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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

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Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#21

Post by raesene9 »

baybal2 wrote: post #9

No he didn't. He turned the company even harder to farming plumpy corporate clients whom they already had on software+service deals with "cloud" thing subscriptions. A Microsoft salesman who visited us last year was almost begging us to switch to Cloud AD from regular AD. This is how hard they are moving toward that. It was just a long delayed admission that you can't make a lot of money on offline boxed software sal…

Of course they're moving to cloud, that's the direction of travel all software companies want, with nice recurring monthly revenue and plently of lock-in.

Microsoft's achievement (in relation to their "legacy" enterprise peers like Oracle and IBM) is making a much better job of the transition. For example, where are IBM cloud and Oracle cloud in terms of market share, relative to Azure...

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#22

Post by wastedhours »

baybal2 wrote: post #9

No he didn't. He turned the company even harder to farming plumpy corporate clients whom they already had on software+service deals with "cloud" thing subscriptions. A Microsoft salesman who visited us last year was almost begging us to switch to Cloud AD from regular AD. This is how hard they are moving toward that. It was just a long delayed admission that you can't make a lot of money on offline boxed software sal…

> It was just a long delayed admission that you can't make a lot of money on offline boxed software sales today.

Well, yeah. That's the turnaround. And it's worked. It's not easy to get a large company, fat off the proceeds of boxed software to actually reinvent their business model to shift to what lots of companies actually want (easy-in/easy-out licenses on their whole software stack to scale with their workforce, like with O365).

Ballmer and Nadella have pulled it off remarkably well - few legacy companies manage to stay in with their existing clientele whilst also adapting themselves to changing landscapes like that.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#23

Post by xiphias2 »

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7.

If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop.

As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be the part of the continuous testing of any operating system.

Another important example is that I find it harder to find installed programs in Windows 10 than what it was in Windows 7, as Windows 7 grouped shortcuts installed by programs into folders, now I just see a big mess of shortcuts where I have to remember the name of the shortcut to be able to run it.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#24

Post by ck425 »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #14
tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

Interesting to contrast Satya with Sundar Pichai, whose company seems rudderless by comparison.

The things is I never read about any major decisions Sundar Pichai has made. There's tons online about Tim Cook, Satya, Netflix's various SLs, Daniel Ek, Elon Musk (admittedly more about his tweets than business strat these days) etc. But I never read about Sunder Pichai's strategies or decisions. What is he actually doing?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#25

Post by skywhopper »

burnte wrote: post #13
cammil wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devils advocate, isn't that the whole point of a CEO? It seems to me that true change can only happen if it comes from the highest influence. Of course that's not to say that just because the CEO changes that business change will happen

Yes, it's the job of a CEO, but most CEOs aren't that good.

Right, many CEOs don’t seem to understand their own business all that well, much less are they able to deal with the political and cultural challenges of driving a company in the right direction. So many CEOs are just filling space at the top while their company just sort of continues working under its own inertia. Nadella is one of the few who not only clearly had a meaningful vision for his company, but was able to take charge and successfully steer the ship.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#26

Post by ToFab123 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

If there is someone at Microsoft who didn't got enough credit it was Ray Ozzie. Remember him when he was Chief Software Architect? He started Azure / Microsoft transition to the cloud. He created that shift in focus that Microsoft now rides on. Had he not gotten that brief period as BillG's replacement, Microsoft would have continued to live in the past where windows and on-premise office suite was king. Ray Ozzie changed the direction of Microsoft without ever really getting any credits for it.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#27

Post by rileyteige »

xiphias2 wrote: post #23

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

just to counter... i'm on a desktop that's a few years old, i7. win10. start menu loads instantly, settings loads in maybe 1/4 of a second. YMMV?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#28

Post by baxtr »

ToFab123 wrote: post #26
tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

If there is someone at Microsoft who didn't got enough credit it was Ray Ozzie. Remember him when he was Chief Software Architect? He started Azure / Microsoft transition to the cloud. He created that shift in focus that Microsoft now rides on. Had he not gotten that brief period as BillG's replacement, Microsoft would have continued to live in the past where windows and on-premise office suite was king. Ray Ozzie ch…

Maybe it was a team effort and many are to be credited?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#29

Post by chenzhekl »

tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

I can’t agree more. In fact, I feel that consumer products (e.g. Surface) from Microsoft in the era of Ballmer was far better than those of now.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#30

Post by alltakendamned »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #2

For better or for worse, time will tell, but there is no denying this at this point. To take an organization of that size with that much legacy managment and business processes, code and do what he has done is quite the feat.

How do you even make such massive change happen ?
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