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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

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Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#231

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rdl wrote: post #72
kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

Positives: Only threw away 10-20b on pointless acquisitions (aQ, etc.). Successfully avoided buying Nokia, or pulling an HP/Compaq Fiorina fiasco, and didn't buy a big dying services organization to chase IBM. Also didn't do like HP's board with the lawsuits and revolving door CEOs and such. Avoided major criminal activity.

Got lucky on yahoo.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#232

Post by astrodust »

sker wrote: post #180
eykanal wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The man missed mobile. He screwed up search. And social. And Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and Windows 8. He insulted the OEMs with the Windows Tablet, which was also a failure. He created the Zune. He even managed to screw up with Mac Office, by removing and then putting back in VBA. For one man, he sure has a lot of failures on his plate.

You've mentioned Windows 7 twice in this thread. By what measure do you consider it a failure? If anything, Windows 7 is the best thing released under Ballmer.

Windows 7 is not a success. It's just a non-failure.

The only reason people use it at all isn't because it's fantastic, but because it's incrementally better than Windows XP without all the garbage Vista foisted on the user.

After having used it for an extended period of time, the only real improvements I've seen are in the explorer shell, which are minor at best, and the theme.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#233

Post by simonh »

seldo wrote: post #157
potatolicious wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both are correct. Ballmer was gloriously good at extracting profits - out of existing, successful product divisions. I believe Ballmer has a firm grasp of the enterprise market, and Microsoft's revenue and profitability numbers reflect this. But new product development, particularly consumer product development, at Microsoft has largely fallen flat in the Ballmer years. WinPhone, Win8, Kin? So while Ballmer h…

Reacting to new market conditions is definitely Ballmer's problem. Under Gates, the explosive growth of the web took them totally by surprise, and he managed to swing the whole company around, producing the market-crushing behemoth that was Internet Explorer 6, and green-lit the XBox on the basis that "convergence" (i.e. computers running your TV) was inevitable. Those two alone are really tough, smart, forward-think…

Except that IE was just a clone of Netscape and XBox was an attempt to duplicate PlayStation. Neither of these were original or ground breaking products. In fact with IE 6 he so badly misjudged the market that he assumed the game was over and didn't even bother continuing development. IE 7 didn't come out until 4 years later! Gates founded Microsoft's online businesses, which have been losing money ever since. You count XBox as a success, yet MS is in the hole over XBox by over a Billion dollars and will probably never make money on it, taking past losses and write-offs into account.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#234

Post by michaelpinto »

kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

Maybe the failed Yahoo acquisition wasn't a bad thing? Would Microsoft have really improved Yahoo? Would Yahoo give Microsoft growth? If anything not doing that deal was a good move.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#235

Post by rdl »

pwthornton wrote: post #227
rdl wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-crappy enterprise mobile option alone (basically Blackberry 2013) would be a $100b business. Neither Android nor iOS is that out of the box, and the bolt-on ecosystem of crap doesn't turn either into as good a system as RIM was in its heyday. Look what phone DIRNSA uses today: a Blackberry. I'd sell non-core assets (Xbox, Bing, hotmail, consumer stuff in general, etc.), and focus on the core OS/mobile/Azure/Off…

I think you might be underselling the enterprise features of iOS, particularly with all of the Exchange support built in, ability to manage profiles with OS X server, the remote wipe, encryption, etc. It's what I use for work, and a Blackberry 2013 wouldn't get me to switch. I would grant that there are specialized markets that MS could serve well in the enterprise market, but what do you think the typical enterprise…

iOS devices themselves offer most of the hardware security features Blackberry (old) offers (I actually know zero about BB X; it seemed unlikely to live to adulthood, so I've ignored it). I love iOS for that.

iOS is undeniably a better web browser experience than Blackberry. It also has a viable app ecosystem, but that mostly doesn't matter for enterprise.

The only large OS X Server-managed deployment I've heard of is Apple internally. In Silicon Valley, I'd probably go with iOS-only (I don't believe in BYOD, and crossplatform means LCD and pain) with either a third-party MDM or maybe try OS X server. No way I'd do that in a 100k seat enterprise with high security requirements -- 30-50 person shops aren't really "enterprise".

I am excited about iOS 7, but not at all excited about Apple's lack of any real focus on enterprise. The only reason Apple has stuff like Kerberos support in OSX is that Apple uses it internally.

Apple focuses on consumer (primarily), with iCloud, etc. as the main management tool. There is a little bit more for small businesses and some smaller education deployments, but aside from Apple.com, there isn't much attention given to the enterprise market.

(If I got to pick a job, I'd rather be HHIC of Apple Enterprise Products/Enterprise Security rather than CEO of Microsoft, personally. Either would be a turnaround.)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#236

Post by microtonal »

prawks wrote: post #99
the_bear wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, one of the greatest "see the future" CEOs has said similar things. Just off the top of my head, I know that Steve Jobs said that no one would want a larger screen than the original iPhone had, and he said that 7" tablets didn't make any sense. Now Apple has a larger iPhone screen and 7" tablet. That's not to say that Steve Jobs was wrong about the future, but he had to sell devices in the present which me…

Also don't forget Apple has had it's share of failures under Jobs (MobileMe, arguably AppleTV, their desktop peripherals always sucked, plenty of failed products, etc.).

Well, judging by the number of iMessages that arrive in a correct order on my iPhone/Mac and their inability to make iTunes Match stable, it's hard to believe that iCloud will be a success in the end.

Under Jobs Apple made stellar hardware and good-enough software.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#237

Post by [deleted] »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94
lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#238

Post by gregd »

JonnieCache wrote: post #154
gregd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely sure any of these can be attributed to Ballmer but Microsoft has been entirely successful in the enterprise. Active Directory (copied, but marketed better than Novell), Group Policies, Visual Studio (arguably the best IDE available today), Sql Server, .NET, Azure. And trust me, I am no fan of Ballmer. I think this announcement is the best thing to happen to Microsoft in a LONG time.

If we're marking off the copies, the last two in that list weren't exactly original ideas either.

Sorry, I wasn't so much pointing out what were copies as I was trying to (albeit terribly) point out that Netware was actually BETTER than AD at that time (access-based enumeration anybody???)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#240

Post by rlanday »

benihana wrote: post #64
kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

Positives: Xbox/Games division

Are people saying this because the Xbox actually makes money, or just because it’s popular and seems successful? The most recent overall look at profits I’m aware of is this one: http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h...

If this is accurate, Microsoft has been turning a profit in recent years, but not enough to make up for years of losses from the first Xbox and the first few years of the Xbox 360. They’re about to launch a new system, which probably means they’re again going to be losing money again for a while.

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