Comments on: Ballmer plays up business focus

Microsoft wants to make office workers more productive, and it's earmarked $500 million to tell you all about it.

[Earl Benser]

So much of what MS is proposing...

... is already being done in companies with competent management
and employees. Using MS Office, maybe with Access and FileMaker
Pro, a few other focused programs and basic intelligence,
corporations do very well.

Without competent management and employees, nothing MS can
offer will make any significant difference.

It's not the suit that let's Superman fly

[James_U]

May Have Missed the Point

Software can absolutely make a difference on employee productivity. It is one of many tools that professionals use every single day. Depending on how complex, integrated and powerful software is it can have dramatic impact on employee effectiveness and satisfaction with IT.

Said another way, I can give someone an axe or a power saw to clear a forest. Both are great tools and can get the job done. Yet, we understand that there is a productivity difference between the two.

I think this is a great path for MSFT to follow. In fact, I wish more vendors would pick up on this core theme/focus. To the extent that they can invest more $$$ in usability and make their packages simpler yet more powerful, it will provide very, very direct business value.

BTW, I saw the video of this off a link on WSJ. The stuff (Office 2007 I believe) that I saw demonstrated was fairly compelling . It made sense, and is something that most business professionals could actually understand and use. We must remember, business professionals want simplicity in software. Their jobs are to be good at what they do. Software should enable that, not impede it.

Good words MSFT. Now, let's see you deliver. With all due respect to us IT folks, I love the focus on the end user. Make software that much easier for our internal customers to use, and you will make satisfaction with IT higher. You will also make them a lot more productive.

James.

[Ian Joyner]

Core vision of "empowerment"?

That was not Gate's vision. As usual, he saw others were having
success with it in the micro computer area, so adopted the
terminology but not the reality, as if it were his idea. That
empowerment scared the hell out of IBM, which is why they
brought out a really weak PC, the biggest oversight being an OS
(which Gates luckily provided in the aptly named QDOS 'Quick and
Dirty OS' from Seattle Computer Systems). Windows is still big in
business because it controls the user, which businesses like, which
is the opposite of empowering them.

[DannyJock]

Microsoft still has the best most secure products

No matter what everybody is going on about
open source. They forget the fact that open source everybody including the most wicked hackers have the code which makes it very very vunerable