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Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

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Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#51

Post by samfisher83 »

scholia wrote: post #21

Bit too much Ballmer bashing. He made plenty of mistakes so he's an easy target for the ignoranti, but the adoption of open source, the move to the cloud, the writing of Android and iOS apps etc all started under Ballmer. Ballmer also cleaned up the anti-trust mess and -- while his hands were somewhat tied by a dozen years of constant DoJ supervision -- tripled Microsoft's sales and doubled its profits. This was desp…

Under Ballmer's watch the revenue tripled. It could have been pure dumb luck. Even with all that Satya is doing it hasn't really showed any results on revenues and profits. Sun did a lot of great things for open source and they pretty much floundered.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#52

Post by samfisher83 »

widforss wrote: post #48
puranjay wrote: post #34

Try this: Google "Office 365" The first result just says "Email". The second result says "Office 365 login" I'm not an internet dunce, but this is just bad user-experience. Why not have a modern landing page that tells me a bit about the product, it's price and what I can expect from it? Why is the first result a login page? I've been using Google Docs almost exclusively for work now. I've ditched Word completely. I…

Because Microsoft is Microsoft and everybody knows everything about Microsofts products. There is no need to explain anything, right?

How many people don't know what office is at this point?

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#53

Post by widforss »

codingmyway wrote: post #5

I've always said sales (and marketing) was Microsoft's biggest problem. The are finally starting to be cool again as the engineers take over. The silo between Windows and development (Azure, .net etc) needs to come down fully to fix Sinofsky's mess too. We're still left with a desktop OS UI with huge animated icons designed for a phone even though they've now given up on the phone market anyway. They gave up too easi…

We used Windows phones at my last place. I would say that the biggest problem for corporate users is the confusion between Azure AD accounts and Microsoft accounts (we didn't manage the phones in any way). It was really hard to explain to users why they had to register a new account at Microsoft when they already logged in to Office 365 daily.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#54

Post by leonroy »

There is one damn thing I would love from Microsoft. And that's to get rid of adverts from their software.

I use Windows 7 and Windows 10 Enterprise. We paid for those licenses. It boggles my mind that anyone at MS would think sticking ads in the Windows Weather App or Skype would be a good idea for paid for software.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#55

Post by widforss »

samfisher83 wrote: post #52
widforss wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Microsoft is Microsoft and everybody knows everything about Microsofts products. There is no need to explain anything, right?

How many people don't know what office is at this point?

The standalone Office suite and Office 365 are two entirely different beasts I would say.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#56

Post by caryme »

kabdib wrote: post #35
scholia wrote: post #21

Bit too much Ballmer bashing. He made plenty of mistakes so he's an easy target for the ignoranti, but the adoption of open source, the move to the cloud, the writing of Android and iOS apps etc all started under Ballmer. Ballmer also cleaned up the anti-trust mess and -- while his hands were somewhat tied by a dozen years of constant DoJ supervision -- tripled Microsoft's sales and doubled its profits. This was desp…

Ballmer's biggest mistake was the review system at Microsoft. - Managers spent easily a quarter of their year on reviews - Employees often competed against one another (have a great idea? Okay, but That Guy down the hall found out about it and did a half-assed implementation and got a great annual review, and you got slammed for not accomplishing enough. Or maybe your idea simply got sabotaged in some closed-door mee…

Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input.

Ha, this happened to me. I found out I was getting laid off before my boss and boss' boss did.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#57

Post by cptskippy »

puranjay wrote: post #34

Try this: Google "Office 365" The first result just says "Email". The second result says "Office 365 login" I'm not an internet dunce, but this is just bad user-experience. Why not have a modern landing page that tells me a bit about the product, it's price and what I can expect from it? Why is the first result a login page? I've been using Google Docs almost exclusively for work now. I've ditched Word completely. I…

One of the problems Microsoft has that others don't is brand confusion. They like to ride on their own coat tails so distinct and unique products that are completely unrelated are often called the same thing.

What do you call Microsoft's personal email client? Outlook.

What do you call Microsoft's web based personal email service? Outlook.

What do you call Microsoft's enterprise email client? Outlook.

What do you call Microsoft's web based enterprise email client? Outlook.

Google doesn't have this problem because Gmail is Gmail.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#58

Post by samfisher83 »

widforss wrote: post #55
samfisher83 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people don't know what office is at this point?

The standalone Office suite and Office 365 are two entirely different beasts I would say.

The products are pretty much the same. The difference is just the way you pay for it and number of licenses you get.

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#59

Post by zimbatm »

hacknat wrote: post #32

>At Microsoft, those resources are so disconnected from engineering that they seem to rely on whitepapers and customers to learn about their own products. This is so true. My company was being courted by Azure folks so we got some premium access and it was always laughable and frustrating how much more I knew about their cloud architecture than they did. I remember finally being able to talk to the head of network en…

Azure is the worst. I think their strategy is to throw money at addon providers (and other customers) until something sticks. The issue is that their API is so horrible that unless you use .NET and use their official client libraries it's way too much work. I remember one time we published our addon on production and it had a different behavior than staging...

Re: Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem

#60

Post by dctoedt »

samfisher83 wrote: post #51
scholia wrote: post #21

Bit too much Ballmer bashing. He made plenty of mistakes so he's an easy target for the ignoranti, but the adoption of open source, the move to the cloud, the writing of Android and iOS apps etc all started under Ballmer. Ballmer also cleaned up the anti-trust mess and -- while his hands were somewhat tied by a dozen years of constant DoJ supervision -- tripled Microsoft's sales and doubled its profits. This was desp…

Under Ballmer's watch the revenue tripled. It could have been pure dumb luck. Even with all that Satya is doing it hasn't really showed any results on revenues and profits. Sun did a lot of great things for open source and they pretty much floundered.

Nit: It's "On Ballmer's watch" (an old naval expression).
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