a certain size. However this furthers the problem because at that point those players will not continue exponential growth for very long.

2. Large companies are far more reliant on streams of income and partner supports that are subject to disruption than small companies. This again makes it harder to pivot.

3. Large companies have much more inertia than small ones, making pivoting even harder.

I don't know if it is "too late" for Microsoft because I don't know what "too late" means. Too late for what? Too late to do what? The company is large and changing remarkably rapidly these days (though I saw the beginnings of change starting when I worked there a decade ago).

But the future will certainly be painful for Microsoft. Everyone knows this, even everyone who I know that still works at Microsoft. Is it too late for them to survive? Certainly not. But success on the scale of Microsoft in our market is too often a dead end, and getting out of that dead end is never pleasant.

diminish• 12 years ago

I guess, Microsoft's final stage will be either like an exploding supernova (like Sun, the company) where it will emit a lot of open source software in the wild and die, or like a red giant (like IBM) where it will focus on business customers and get more of them.

clef• 12 years ago

Do you think Linux is the last ever OS (or kernel) that will ever be? Sure windows and you and I and everyone will die one day..including. Linux...and Apple..and everything.

malandrew• 12 years ago

Personally, I'm looking forward to an OS based on rust myself. It seems like the language with the right mix of features that will prompt systems developers to re-invent lots of the base pieces of operating systems.

andrewjl• 12 years ago

Microsoft is a company suffering from the innovator's dilemma. Releasing Office on iPad was a good first step. I however believe that they will ultimately marginalize themselves in the consumer markets (if they haven't already, for example look at the Windows Phone share, Surface RT issues, etc). They will likely remain a formidable force in the enterprise market for years to come.

Is it too late for Microsoft?

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