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Microsoft 'under attack' On All Fronts
khujifig writes "The Beeb are carrying a story looking at the challenges facing Microsoft in the next few years.
This includes a brief description of the M.Home (sans Clippy) which the Beeb describes as "a far cry from real life", and a discussion of the next few years competition for Microsoft. They go on to highlight Linux, OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and Firefox (which Gates himself has used: "I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"), and look Apple in relation to Longhorn. Not as bad a read as I was expecting. Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to innovate or die. "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?."" It should be said, tho', that articles like this have been written about MSFT for a long time - and there's still billions in their war-chest.
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"
What makes it so much better? I've been using Firefox for a while now and it seems like more then 'just another browser' to me.
But hopefully they'll get up off their lazy butts and get to work.
How old is IE? Wonder if the recent Firefox buzz hasn't got them back in the shop feverishly working on IE 7. Wonder if many of the feature in the said browser won't mimic those found in Firefox (opera, safari, etc...)
How old is XP? Wonder if the recent Jaguar/Panther/Tiger buzz hasn't got them in the shop.... (you get the idea).
I hope we can keep them lumbering for a few more years. It would sure be nice to see them either start to *really* innovate or throw in the towel.
If you make them lose money long enough, it doesn't matter how much they have in the war-chest: like any good capatalist, they'll pull out when they realize its not growing anymore.
Name a company that can seriously put all of there resources together and pose a serious threat to Microsoft?
Only niche market software sources are able to peck away at MS.
People are brainwashed into following the most marketed item with all of the fancy surface features.
This should be old news to Slashdot readers. We all know that Office is the cash cow that leverages windows across the enterprise. Or SMB.
... It's just that since they do so much badly that it all gets integrated into their OS/Office/Back-office. That's when people stop buying competing programs.
Really, most new Microsoft "lines" have failed miserably: Passport, MSNBC,
Besides, most companies are afraid to compete with Microsoft: Just look at MacAdobeMedia. They were formed explicitly because of fear. Most companies that are competing with MS started in an area that Microsoft moved into (Skype).
Q:What do you call a clumsy 800lb gorilla?
A: Sir (or an 800lb gorilla)
However, MS IS looking at web and e-mail. A little over a week ago I got a call from an MS recruiter asking if I wanted to interview for the MSN web services division (my resume was posted online). It was my first ever call from MS (although I've approached them a few times before).
Basically, they're looking for people to code things like Outlook Live, which is essentially a web service edition of Outlook Web Access. According to the recruiter, they seem to be going full-speed toward services (while keeping an eye on the cashcows).
We all laugh, but an interesting move would be to have a version of Linux that would run Win32 binaries. Or at least a package that would allow Win32 packages to run. Honestly, how many of us /.er's would run that? All of the sudden you have the flexability of OSS with the freedom of being able to run whatever you want. I wouldn't be suprised if Microsoft was developing such a thing. Of course they wouldn't want to release such a beast unless it was nessasary -- when it looked like more and more were abandoning Windows for Linux.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
GMail as a service shouldn't be attractive to businesses for precisely that reason.
But what if Google sells a "GMail appliance?"
All the features of GMail, but on your own VPN, and nobody but you controls the data. Starting to look more interesting.
Add the ability to plug in any service you want where the ads normally are... company announcements, whatever.
Now *that* would be really attractive, I think, to a lot of companies. I don't know how well their Search Appliance worked out, but a GMail appliance could indeed be a threat to Exchange.
This Like That - fun with words!
Microsoft has not lost its ability to innovate because its people aren't smart any more. They have not lost their ability to innovate because they just don't have any more great ideas. They have not lost their ability to innovate because of poor management or leadership.
Microsoft has lost its ability to create innovative products for three reasons:
1) The company is now run by HR, which is forcing a politically correct agenda into the rank and file. The biggest head on this hydra is the review process, where you are reviewed by your direct manager. From this review comes rewards and longevity at the company. Because of the onerous process, people tend to drift into comfortable spots where they have a great relationship with their manager, and stay there. If you don't do this, you run the risk of being one of the lower echelon that is managed out of the company. There is no peer review, the system encourages favoritism. The process is completely destructive to innovation, you do what your manager wants, not what is right for the company. They are different things.
2)Microsoft cannot move innovation from the research groups into the product groups because the product groups are completely disfunctional and understaffed. Once the 35% y/y growth stopped, it became all about revenue, and headcount became a scarce commodity that had to be completely justified. Because of this, the resource pool is spent on the most critical areas, which tend to be test and sustaining engineering, and whatever Bill wants to fund this year. This leaves little for new features and innovation. In fact, the feature list for Office has over a thousand new features on it, they can fund maybe 30. The 30 are picked by Sinofski or Bill. The rest are dropped. Work from Research is ignored.
3)Employee morale is at an all time low. The place is just not fun to work at any more. The stock option program is gone, replaced by a stock award program that gives the employee one-tenth the leverage they had with options. The stock has been flat for 5 years. The will and desire of the average employee is gone. It's just a job.
Microsoft has to address these three problems in order to remain competitive. I, personally, do not believe they can fix these issues. It will take them a long time to die, and it will be painful to watch, but they will join the ranks of AT&T, DEC, SUN and the long list of other one-time greats.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Well, I've seen figured cited at anywhere from 8% to a patently unbelievable 35%, but 10% or so seems to be the most common. Here's one study.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Someone here said that Microsoft has become a dull and boring place, and I tend to believe it has. I think their engineers have lost the spice to create really cool things, because we can see that in the evolution of windows. Since Windows 95 we have seen the START taskbar... below. And the only differences are nicer graphics and more compatibility with hardware and games. That is basically it.
And frankly by the look of things, Longhorn is just looking to be a big fat white elephant. Longhorn will be Microsoft's downfall. Nothing the OS has is impressive, not glass, not Aero... basically its more gloatware... The only thing it had that was amazing, IMHO, was the WinFX foundation and that got ripped out.
But to say Microsoft entirely is doomed is an overstatement. While I think Microsoft's downfall will be the OS Longhorn, it will rise from the ashes with the new Xbox 360. I guess while they are not innovating on the Desktop they are doing it on the Living Room. So all is not lost for Microsoft.
In that sense the competition they are getting heavily from Apple will either put them on their toes or bring them to their knees, specially if more governments around the world choose to dump Microsoft for cheaper and better functioning Open Source solutions.
That is why I strongly believe Longhorn won't be the event they think it will be. The most important group of people that has to upgrade their systems and wont do it in the first 5yrs is the corporate sector. The consumer will prolly upgrade to Longhorn, but not that quickly as you think they can. Mostly because the hardware requirements to run LH with all the bells and whistles are short of obscene and your average PC comes with a Intel Video graphics card that sucks... But on the other hand, their innovative new Xbox 360 will do everything you wanted to do in the living room and will change the way the living room is. In that department SONY doesnt have a chance.
Everything that is important will happen this summer and by the end of the summer we are going to be well aware of who is winning the war of Microsoft vs The World.
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
I pose this as a serious question.
.NET framework, either VB.NET or C# (I use C#) and SQL Server make a superb environment to work in for building either WinForms or ASP.NET.
... its hard to justify messing with PHP and not much more than a text editor for tools.
/. sometimes makes me wonder if I'm backing the wrong horse here. Am I blinded by the hype, stupid, gullible, naive or doing the right thing here? So far my choice of platform is getting pretty good results.
I'm a sole inhouse developer in a company with about 100 employees. I build specialized desktop and web tools for sales and logistics and stuff for presenting info to customers etc. Nothing I do is really rocket science but off the shelf tools just don't do what we want so its worth keeping me around. We're a typical company in many ways. MS Office on every desktop.
I've done some private / volunteer projects using LAMP, I've fiddled with Java, I maintain a Linux web host for a non-profit. I consider myself a reasonably competent programmer despite having written many thousands of lines of VB6.
For someone in my position, right now, Visual Studio, the
MSDN is a great resource.
ASP.NET is finally moving web development out of the stone age with real debugging and abstraction from the tedium of html. According to MS, the new version will be all W3C compliant and yes they do test with FireFox. I'm coming to the concluson that nothing really comes close to ASP.NET for ease of development for web projects. I've used several PHP frameworks. Prado is very cool and I was planning on using it for another volunteer project for a non-profit I'm involved with but good ASP.NET web hosts are appearing, complete with SQL Server that don't cost a lot more per month than LAMP so
Reading
I think the interesting point that this article raises is that Microsoft is no longer able to bully its competition. Back in the days of the web browser wars and even the GUI wars Microsoft was able to win because it could either undercut, buy out, or out lawyer any corporation on the planet. In the absense of innovation and an active monopoly these appear to be Microsofts only weapons and they are all neutured by OSS. You can't undercut or buy-out free software, and the global nature of OSS seems to give lawyers the willies. There is only one thing left for them to try and thats patents, and I don't anybody really wants to open that can of worms, even M$... but they will.
Just as Microsoft needs an Apple, I think OSS needs a Microsoft (if only to keep it on its toes) so I don't want to see M$ die completely just reduce its market share to a healthy 30-50%. But I'd also like to see them release some decent products. I can't remember the last time I saw some Microsoft software and thought "Hey thats cool!". They've got the resources what's stopping them?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I used to be one of the photoshop detractors. It's funny what groupthink does when you're part of the creation of it. I really believed gimp was the bees knees because I was contributing to its code, using it, and because I heard all the testimony from other gimp users about how much better than photoshop it must be.
Then I went & used photoshop 5.5 for 45 minutes on my girlfriend's powerbook. Never had such a quick turnaround in my life. I went right back to Gimp, gave it one look and thought "What is this shit?" and stopped caring (and developing) for it.
I'm no graphic artist, but I'll go to the gf's macs before using gimp on my own desktop.
These articles only partially get it right. Alot of what MS makes their big $ off of is becoming a commodity. It doesn't really even matter if Firefox and OOo are "better". This part of the computer industry will become less and less the sweet spot for growth and innovation. If MS concentrates on these markets but fails in the growths area (connected non-PC devices, web services etc.) then they will die. If they climb to the high ground and are successful, I think one day we will be saying "Remember when MS used to make Office?". As much as I like the open source movement, Apple and Google are MS's real problems. Linux, Firefox, OOo are just commoditizing the trailing edge where MS will lose if they try and key fighting on this front. I mean how much more can you improve office, at some point OOo will catch up.
When I worked at Microsoft, there was a large push to look at trying to develop a services model out of their support section. They brought in some guy from IBM to push this (after they merged their Product Support Services division with Microsoft Consulting Services and called it Microsoft Services).
;-)
They had two large problems that lead them to either slow these plans down or abandon them altogether (not sure since I no longer work there). The first is that people expect MS to lose money on support. Note that they only lose money because they are darned inefficient at providing support, however, so it is not the great value that it appears.
Secondly, they don't want to gut their partner program by directly competing with their partners.
There is a third problem that I don't think they have thought about, however. This is that the services industry is pretty close to what economists call "perfect competition." There are very few barriers to entry. Customers can switch service providers at any time at very little cost. So services will *never* be the cash cow that Windows and Office are. Yet Windows and Office are under what I call terminal attack. The attacks from the open source community are simply not ever going to go away, and Microsoft can never really win this war-- the best they can hope for is a containment strategy which quite frankly isn't working at the moment.
What about emerging product markets (home of the future sort of things)? Great, and there is growth potential there. However, there is no potential for Microsoft to grow there because these markets are small. And they are competitive. So they could grow rapidly and Microsoft would simply be unable to have this growth translate into similar levels of revenue growth. This means that these markets *will not* satisfy shareholders.
Microsoft, as a software company, is dying. But it is a death of a thousand cuts and is unlikely to be a dramatic implosion in the immediate future. However, give it five or ten years and we will see a very different picture. I predict that in 10 years, that Microsoft will largely be a media and entertainment business. However, I make the following predictions:
1) Longhorn will be praised as a great marketing success by Microsoft. It will sell more retail copies than XP.
2) We are already in the opening period of a war for the desktop. A few battles have gone either direction. Each battle that Microsoft loses will force more interoperability from them and will cause more to fall. It will also bring more expertise to open source software. Battles that FOSS loses will have no long-term implications. The Desktop War is already heating up, with Microsoft launching a counterattack via television advertising
3) The consumer market will follow the corporate market.
4) Microsoft will lose this war within 10 years.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
A lot have people have claimed (including Linus IIRC) that the NT kernel itself isn't bad at all, and the main problems I have when running Windows are certainly not a problem of the kernel. There's no reason I can think of for replacing it.
Microsoft isn't entirely about control, it's about taking advantage of its monopoly with incompatibility with the competition. Gates likes IE because as long as it has a large marketshare, Microsoft can break compatibility with things it doesn't like, thus eliminating them (see the issues with Java and CSS2).