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InfoWorld's Crystal Ball Predicts the Future of Microsoft
museumpeace writes "InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman has brainstormed five different scenarios for Microsoft in the coming decade and solicits the reader's vote on which is more likely. Does it tank? Does it go open source? Does it out-Google Google? Does Ballmer really fill Gates' shoes?"
Microsoft never ever had a 50-50 split on servers. Check Netcrafts top hosts and see what they are running and count how many are Windows. Then keep counting down past the top ten. They have 25% on average! And given the current economic situation, the last trend was to dump Microsoft and switch server to BSD and Linux where possible. You will see this trend continue again now that CEO's and CTO's now know that Linux is a stable and reliable alternative on the server side.
The economic crisis is open sources friend and Microsofts enemy. People who are spending money will be spending on QUALITY (ie Mac for desktop) or not spending at all (ie open source for server); they will see their profits fall tremendously unless they can get a bloated Vista onto a netbook and have it play Warcraft decently.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Frankly, people said the same thing about IBM during their "decline" in the '80s. IBM was "the one" - the old saying was "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" and only with the rise of MS did the word "IBM" get swapped for "Microsoft." And yet IBM is still a player in the research and sales areas. Last year they held the record for most U.S. patents earned in one year. They seem to meet or beat projected profit each year. And, most importantly, they still have continuous revenue from annual maintenance, etc. from overseas governments and NGOs. As one of the posters below states, MS spends a ton on research and like IBM will find ways to capitalize on that research, even the OS goes away...
Bark less. Wag more.
Considering the fact that you are an anonymous coward that doesn't quote any sources and that MySQL is the number 1 database for web servers (been that way for the last couple years) I highly suspect you are spouting FUD and by 'last couple companies', you merely mean 'last couple Microsoft campuses'.
You do realize that this is a engineering website for computer scientists right? Don't you have an Xbox you should be playing with?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Yet this same company has produced a great server operating system (Windows Server 2008) and sharing server (SharePoint 2007)
SharePoint? A great sharing server?
SharePoint is like someone at Microsoft heard of a Wiki as explained by a Martian, and hired some people from Lotus to implement it. It's inflexible to set up and configure, only works right on Internet Explorer, and is insufferably clumsy to use. It could only be described as "great" by someone who has never touched any software unblessed by Redmond.
Guh? Non sequitur much? When did I say Linux was irrelevant or that I hate it? In fact, I work in a group which supports largely Linux compute servers and workstations, as it's far and away the dominant OS in EDA computing.
From TFA:
Borvell = Borland & Novell.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
actually that is where you are wrong. For every million dollars ms spends on R&D they get something like $100 back.
And do you have any numbers actually supporting this?
Nearly every other division of MSFT is losing money with the exception of windows and office
You know, it may help to look things up before posting: it's so easy to Google for "Microsoft financial report", and it would really make you sound less stupid. Have a look here. MSFT has 5 divisions; 3 are big money makers (Client, makers of Windows, Business - owners of Office, and Server and Tools, mainly selling SQL Server), Entertainment and devices (mostly known around here for the XBox), made less money (only 178 millions in the 3 month ending Sept 30), but was still in the black, and only one division, Online Services, actually lost money (no surprise there).
If you marginalize either one of those products MSFt goes bankrupt in less than 10years.
You're so wrong it's not even funny. Look at the numbers again; in the 3 months ending September 30, the consolidated income for MSFT was $5999 million. The biggest earner was the Business division, with an operating income of $3311 million. Even if you completely remove all revenue from Office while still keeping all the related expenses (research, development, sales and so on), MSFT still ends up with an income of more than 2 billion in the three months, or 8+ billion anually. You're so far removed from reality I have to ask: doesn't it hurt to pull so much weird stuff from your nether regions?