Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by themagician » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

rdslw wrote: post #38

As an investor I bought few years ago MSFT stock. I did it as I saw two things: 1. azure 2. o365 1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS 2. because microsoft moved to subscription model Those two things, connected with third "secret" incredient: BIGGEST user base (corporate) which WILL use those two offerings = success. Satya is/may be great. I bought stock around 2014/2015 because of the above a…

Recurring payments scale well in good times.

No one really knows what’s going to happen in a recession. I suspect it won’t be pretty. Revenues will probably contract just as well in the reverse direction and I suspect many customers will look to cut costs by eliminating monthly recurring expenses.

Perhaps recurring revenue business will be more resilient. I can see a path for that as well. But no one really knows.

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

#72

Post by TheGRS » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

spectramax wrote: post #46

rdslw wrote: post #38

As an investor I bought few years ago MSFT stock. I did it as I saw two things: 1. azure 2. o365 1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS 2. because microsoft moved to subscription model Those two things, connected with third "secret" incredient: BIGGEST user base (corporate) which WILL use those two offerings = success. Satya is/may be great. I bought stock around 2014/2015 because of the above a…

I think your reasoning is a perfect example of Confirmation bias, I do agree with your points but there is no way to analyze this objectively - market is a complex system with game theory and all kinds of players doing unpredictable things, disasters such as password leaks, etc. If results were the opposite, one can come up with various other reasons to explain their losses.

Sure, but if you do understand what a company is doing under the hood, you can make informed long-term investments based on that (which still pose a risk because of the reasons you stated). If you knew Facebook's history and engineering practices years ago you would have accurately predicted that the other shoe would eventually drop. If you paid attention to Microsoft's shift in focus you would either have thought that it was foolish to try to beat Amazon or it was a great space to invest in because AWS has many flaws. I dunno, I'm just trying to say that knowledge about this stuff can give you an edge in investing.

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

#73

Post by awinder » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

rdslw wrote: post #38

As an investor I bought few years ago MSFT stock. I did it as I saw two things: 1. azure 2. o365 1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS 2. because microsoft moved to subscription model Those two things, connected with third "secret" incredient: BIGGEST user base (corporate) which WILL use those two offerings = success. Satya is/may be great. I bought stock around 2014/2015 because of the above a…

Is microsoft actually making a lot of money off Azure once you've divorced office 365 revenue from the cloud bucket? Clearly you made a good market decision but I've yet to see anything to suggest that Azure as a pure-play is a runaway financial success, and even where Azure is making money it's not been to AWS' detriment

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

#74

Post by belltaco » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

kuzehanka wrote: post #66

chillacy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine among our crowd but how many non technical people are using Linux?

Uhh. The entire world? The internet doesn't run on IIS.

There are no ads in IIS or Windows Server.

By your logic every developer is a Windows user, since they use Stack Overflow that runs on Windows, IIS and SQL Server.

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

#75

Post by ljcn » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

spectramax wrote: post #46

rdslw wrote: post #38

As an investor I bought few years ago MSFT stock. I did it as I saw two things: 1. azure 2. o365 1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS 2. because microsoft moved to subscription model Those two things, connected with third "secret" incredient: BIGGEST user base (corporate) which WILL use those two offerings = success. Satya is/may be great. I bought stock around 2014/2015 because of the above a…

I think your reasoning is a perfect example of Confirmation bias, I do agree with your points but there is no way to analyze this objectively - market is a complex system with game theory and all kinds of players doing unpredictable things, disasters such as password leaks, etc. If results were the opposite, one can come up with various other reasons to explain their losses.

To be fair the comment says "I bought it because x, y, z", which is probably true; not "it has gone up because x, y, z", although that might be implied.

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

#76

Post by anentropic » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

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.

acquiring LinkedIn brings cred...?

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

#77

Post by jlarocco » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #42

loudmax wrote: post #32

Microsoft's core revenue is still due to market lock-in of their proprietary technologies: MS Office and Windows itself. There are other office suites out there, but nothing can gain much market share without complete compatibility for MS Office file formats: docx, pptx, etc. Microsoft produced a version of Office for Macs and that allowed Apple to grow greater than niche, but their market share was always tiny compa…

G Suite, WPS Office, WordPerfect

Google's office software is a joke compared to the standalone versions of Office. Microsoft's web based Office is pretty bad, too, but at least they don't mangle imported documents quite as bad.

I know everybody thinks they're "good enough" for most people, but they're still crap compared to the regular desktop programs.

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

#78

Post by partiallypro » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #15

thrower123 wrote: post #3

What a great difference between him and Ballmer. I'd not be surprised if they eat Amazon's lunch on cloud computing in the next few years.

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.

Here is AWS's core weakness going forward...they compete with their own cloud customers. From video streaming, to online shopping, to groceries, to logistics...why would I (as a business consumer) want to fund my own competition? Azure competes with none of its own customers, outside of perhaps AI. Amazon is AWS's biggest enemy. Azure and GCS are going to catch up on features, and customers are going to start fleeing when they realize they are helping to fund their own demise and biggest competitor. Then there will be margin pressure. The next 10 years in the cloud are going to be interesting...and while people seem to think the Cloud already has huge adoption, it's just beginning; and I think Microsoft more than any other will be the biggest benefactor.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 02, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

rdslw wrote: post #38

As an investor I bought few years ago MSFT stock. I did it as I saw two things: 1. azure 2. o365 1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS 2. because microsoft moved to subscription model Those two things, connected with third "secret" incredient: BIGGEST user base (corporate) which WILL use those two offerings = success. Satya is/may be great. I bought stock around 2014/2015 because of the above a…

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by cjarrett » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

spectramax wrote: post #46

rdslw wrote: post #38

As an investor I bought few years ago MSFT stock. I did it as I saw two things: 1. azure 2. o365 1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS 2. because microsoft moved to subscription model Those two things, connected with third "secret" incredient: BIGGEST user base (corporate) which WILL use those two offerings = success. Satya is/may be great. I bought stock around 2014/2015 because of the above a…

I think your reasoning is a perfect example of Confirmation bias, I do agree with your points but there is no way to analyze this objectively - market is a complex system with game theory and all kinds of players doing unpredictable things, disasters such as password leaks, etc. If results were the opposite, one can come up with various other reasons to explain their losses.

Most of the initiatives Satya has gotten credit for were started under Ballmer. Some of the worst moves I've seen regarding current MSFT internal culture were direct results of Satya

Source: Me, at MSFT before Ballmer left and still there now.

That doesn't mean Satya's not had a good effect overall. Part of the investor postives were due to PR differences that Satya made (which are very good), and his ability to talk about the future of the company is far superior to Ballmer.