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Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

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Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#171

Post by Torwald »

nostromo wrote: post #65
Bamafan wrote: post #11

Long story, short: 1. Realize the world is moving beyond Windows 2. Cede mobile OS to Android/iOS, that battle is lost. 3. Realize, next great revenue stream is the Cloud (Azure).

The problem is they are no longer best-of-breed for any of their markets, except maybe Office. Microsoft doesn't break out Azure revenue, but by all accounts it's quite small compared to AWS. And Office is very much under threat. If you work with young people you'll notice they tend to prefer G Suite apps over Office - most likely because Google has done a great job getting their software into schools.

> except maybe Office.

Not really. But an awful lot of shops rely on their Excel macros. Changing the office suit would mean to re-develop a huge amount of infrastructure.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#172

Post by spydum »

aliswe wrote: post #165
techfoolery wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more like an entrenched opinion that you've continually looked to reaffirm instead of opening your perspective. First, serious work & powerpoint? Really? Yeah in an enterprise organization that's largely stuck doing what they've been doing because it's worked - sure, but that's not a technology issue, it's a culture issue. For example, Google Sheets covers 80-90% of the use cases for Excel. But that's not…

An example would be a PowerPoint presentation showing a diagram linked to an Excel file using SQL Server as a datasource. Dunno if something similar can't be done in Googles office suite as well though.

It can, google data studio more or less is this

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#173

Post by manigandham »

techfoolery wrote: post #119
king_magic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, Azure revenue, by many accounts, is greater than AWS: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsof... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-... And sorry, G Suite is a joke compared to desktop Office for serious work. It doesn't matter what the youngin's prefer, what matters is what gets (or facilitates getting) real work done in the enterprise, which generally revolves aroun…

That seems more like an entrenched opinion that you've continually looked to reaffirm instead of opening your perspective. First, serious work & powerpoint? Really? Yeah in an enterprise organization that's largely stuck doing what they've been doing because it's worked - sure, but that's not a technology issue, it's a culture issue. For example, Google Sheets covers 80-90% of the use cases for Excel. But that's not…

Business users are not going to learn SQL. They're not going to move all their data into the cloud, setup access, manage resources and spend money to run queries that take a few seconds on their laptop. They're not going to use 20 different services to break out scratch work, analysis, charting, and BI from what runs in a single portable file that they can manage and backup and extend in unlimited ways from meeting to meeting.

There are billion dollar businesses that run on Excel, and many workers in all kinds of industries live in it all day because nothing else comes close. Those macros and automations are what empower them to get things done and drive business forward instead of worrying about the "right way" to do something.

This perspective that they're all naive and should use better tools just fails to understand how people actually work, and explains why G-Suite as it is today will never beat Excel.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#174

Post by johngalt »

king_magic wrote: post #74
nostromo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they are no longer best-of-breed for any of their markets, except maybe Office. Microsoft doesn't break out Azure revenue, but by all accounts it's quite small compared to AWS. And Office is very much under threat. If you work with young people you'll notice they tend to prefer G Suite apps over Office - most likely because Google has done a great job getting their software into schools.

Uh, Azure revenue, by many accounts, is greater than AWS: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsof... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-... And sorry, G Suite is a joke compared to desktop Office for serious work. It doesn't matter what the youngin's prefer, what matters is what gets (or facilitates getting) real work done in the enterprise, which generally revolves aroun…

> G Suite is a joke compared to desktop Office

If there is one area where I've been consistently wrong, it is betting on "powerful/serious tools" rather than simple, ubiquitous things that handle most of what people need. 'Simpler' tends to win vs 'better'.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#175

Post by timrichard »

electrichead wrote: post #4
bayulxc5 wrote: post #3

The only product from Microsoft I use is Windows and they're ruining it. So, sorry Satya, but...

You don't use GitHub or LinkedIn or Skype either? You might also rely on sites that are built with Microsoft technologies (Stack overflow for example) or find that your workplace gets by with Excel. It's hard to say you don't use their technologies.

> You might also rely on sites that are built with Microsoft technologies (Stack overflow for example)

... which is also reliant on HAProxy, ElasticSearch and Redis, but that part doesn't get quoted so much.

https://stackexchange.com/performance

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#176

Post by gerash »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #54
gnu8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft deserves to go gentle into that good night because of all the damage they’ve done to the computing industry over the years, for example killing Be and Netscape with monopolist tactics and creating a terminally insecure software monoculture of the lowest common denominator of Windows and IE, that we’re still recovering from today. (Google is repeating the lesson today - Android is the Windows 98 of mobile).…

Then certainly Google deserves the same (i.e. gentle into the night) and then some. Not only have they done plenty of damage to the computing industry but they've normalized a lack of privacy in doing so. That is, Google has done social, if not sociopolitical damage (that makes MS looks like the tooth fairy). Your disgust is fitting. But let's be sure the context is appropriate as well.

> damage to the computing industry

What are you talking about? Citation needed.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#177

Post by lwkl »

nostromo wrote: post #87
king_magic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, Azure revenue, by many accounts, is greater than AWS: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsof... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-... And sorry, G Suite is a joke compared to desktop Office for serious work. It doesn't matter what the youngin's prefer, what matters is what gets (or facilitates getting) real work done in the enterprise, which generally revolves aroun…

Microsoft includes a bunch of non-Azure products under their cloud revenue. And they do it to confuse people and falsely claim they're outpacing AWS, which as you just proved, works.

I agree with you but it makes sense to include Office 365. Amazon offers mail hosting and office software in AWS as well.

Edit: Okay they only offer document storage you still need to edit your documents with MS Office.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#178

Post by eldavido »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #5

"When Satya Nadella took Microsoft Corp.’s helm five years ago, the conventional wisdom was that the company’s glory days were behind it." Have a look at this MS revenues [1] and consider why for a moment there is any 'conventional wisdom' like this? MSFT stock price did languish during this time of amazing growth which I guess validates that 'conventional wisdom' was in fact sour, but it's hard to see why it was. Ro…

It's because the industry perspective and the business/wsj perspective are different.

I think the industry perspective tends to be ahead of the business/wsj perspective but sometimes incorrect. Tech people are the folks who build this stuff. It takes a long time for upfront investment to filter down through sales and into tangible business results. And then even longer for anyone to notice those results. Whereas the devs / product managers / salespeople are on the front lines seeing all of this firsthand.

A good, concrete example of how this has played out for me personally was that I bought stock in new relic a few years ago. In a nutshell, they were making a product it was obvious people needed, I worked at their competitor and realized they were kicking our asses product-wise, just totally out-executing us and it wasn't even close. I bought a bunch of stock on the theory that the product was getting great adoption and people loved it. Fast forward a few years and now it's tripled/quadrupled. I would've done the same thing with Stripe and lots of others, except they aren't public companies.

Stripe is sort of out of the bag at this point but you'd be surprised how few traditional "business" folks have even heard of it. There are tons of great developer tools, stuff like Sendgrid, Lob, Easypost, etc. that are going to be huge that are still mostly under-the-radar.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#179

Post by [deleted] »

GVIrish wrote: post #109
nostromo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft includes a bunch of non-Azure products under their cloud revenue. And they do it to confuse people and falsely claim they're outpacing AWS, which as you just proved, works.

Why shouldn't Office365 be counted in cloud revenue? "Cloud Revenue" doesn't exclusive mean IaaS or PaaS.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#180

Post by twoheadedboy »

skizm wrote: post #156
Ruxbin1986 wrote: post #126

Steve Ballmer, technical bits aside. Just couldn't play as a successful CEO in PR Role. He was too aggressive, abrasive and even somewhat rude. Aside from that, one of thing most amusing things and one Ballmer excellent business moves was suing nearly every Android Smartphone Company for patent infringement. Microsoft literally makes money off of Android Smartphones but what's confusing to me is how Apple takes all o…

IIRC the android revenue is rolled into the x-box revenue under some nebulous category when they break out revenue in their earning (forget the exact title). This hides the massive losses they are taking on x-box and all things x-box related. The android revenue is almost pure profit and nearly $2B annually. (they make this money by licencing patents to phone makers that use android such as HTC and Samsung)

Do you have any sources or related info about this? That's super interesting.
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