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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

#631

Post by dkrich »

nl wrote: post #328
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's hard to disagree with sarcasm on the internet. But in this case you are absolutely correct. Microsoft used to control the future of computing. Now they are yet another enterprise software company with no apparent mission except to make money. The lay somewhere on a continuum with IBM, Oracle, SAP all the way through to companies like CA. At one end of that spectrum they do research and produce software that peop…

I don't get why people compare Facebook's performance to that of Microsoft's. Okay, they are both tech companies that have large interests in the internet. But one makes enterprise and consumer software (exceedingly successfully by any measure) and the other is a website for sharing photos.

Microsoft is worth roughly three times what Facebook is at one-twentieth the P/E ratio. Why do people assume they are losing? I fully accept that they are continually riding the coat tails of Windows XP for the majority of that and have missed a number of opportunities though. But let's be honest, everyone but Apple missed the smartphone revolution except Google and Samsung and Microsoft owns part of Facebook and isn't really playing in a competing market for the most part.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#632

Post by enupten »

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…

If you account for inflation, it has actually moved down :)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#634

Post by ams6110 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #605
dredmorbius wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that search and Ajax did more harm and drove the first wedge. Search gave Google a business model and revenue stream. Ajax enabled Web apps, beginning with Gmail. That enabled platform independence and a split from the Office monopoly, particularly Outlook/Exchange and Active Directory. Mobile was another keg of coffin nails, particularly in consumer space showing that ease of use and zero configuration wer…

Microsoft essentially invented AJAX. In the late 90s they had some HTML remote update thingy via a Java applet, I believe. Then they introduced XMLHttpRequest. Developing for IE around that timeframe wasn't bad. They had excellent documentation, and added (proprietary, sure) extensions that let you do all sorts of neat stuff.

Yes. Microsoft invented XMLHTTP so they could build a killer web client for Exchange Email. Remember when you first saw that? It was amazing. IE 5 was hands down a more capable browser than any other when it was current. It was nonstandard, but it was very productive. You could do AJAX, XML to HTML transforms in the browser with XSLT, xpath navigation of XML documents, etc. JSON wasn't popular then but support for XML was excellent.

They didn't have the vision to build consumer oriented "cloud" software like Google did, but they were positioned to do it before anyone else was.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#635

Post by tlogan »

Spearchucker wrote: post #450
tlogan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should compare MSFT against other companies in enterprise space. So lets take, for example, ORCL. From 2000 till today, ORCL become the clear leader in enterprise: they acquired PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun, etc. On the other hand, MSFT position in enterprise space is in much weaker position comparing to competitors such as ORCL. Enterprises will replace their Windows with tablets, but I don't see them rep…

I see that slightly differently. Oracle is huge in government, world-wide. But while it used to be "Oracle is the answer. What was the question again?", there's a shift towards F/OSS, open standards, and commodity hardware. This hurts Oracle. And yes, the exact same thing hurts Microsoft, too. Microsoft, however, have three products that will ensure their continued profitability[1] - Excel, Exchange and (probably mos…

Back in late 1990s and early 2000s, enterprises were much more dependent on MSFT than today. Windows machines were in server rooms, Windows machines were on desktops, Exchange was everywhere.... Companies really depended on Microsoft: they had the entire stack.

Fast forward to 2013 ... what do you see? Did Ballmer really improve Microsoft position in enterprise comparing to Oracle and other competitors?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#636

Post by marcosdumay »

specialist wrote: post #485
tlogan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should compare MSFT against other companies in enterprise space. So lets take, for example, ORCL. From 2000 till today, ORCL become the clear leader in enterprise: they acquired PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun, etc. On the other hand, MSFT position in enterprise space is in much weaker position comparing to competitors such as ORCL. Enterprises will replace their Windows with tablets, but I don't see them rep…

MSFT position in enterprise space is in much weaker position comparing... Is that true? Microsoft's ActiveDirectory, Exchange, and SharePoint are every where. Perhaps they have different parts of "enterprise" pie.

Microsoft still has a problem. AD, Exchange, and Office (no SharePoint is not everywhere) only work on completely Windows networks. Once somebody has to use mobile computers, you are better with Samba, IMAP, and a LibreOffice compatible package.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#637

Post by ams6110 »

jacalata wrote: post #595
hkarthik wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to look at how much money these products make, it's a pittance. Most of the money is made on Windows Server licenses and many of these things get thrown in.

That's certainly not something I've heard. Sharepoint alone is supposed to be $2 billion in revenue.

Don't overlook the SQL Server licenses that almost all of the enterprise stuff requires.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#638

Post by marcosdumay »

criley2 wrote: post #556
erikpukinskis wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand that some of us, who were around and writing code through the 90s, are still a little PTSD about Microsoft. Back then, when Microsoft did control computing, it was easy to wonder if maybe they would control it forever. It was a shitty period. There was a sense of futility to building software. You could build small software, but as soon as you reached a certain scale, particularly if you were a…

"It was a shitty period. There was a sense of futility to building software. You could build small software, but as soon as you reached a certain scale, particularly if you were a platform company, Microsoft would decide that they'd like to take your revenue, so they'd box your software out of their operating system with incompatibilities, launch their own competitor, and eat your lunch." Sounds like Apple and the 00…

Except that Apple controls around 6% of the desktop PCs and 20% of the mobile PCs. MS controlled 99% of the PCs at the time, and I'm rounding it down.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#640

Post by marcosdumay »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #516
adventured wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anybody think that there aren't limits to what one company can dominate? This absurd notion that Microsoft could have ever possibly retained "control" of the future of computing (apparently forever would be the requirement) is non-sense.

All they had to do was get mobile right. To do that, all they needed was one manager who kept an eye on the state of capacitive touchscreen development and moved to lock it down before his/her counterpart at Apple did the same thing. The iPhone could have been theirs all along, with all that that implies. But first they ignored the underlying technology, then Ballmer laughed at it (on national TV no less), then they…

> all they needed was one manager who kept an eye on the state of capacitive touchscreen development and moved to lock it down before his/her counterpart

And they did move.

I was trying to create a startup based on PDAs at the early 00's (no luck, they were too expensive - the idea was flawed from day 1). There was Palm, and the two entrants: Windows and Linux. Palm had a once nice system that nobody wanted to program for anymore (accumulated too much cruft), Windows had a giant marketing campaign that made everybody hear about them (it was getting more known than Palm), but it was so bad that everybody soon learned to run away from it, and Linux got a steady monotonic growth from nowhere into almost-nowhere.

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