Comments on: Downturn could be Microsoft's bonding moment

Stephen Elop, who took over the software maker's business unit, sees a valuable challenge in the current economic turmoil.

[Neil Wainwright]

Nice article Steve.

[Len Bullard]

Some trends that affect Microsoft:

1. Relentless social engineering by the open source community of the markets to favor their products leaves us with fewer .Net programmers than Java programmers. Given the layoffs, supply and demand just became the Java programmer's worst enemy when sending out resumes.

2. Quiet but effective advances in RAD tools by third parties over the .Net platform are enabling teams smaller by a factor of ten to build integrating applications that scale. While some believe the cloud is the answer, cloud advocates can't answer the basic questions of how they will fill out the SP300-80 NIST documents. The teams building appliances for government agencies over .Net can.

3. All parties need to consider when making a sale if it is smart to sell technology. WebSphere is Not Content. IBM doesn't get that. Microsoft partner programs have to emphasize to the partners the necessity of shifting to a content-focused approach to the sale. While sales in the US will continue to be difficult because of the lengthening sales cycle from RFP to contract signing, in other markets, the focus is on solutions that require less maintenance and deep geek skills. That means focusing on selling Open Source or Our Tech is a bad play. Selling services is still profitable but increasingly weak as the locals want to keep their jobs. Selling an appliance targeted to the content of the customer, or simply, selling them what they actually want instead of trying to convince them to want what they don't understand will succeed.

This goes against the dominant memes being sold in DC right now to the Obama crowd, but one has to ask if telling them they need cloud solutions with weaker security because that is cheaper and 'trust us to take care of you' is not exactly the same thing the Bush administration did. Caveat vendor.

[nadolovely]

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