Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 353 posts

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#21

Post by max76 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #14

> There’s a bit of Silicon Valley cred, too, thanks to its acquisitions of LinkedIn, the professional social network, and GitHub, the software code repository. I would have thought open sourcing so much of it's framework, vscode, and typescript would have had a greater impact.

> I would have thought open sourcing so much of it's framework

I have a pedantic correction here.

Instead of open sourcing the .NET Framework they wrote a new opensource framework (named .NET core) that is very similar to their closed source framework. Microsoft is currently supporting and expanding both frameworks.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#22

Post by lokidokiro »

1024core wrote: post #2

Satya has done a tremendous job turning around Microsoft. It was headed in the direction of becoming a slowly sinking behemoth under Ballmer, but he's turned it around. Sundar, on the other hand, is just content collecting $$ and showing more ads.

Sundar gets paid 4x what Nadella makes, too. Hopefully, the board will reconsider that obscene level of compensation given the company's poor performance in the most recent earnings report.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#23

Post by maxxxxx »

luckydata wrote: post #13
Amezarak wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's hard to see what Nadella's leadership has actually added to MS from where I've standing. As best as I can tell, there hasn't been any major new products or shifts since Ballmer left. People talk about MS "stagnating" under Ballmer, and that's true of the stock price, but revenue and profit more than doubled under Ballmer and he introduced multiple new billion-dollar products/services. Nadella has made some…

Nadella has made a few key changes, for example exempting internal product teams from having to consider Windows as the only OS to develop for, changed the incentive structure for sales to avoid pushing products enterprises didn't care about etc... When you're a CEO your success is usually not dependent by flashy all in decisions, especially if you're managing a giant company like MS. You are successful by setting po…

I think they are in danger of neglecting Windows too much to the point of people leaving the platform. I personally wouldn't recommend Windows anymore. And almost nobody who isn't using Windows will use azure or .NET Core.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#24

Post by 781 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #14

> There’s a bit of Silicon Valley cred, too, thanks to its acquisitions of LinkedIn, the professional social network, and GitHub, the software code repository. I would have thought open sourcing so much of it's framework, vscode, and typescript would have had a greater impact.

This article is written by some tech journalists. Do you actually expect them to have heard about vscode/typescript?

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#25

Post by Spooky23 »

shubhamjain wrote: post #6
bryanlarsen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff propping up Microsoft now (Office 365, Azure, Windows 10) were all started under Ballmer, weren't they?

How does that matter? The article clearly states that Microsoft was still hanging on Window and PC software for majority of its revenue and made terrible bets (like Nokia acquisition) under Ballmer. Satya worked hard to change the direction of the company. He pushed to cut budgets from other departments and invested in Azure. Another important thing is that he resisted the urge to make shiny bets (like self driving c…

They still are. Azure is to Office 365 as Apple's rebirth is to the iPod. "Halo effect".

Office 365 was a classic Microsoft bundled cost play -- you have this big investment in your EA around the Microsoft ecosystem and you basically pay to put email in the cloud, and get Sharepoint and Skype for free. They then made deals on EA renewal to convert "on-prem" Office licenses to subscriptions to lock you in.

In subsequent renewals, Microsoft uses Azure gift cards like a "tax credit" to drive behavior without a competitive process. They're essentially applying the Office 365 playbook to Windows Server/Active Directory/SQL Server and eventually Windows Client. Example: You pay for Azure AD by getting ATP for "free".

It's not taking away from Satya, his genius is dressing up the classic Microsoft hard-nosed deal playbook and making it friendlier in key ways, and cutting the cord on legacy. (Which is a risk, as it's an opportunity for AWS, Google, Oracle, etc to sell) But ultimately, the strategy existed and was executed before with Ballmer, but with less charisma and humanity.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#26

Post by omnifischer »

1024core wrote: post #2

Satya has done a tremendous job turning around Microsoft. It was headed in the direction of becoming a slowly sinking behemoth under Ballmer, but he's turned it around. Sundar, on the other hand, is just content collecting $$ and showing more ads.

Except windows 10 privacy issues, Satya has really fought the status-quo inside the company. Honest interview: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/satya-nadella/

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#27

Post by newsoul2019 »

spectramax wrote: post #11

It’s unfortunate to see Microsoft (along with Adobe, etc) expanding into Ads. If nothing else, they could really differentiate and join forces with Apple from privacy standpoint to oppose Google, Amazon and Facebook. Instead, “Intellisense with AI now available on VS Code” is Microsoft’s nice way of saying “We harvest the shit out of your data”. Ah, like a true Ad company. Don’t get me started on Windows 10 telemetry…

>> If nothing else, they could really differentiate >> and join forces with Apple from privacy standpoint >> to oppose Google, Amazon and Facebook.

I didn't realize I wanted this, but now I do.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#28

Post by max76 »

thrower123 wrote: post #17
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never, ever underestimate Andy Jassy. I consider him on par with Jeff Bezos, in terms of leadership and execution, if not superior. source: worked at AWS 2008-2014.

Possible, but from the inside as a Microsoft Partner, it feels like most of the world is just starting to move to the cloud, and when they do, they go Azure, because they are already dependent on Exchange.

Why would someone choose Azure over AWS because they currently use Exchange? An Exchange server can easily be ran inside an EC2 instance inside AWS.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#29

Post by johnday »

spectramax wrote: post #11

It’s unfortunate to see Microsoft (along with Adobe, etc) expanding into Ads. If nothing else, they could really differentiate and join forces with Apple from privacy standpoint to oppose Google, Amazon and Facebook. Instead, “Intellisense with AI now available on VS Code” is Microsoft’s nice way of saying “We harvest the shit out of your data”. Ah, like a true Ad company. Don’t get me started on Windows 10 telemetry…

> “Intellisense with AI now available on VS Code” is Microsoft’s nice way of saying “We harvest the shit out of your data”.

What? The IntelliCode description says that "Contextual recommendations are based on practices developed in thousands of high quality, open-source projects on GitHub each with high star ratings.". I'm not clear on how you think Microsoft will harvest data from doing this - much less how it is related to ads.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#30

Post by oneplane »

thrower123 wrote: post #17
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never, ever underestimate Andy Jassy. I consider him on par with Jeff Bezos, in terms of leadership and execution, if not superior. source: worked at AWS 2008-2014.

Possible, but from the inside as a Microsoft Partner, it feels like most of the world is just starting to move to the cloud, and when they do, they go Azure, because they are already dependent on Exchange.

Odd, I'm seeing more and more people trying to find ways to escape Exchange, and not having it as a driver towards anything. Nobody likes being driven by artificial lock-ins.
Post reply on HN