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

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

#91

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.

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…

Totally agree. It's truly interesting to think how the cloud will evolve (private vs hybrid vs public). Not to forget the shift towards the edge for IoT use-cases (which will grow rapidly in the future)

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

#92
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…

1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS

What is this, specifically?

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

#93
Having read Nadella's book Hit Refresh as soon as it went on sale, Microsoft performance since then doesn't look surprising at all. Having listed what's wrong (with their product focus, company culture etc), and where they plan to head, its' almost like the book informs the reader where puck is going to be (from Satya's POV).

It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other way!

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

#94
post #69
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…

Excel is actually an amazing product. Google docs is cool, but it’s nothing compared to excel.

Excel is a beast, but for my use case Google Sheets is better since I don't need the advanced features and it's always available in any browser.

My biggest problem with Google Docs in general is not about features but that performance is pretty bad.

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

#95
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows always been a pain to develop for. And every Windows version redundantly includes "a new api for everything" alongside all the horrible legacy stuff. But Microsoft's recent efforts on Linux & macOS, i.e. VSCode, has been surprisingly good. They do a lot of things, I think Typescript is run by MS as well. So that's something that positively changed under Nadella.

I believe this is because MS wants to move away from being an OS provider to being a service provider. If a service runs on Linux they won't care as long as its generating revenue for them. Whether this is Nadella's push or obvious from MS's accountants is hard to say.

They may turn into an IBM variation long term. Profitable, stable business. Not glamorous, but good money.

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

#96
post #84
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way was MS sinking under Ballmer? Maybe they were not exciting but they were super profitable every year. I think it's more about better PR. Not everything is golden at MS now either. I am working on creating a platform for our medical software on Windows 10 and it really makes me want to switch to Linux or iOS. Windows is a big mess of old and new code and attempts of sandboxing like iOS but only half-hearte…

Is "opportunity sinking" a thing? Remaining stagnant for years and years when there was growth to be had if only Microsoft would go after it was on Ballmer.

They grew under Ballmer almost every quarter. Yes, they missed opportunities but by any standard it was a highly profitable and successful company.

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

#97
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…

The last half a decade in open source OS land has been amazing....

No issues with file formats

Amazing unbloated (or at least to the point) user experiences

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

#98
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! They're taking the desktop by storm!

I think it's a lot more plausible that Microsoft could still do fine with Windows if they took out ads than that Linux would be doing much better in the desktop market if they started bundling in ads.

I run Windows 10 as my primary operating system. We do Erlang, and C++/CUDA programming here.

Are there ads? I've never seen anything other than a very occasional promotional tile for a Microsoft product. Apple cross-promotes, too.

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

#99
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…

1. because I knew what happened (and was happening) with AWS What is this, specifically?

Presumably that it's printing money for Amazon, so they hypothesised Azure could do the same for Microsoft.

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

#100
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…

What you say is true, was a good move buying in.

Though the big corporate user base is not a certain success, IBM is a testament to this.

(Was going to say Oracle too, they haven't had a stock surge comparable to Microsoft but seem to be growing (some how?))

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