Microsoft's technology strategy needs a refresh
As news broke this week that Microsoft and Nokia would be partnering to (brace yourself!) port Office to Nokia phones, followed by the equally momentous (or not) news that (sit down for this one!) Microsoft will replace Entourage with Outlook for Mac OS X, I couldn't help but agree with Larry Dignan's assessment of the Nokia deal:
Simply put, Nokia and Microsoft are the equivalent of two St. Bernards that are forced to run in 90 degree heat and high humidity. They're big. They're winded. And they could knock you over--if they could only catch you.
I happen to compete with Microsoft in one area that it is growing from strength to strength (SharePoint), but for everyone else, Microsoft is becoming a footnote in the history of computing.
Sure, it's still big. Yes, it still competes vigorously. But with the odd exception (Bing, perhaps), Microsoft just doesn't seem to have the energy to compete anymore. One indication of this is that most of the dirt that Roy Schestowitz digs up on Microsoft is from old court records. It's as if Microsoft struggles even to be nasty anymore.
So Microsoft dresses up tired press releases like the Outlook on Mac announcement "like they've been working in the lab for some time now and have had some technological breakthrough that allows them to bring Outlook to Max OS X," as ZDNet's Sam Diaz puts it. The breakthrough would be putting Outlook in the cloud, Google Apps-style. It would be creating products that wow in the same way that Apple's do.
But Microsoft doesn't wow in its traditional businesses. Surface, yes. Project Natal, yes. But there doesn't seem to be much creative gas left in the enterprise computing tank.
And perhaps that's the point. How much innovation can there be, really, in Office? Or the Windows operating system? These are old paradigms that don't need window dressing: they need the window shattered and shifted to completely new methodologies of computing, similar to what Google (Web) and Apple (entertainment) are doing.
The desktop is a tired metaphor. This is why Google's Chrome OS, while not necessarily manna from heaven, is a welcome change, and just the sort of thing that Microsoft should be investing in, but is structurally, financially incapable of promoting in the same way and to the same degree that Google does. Because Microsoft dies if it innovates its way out of its Office and Windows businesses too quickly.
Google may be resorting to some of Microsoft's most frustrating practices, using its strong products to prop up weak siblings, but at least those siblings promise a different mode of computing.
Apple offers a premium "desktop" experience that makes old feel new. Google replaces the "desktop" with the Web. Open source commoditizes and then innovates enterprise IT, as Accenture's Alex Wied recently wrote. What does this leave Microsoft?
It leaves Microsoft desperately needing to refresh its approach to the market. Immediately. It can live off its billions for a long, long time, but it risks becoming like CA: ever-present but not very relevant.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I'm sure Microsoft's competitors are happy to see Microsoft continue to waste their time & resources on these subversive lock-in tactics, since the writing is clearly on the wall that open standards & powerful web apps are the way forward for the computer industry. Wasted diversions at Microsoft create opportunities for other companies to get their products established within the new cloud paradigm.
Oh that is a shame. It is a dream.
OK, lets all stick with Windows and viruses. The game is over guys.
The cloud is really cloud 9. A dream.
Pity about that. I was getting real excited about Chrome and the Cloud.
It's funny though, all of the products you listed rely on .NET (Direct3D, Silverlight, Office, Outlook), I've said it to people before Microsofts #1 product is .NET, it's what they've relied on for ages. It fuels most of their products, it's why Windows switched from DOS to the NT kernel, it's why a lot of game developers favor Windows and the XBox 360, etc...
I think what we need is an open source alternative to .NET
I'd suggest the Android Dalvik VM but a lot of people would argue against me for that (could just make a VM that's compatible with Dalvik bytecode), and as a Silverlight competitor someone could just port Dalvik to Googles Native Client.
SharePoint and (now) Exchange does too (at least on the back-end).
"I think what we need is an open source alternative to .NET "
Look up Mono - it's a direct (but lagging) port of it.
Now, if you mean a universal language? Heh... That's what Java's been doing all this time (and explains why it is more widely used).
Ever heard of Java and J2EE? That is open sourced. .NET was a rip off of J2EE.
If Microsoft keeps the $100 price tag, they will start to ship netbooks and laptop with Linux. They don't have to sell many units -- the possibility of loosing 10% of market share to Linux scares the hell off Microsoft.
If Microsoft slashes their prices by, they will be able to keep their monopoly. But that would mean loosing their huge profits -- and investors won't like that.
So my guess is that Microsoft will keep their prices high and manufacturers will continue pushing Linux.
We won't see Linux surpassing Microsoft anytime soon, but it will definitely get a significant market share.
http://www.linux.org , or http://www.ubuntu.org, or http://www.fedoraproject.org - download it at your convenience for $0.00.
"Yeah, I can just see Joe Sixpack and Ma and Pa Kettle booting into Linux. Yeah, right."
Actually I can see Linux booting a browser (like Chrome) and using Web Apps really taking off because of its ease of use, cheaper price, and because we are all use to the Web.
Windows will seem difficult in comparison to a browser and web apps. Guess what the underlying OS for the browser is? It begins with L.
Strange that one of my neighbors, a 50+ year old retiree, was having trouble with Windows XP due to maintenance, viruses, malware, Windows Update forcing her into IE8 and general lack of knowledge in how to work her machine past a certain point.
I went in and fixed her machine, made the maintenance easy to do, replaced her AV, replaced IE with FF, replaced Adobe Reader with Foxit. In general, I rebuilt everything from the ground up for her machine.
Then I booted her second computer into Linux Mint, I happened to bring the CD with me for her to try. She loved it, it's easy to use, easy to set up, easy to install apps, easy to search for apps.
Pretty sure if Joe Sixpack and Ma and Pa Kettle were booting into Linux, they'd be in much better shape. When they'd bring in their machine because of a problem, you'd at least know it was something fairly major.
@TechG2009
Please tell me, how is Linux NOT free?
It's more usable for every person I've gotten to try it, has more features (don't believe me? Randolm_Walk gave you a list of webpages you can take a look at for features), has great support (need some one on one help? Canonical does paid support. Plus you'll never have to pay for the OS or other apps).
Industry is stuck in a Windows world but that's changing.
Worse still, we found that trying to engage in a strategic partnership with them on a new IT security concept was like jumping into bed withthe CIA. Not pleasant. www.tadag.com
The reason why OSX and Windows are attractive is because they are easy to use and allow YOU to control what happens. It's easier to troubleshoot a problem on your own machine then it is to sit and wait while your cloud provider tries to troubleshoot their own.
Also I think it's a bit early to be predicting the death of Microsoft it would be understandable if they were pulling in maybe a few hundred million but this company is still a leader in pulling in profit and considering they have woken up look at Windows 7, Office, Bing, etc all getting rave reviews the change you are looking for is already here.
Their is also the idea of not giving Microsoft credit where it is due. I understand OSX is a great OS but you seem to completely ignore what Windows 7 has brought to the table in terms of fun and ease of use.
On both OSX and Windows.
Maybe but it takes the docks shortcomings and improves on them quite a bit.
Some programs, sure - though Firefox and the like have that built-in (e.g. "File -> New Window"). Others (e.g. Finder), you simply right-click, and there's "New finder window".
OTOH, you have to remember - you don't find it intuitive because you likely have learned to use a computer with Windows (like most folks), and are imprinted with that as your paradigm.
Any OS that you're not familiar with will take a bit of time to get used to... no matter which one you started on first.
For the moment, you have to take MS Office out of the line-up. Unless I've missed the news, it's still banned from being sold due to patent infringement.
Otherwise, I'd like to see a hybrid approach between web and desktop apps. Desktop apps would need to use a standard form of document type (i.e. .odf). It would also need to be treated in a very uniform way. If the standard needs to be rewritten to force everyone to make it readable by everyone else then so be it (might be necessary due to MS' horrible treatment of the standard).
I'd like to be able to save my documents on more than just a single machine while still being able to save my documents on my machine. Perhaps treat documents like XMarks treats bookmarks. When you change them on your client machine, the cloud server wants to update their own version to match.
You tool; it's just Word and they have 60 days before it's banned which Microsoft won't let stand regardless if they win on appeal or have to pay. It's comments like this (and Matt's entire biased article) that make the Microsoft haters sounds like idiots.
Sure Linux, the cloud, and open source have a lot of potential but they are not even close to dominant yet. Apple is winning more people over to their closed system than any player in any market in the open source world.
Sounds like sour grapes coming from Matt who's product is getting it's ass kicked by Sharepoint.
Wow, calling me a tool, that really hurt. Especially since I made a valid point and you had no rational argument against it.
MS Office, without Word, doesn't exist. They can't sell it. Every article I've read about the ban has spoken of it as if it is immediate and I'll trust the guys getting paid to report tech news over yours since they can be sued and you can't.
By the way, it's MS making patent infringement claims all over the place and then getting sued for patent infringement, making proprietary tech and then claiming it to be a standard, paying people to comment in their favor on tech sites and having a buffoon as a CEO that make MS supporters look like idiots.
Notice I said 'look like idiots'. That doesn't mean I'm calling anyone an idiot, except perhaps those who insist on calling others names like yourself.
Linux has had the capability since the first 64-bit capable processors came out (w/ the x86_IA64 and x86_64 kernels in 2000-2001?). In fact, the early Itaniums and AMD 64-bit chips could only run one OS to use the chip fully until Microsoft caught up a few years later on the server side (starting with Win2k3, I believe), then later on still with the desktop side (starting with XP 64-bit, which came out IIRC in 2005-6?).
OSX has always used 64-bit components throughout its lifetime (which is why it benchmarked faster on average :) ). The diff in OSX is, Snow Leopard represents the first pure 64-bit OSX version. Apple took a gradual approach, which allows existing OSX apps to take advantage of 64-bit tech without having to be 64-bit in nature (though most of the biggies pretty much are these days, IIRC).
Microsoft should have marketed/priced their 64-bit systems more aggressively themselves, IMHO. I've lost count of folks I know who have a Core2/Quad2/etc, but didn't think they could run a 64-bit OS. Why? Because the OEMs pre-loaded a 32-bit version of Windows on the thing... most likely because the OEMs didn't feel like paying the higher price for the 64-bit licenses. In fact, the OEMs never really coughed up 64-bit as an option for consumer use...
Have you been to Best Buy in the the past year or two? I don't think so. It's more common now a days for systems to ship with 32-bit only in cases that the hardware doesn't support 64-bit (drivers) or on systems that expand more than 4 GB of memory. BTW, it doesn't cost any more for 64-bit Windows over 32-bit. Thanks for the FUD you troll.
32-bit Vista: http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Vista-Business-with-SP1-32-bit-Upgrade/product/82A7DC44
64-bit Vista: http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Vista-Business-with-SP1-64-bit-Upgrade/product/5570E363
Both $195...
2005-6 for XP 64-bit? LOL! Try 2002-2003 you tool:
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for Itanium systems, Version 2002 ? Based on Windows XP codebase, which was released in 2001.
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, Version 2003 ? Based on Windows Server 2003 codebase, which added support for the Itanium 2 processor, was released on March 28, 2003.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition
Recently, they have (though even on systems with more than 3.5GB, you would, until recently see 32-bit + PAE Windows boxes in abundance.
". BTW, it doesn't cost any more for 64-bit Windows over 32-bit. Thanks for the FUD you troll. "
Can you show me where I even bothered to compare prices between the two - at all?
Oh, you suddenly can't?
Literacy... you should try it sometime, especially before launching baseless slander from something I hadn't even written.
"Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for Itanium systems, Version 2002"
You may want to hit up that literacy thing again... the following come from your own cite:
" It {Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition} was released on April 25, 2005."
This was the exact desktop version I was talking about... not "workstation" or some such semantic crap, but the consumer-side desktop OS.
So who was the "tool" again, kid? Oh, that's right - you. ;)
Second, to quote the same source you partially quoted "Two versions of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition were released:
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for Itanium systems, Version 2002 ? Based on Windows XP codebase, which was released in 2001.[citation needed]
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, Version 2003 ? Based on Windows Server 2003 codebase, which added support for the Itanium 2 processor, was released on March 28, 2003.[21] "
You were reading in the section labeled "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition." The above quote is from the section "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition" directly above it.
Yes, they do, but so do most vendors... You can't run OSX apps on Windows either, after all. HEre's what you missed:
The file format specifications and API's for MS Office products are not fully published (at least not enough to make a workable file reader/writer).
Exchange is the only mail server that stores its email in a locked-down and incompatible database/format (as opposed to simple ASCII formats, like every other mail server on the planet uses), and does not use an open standard for its primary groupware component (MAPI is only partially published, and is proprietary).
I could go on, but these will suffice, I believe.
read that, good article, I agree with many points it presents, xorg does need an overhaul, I will admit I`ve had a distro or 2 that xorg was just clunky and could never get the same res (sometimes colour depth would suffer a bit too, had problems resolving it) as i would in Windows or OSX, then again nothing`s perfect, what do you think?
It seems you write this nonsense for nonsense sake and keep backing yourself into a corner. If you criticize Microsoft, you end up criticizing the same things you love Google, Apple and Redhat, because they are in some way or another in Microsoft's core markets. Why do you think Eric schmidt had to come off Apples board of directors? Because he is an employee at a Company who happens to create an operating system that Steve Jobs admits competes against his along with a web browser and smart phone operating system.
Matt, you need to stop criticizing Microsoft and take a look at Google, because it seems to me the one trick pony Company that is aiming to be like its idol 'Microsoft'!
http://twitter.com/adacosta
scroll down for more hilarity, he`s even trying to score a free iphone from somewhere Ha!
Is that how you get your kicks harassing people you don't know on a comment board?
Please find a new hobby sir.
Just exposing FUD young sir, interesting you don`t find hypocrisy in his posts, you`re not shilling too are ya?
His posts may seem over the top at times but no reason to harass him or accuse him of things which may not be true.
To be fair, Bill Gates had a huge flurry of this in the early 2000's and before - tablet evangelism, ".Net", BOB (yeah, I know, but it counts), things like that.
I agree that the desktop in general has (insofar as Microsoft is concerned) run out of steam, though they have been pimping a new version of the touch-screen eye-candy (you know, like the iPhone only bigger) of late...
There are also non standard products that have gained huge market presence that we typically don't hear about. For example, Microsoft's VoIP solutions are running a close hand to Cisco and Avaya. They are quickly gaining market share and have some innovative components.
And don't think they're going to sit idly and watch the handheld market go FULLY to Blackberry, Apple and Android. They have winmo7 which nobody's really seen. If that OS fails, which I agree it easily could. Expect them to use some of those billions to buy a RIM or PALM.
Everyone is way to quick to judge Microsoft or call it the end of Microsoft. Sure, they're having an off year (so far) and because of this we're calling it over?
No, that's not why we're calling it over. I was saying all of this three years ago at least, when MS was in "good" shape. Superficially, maybe the numbers look good, the way car stats looked good for Detroit in, say, 1971. But the writing is definitely on the wall. And MS is behaving the same as Detroit did...
time to put away the kool-aid.
Here's an essay that includes some relevant explanations: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/08/15/why-cant-microsoft-develop-software-for-zune-hd/
The last two paragraphs:
"Death kills everything that does not regerminate with a fresh mix of DNA and rise from its former ashes to try new things. In the mid 90s, Apple had to die to live again. And today, Microsoft is a large cancerous parasite being leached to death by a series of attacks launched by quicker and more innovative rivals.
Today?s Microsoft will die, just like the old IBM monopoly and the British Empire and the Caesars and the dinosaurs. The only question is, will Microsoft reinvent itself and live on in a new form, or sink into history as one of the most troublesome diseases to ever hold back the progress of our society?s technological advancement?"
For example to an Apple or Linux fanboy it wouldn't matter what Microsoft does it would never be considered innovation and vice versa.
Then there is the fact of the term innovation being totally misdefined altogether.
Alot of people think Innovation means to create a whole new product which is not the case that would be invention.
Innovation is taking a previous idea and putting your own spin on it. Which is exactly what Microsoft has been doing all along. Recreating things the way they feel are best.
Prime examples of this confusion are with the Zune HD they make a truly intuitive touch screen device change up the gui make it fun to use but instead of it being referred to innovation as it is. It is referred to as copying which it is not.
You are spot on with the definition of innovation - for those that are confused you might consider reading "The Art of Innovation" by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman. Innovation can be as simple as using an existing product in a manner that it wasn't designed for ...
I've yet to see MS take an idea and put their own spin on it. I've seen and used the Zune, I've also seen and used an iPod, they're virtually the same device except one has an app store, integrates with cross platform (almost fully) software, created the market (PMPs were an afterthought until the iPod) and has helped to bring about a global shift in what computing can be (iPhone wouldn't exist without the iPod, Smartphones wouldn't be a big thing without the iPhone).
It's a good device but not good enough. They're still copying rather than leading with it.
In order to be innovative, you've got to be inventive. Innovation means inventing some new way of looking at/using something. Innovation could also mean adding to an already existing device in a way that surprises.
Apple took the idea of a media player and surprised us all with just how good it could be. They took the lead.
What MS needs to do is go beyond the media player. Maybe, instead of making yet another PMP, MS could make a personal streaming player. Create a device that allows you to control the media from your home machine without being home. Allow it to play through your device with a small amount of storage for buffering purposes, maybe for those moments you don't have a good connection.
Then they can make the device smaller than anything on the market, just large enough to use 3G as mobile broadband and have some speakers and screen.
That's innovation, it's the same idea turned on its side. Rather than store it, stream it.
The opposition better hope that Microsoft stays myopic, greedy and insular for as long as they want to be in business.
It seems to me that adding HD to an hand held video player is a pretty obvious thing to do and therefore would be called evolution as opposed to innovation.
I would disagree anyone expecting HD on a 3.5" screen is delirious. Actually the ratio of resolution on the Zune HS as compared say to my 52" HD tv, the amount of pixels per square inch is better on the Zune, but it stores and can play HD movies on my HD tv as well as HD Radio. That spells HD to me.
stickfu + needs to get a job = make a money + buy what you want = stop moping and ranting over stuff you don't have
No need to thank me, I consider it a public service
Sorry, but I refuse to believe users will believe a no name, nobody like you over those journalist.
come on, Mr. Asay, chrome has 2% market share!
how is it possible for you to get paid for writing this nonsense?!
Enterprises like what they have. Office is a powerful tool and works. What will an enterprise do if a line gets damaged and they can't get on the net for a day or something else happens? How will they access their cloud software?
- by turtlejamm August 15, 2009 9:13 PM PDT
- ...I guess it all depends on what your definition of mature lol
- Like this Reply to this comment
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