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Microsoft Spends $9 Billion On Research, Focuses On Cloud
superapecommando writes to share that Microsoft appears to be going all-out on research in the coming year, with a great focus on the cloud. They're supposedly planning to spend $9.5 billion in R&D; that's $3 billion more than the next-closest tech company. "'Especially in light of the tough difficult macroeconomic times that we're coming out of, we chose to really lean in and double down on our innovation,' [Microsoft COO Kevin] Turner said. Turner contended that Microsoft has more cloud services than any other company, ranging from its consumer email service to hosted enterprise products such as its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) system to its Azure cloud operating system. 'We're going to change and reinvent our company around leading in the cloud.'"
"...We're not sure our OS and Office monopoly will last forever, so we'd really like to see if we could actually turn a profit on something else."
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Microsoft has gotten very pathetic. They're investing billions researching a near-meaningless buzzword? Talk about grasping at straws.
A prudent move, since "cloud" would turn the Windows/Office business model upside down.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Has anyone checked to see if Microsoft has trademarked the word "Cloud"?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Research costs Microsoft about $700M a year, probably less now after the recent belt tightening and layoffs.
R&D means everything that's involved in creating products, including developers, testers, program management, management, non-sales executive pay, etc, etc., and yes, research as well.
Azure is definitely interesting... It's distributed programing model does look to have some advantages. But I think it won't take off like Amazon's has for a few reasons...
First off, there are no computing containers. What I mean by that is you can only run applications on Azure, not whole operating systems. This does have some efficiency gains (in that you don't have an added OS layer in the middle, but it VASTLY increases the tie-in to the system, and prevents you from doing simple things like adding a server template to turn on if your site gets a lot of load.
Second, It requires applications to be custom written for the environment. You can't trivially port a ready-made application from a single server to Azure... While this is good on the efficiency side, it's not good for the weekend warrior or small businesses who want to remain portable and flexible...
Third, it's only on their cloud. You have to trust MS's infrastructure. And you need to trust MS with YOUR data... It's not like amazon's offerings where clones have popped up that are compatible (so you could recreate your own cloud if you wanted to, or use a competitors)... So that locks you in to their system. My guess, is that most sizable companies won't like this at all...
I'm not saying people won't use it. I'm not saying people won't like it. What I am saying is that it is not playing in the same field as the other "Cloud" computing platforms. IF MS opens up Azure (at least in a binary form) where you can install it on your own infrastructure, then it may have a shot. If they allow guest operating systems, then it may have a shot. But without both, I think there's just too much tie-in to be comfortable (and base your business around)...
Disclaimer: This is based on a presentation which I attended by the lead engineer for Azure back in December of 08. Things may have changed since then, but I haven't kept up with it specifically...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Last time Microsoft invested big into R&D in the recent couple of years, we got the Mojave Experiment Project, which was a brainwashing to non-tech people who didn't have a clue anyway. At least they are throwing their money towards a new tech buzz like cloud computing and dumping it into convincing people Vista is great, when it wasn't. First impressions are everything, we all know that. We all know by now throwing money at problems that can't be solved by money doesn't work. Maybe Microsoft will make a cloud that will float Vista away?
I have no doubt that Microsoft's R&D is staffed with talented people.
I have my doubts that the Product Marketing and Sales side would turn any of it into anything of value though. In the history of innovative companies, they all tend to develop such powerful resistance to risk taking that all of the market potential in their R&D will just waste away.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
That money is also paying their patent lawyers to make patent thickets too.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
In the past ten years MS has probably spent $50B on R&D ... what does it have to show ?
Where is the place to go for cloud research job in India for Microsoft???
Watch /. tear apart Microsoft for even mentioning the word "cloud". /. was praising Ubuntu working on the "cloud".
When just yesterday
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/03/03/1947235/Ubuntu-Desktop-In-the-Cloud
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
"We're going to change and reinvent our company around leading in the cloud."
Translation from corporate-speak: "Since the people in charge, like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, have little technical knowledge or interest, we want to be the leaders in cloudy thinking."
That's how it appears to me.
Back when MS missed getting in on the rise of the internet, they played catch-up for years. They didn't "get" the internet at first, and that cost them dearly for a while. To this day MS is not really known as an internet leader.
Back then it was obvious they weren't doing it right. And today they're still not doing it right because they've swung the other way, apparently, and overestimated the importance of cloud computing in the future. Oh well, it's their money and they can afford to flush it.
We're going to change and reinvent our company around leading in the cloud.
Going to lead in the cloud? Given that Google, Microsoft's most-direct competitor, has been "in the cloud" for quite some time, as the expertise to innovate and excel, and has the money to ensure they have everything they need, I find that to be a bold prediction founded in whimsy rather than fact. Methinks Microsoft is about four or five years too late to the cloud computing game. Sure, they have the resources to make up a lot of time but they're competing against a company that has similar resources who already has those four or five years (or more) head start.
That said, it is nice to see Microsoft recognizing that the world has changed and making efforts to change with it.
(And, no, that last part wasn't me being a smartass - I'm actually serious. It's a good thing when major corporations recognize the world has changed and adapt accordingly rather than attempting to hold on to a bygone era.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open--that is to say, nonproprietary--standards, none of which were set by Microsoft.
Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.
I remember reading Gates' book "The Road Ahead" something like seven years ago and being surprised at how wrong he was in his estimation of the impact that mainstream Internet connectivity would have. I wish I could get the exact quotes, but there were a few telling sentences where he comes off pretty clearly as dismissive that net connectivity would become anything more than a cute PC accessory. I'm still not sure if that was his genuine line of reasoning, or of it was just wishful thinking, but I think the point was clear that Microsoft was stacking their chips against net-based services, insisting that locally-run software was going to be the way of the future.
Now they are investing in what Google has already been doing and doing well for years, following their trend of copying other business' models instead of innovating on their own. I'm sure this will work out well for them.
Well ... cloud computing?
Basically it is the same technology that I have used for the last 15 years within the business.
People can call the technilogy whatever they want, it is still the same technology that drives the computercentre. It always has, it always will be, the rest is just code..
I think that cloudcomputing is good, dont get me wrong. It is just what I have been doing for the last 15 years....
I really have another userid as well
Ballmer gave a talk at the University of Washington on Microsoft's cloud strategy: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/cloud/videogallery.aspx
...we chose to really lean in and double down on our innovation...
And... Two times zero is?
With Amazon and Microsoft being businesses, hence for-profit, I was wondering if anyone has taken a stab at cloud R&D in academia.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Wait a minute. I'm a manager, and I've been reading a lot of case studies and watching a lot of webcasts about The Cloud. Based on all of this glorious marketing literature, I, as a manager, have absolutely no reason to doubt the safety of any data put in The Cloud.
The case studies all use words like "secure", "MD5", "RSS feeds" and "encryption" to describe the security of The Cloud. I don't know about you, but that sounds damn secure to me! Some Clouds even use SSL and HTTP. That's rock solid in my book.
And don't forget that you have to use Web Services to access The Cloud. Nothing is more secure than SOA and Web Services, with the exception of perhaps SaaS. But I think that Cloud Services 2.0 will combine the tiers into an MVC-compliant stack that uses SaaS to increase the security and partitioning of the data.
My main concern isn't with the security of The Cloud, but rather with getting my Indian team to learn all about it so we can deploy some first-generation The Cloud applications and Web Services to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our business intelligence and reporting, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to The Cloud 2.0.
They spend over 9 billion dollars on research, and we still need to buy add-on products to protect us from virus attacks.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
A perfect place to meter the use of software and data. In the cloud you absolutely know what your users are up to and how to effectively charge them. ...To fully contain the user experience and to make money from even the slightest little use of a computer. Soft fluffy clouds of money floating around, ripe for picking. Users willing to shell out cash for use of commodity hardware and software. Of course they are investing heavily, because the vision fits their plan so well. Oh, and they can use free software to pull it off--yes it is free to them, but not free to you. ...Enter the fancy dungeon. Fix your eyes on the spinning widget...and open your wallet wide.
Just saying.....
How is Microsoft going to make a profit in the cloud? The cloud is about the centralization and automatic configuration of vast amounts of computing resources. It will allow smaller companies to turn over their infrastructure management to cloud hosting companies.
When they were self-hosting, those smaller companies were often paying licensing fees to Microsoft because of some perceived cost benefit such as support or simplicity of administration. However, when shopping for cloud services, they don't need to worry about such details, and so they can focus much more on cost. A Windows based cloud hosting company would need thousands of licenses from Microsoft, and so they could save millions by using free software instead. These savings would lead to a huge price difference.
Microsoft could always offer special savings on bulk licenses, but they are going to have to offer major price drops. The centralization of hosting will give them far fewer direct customers. Where is the great amount of money to be made in this?
Their only hope is to offer things that can't be found in free software, or to reduce administrative costs enough to offset the cost of licenses. It will be a difficult challenge.
The only difference between putting your tax returns and employee SSNs in the cloud and putting them in a wicker basket and hanging them on a telephone pole outside is that with the wicker basket, you can see when someone steals it.
AT&T used to have an enormous R&D program. It invented transistors, UNIX, C, information theory, ... And they even won a couple of Nobel prizes. IBM wasn't AT&T, but they still made enormous contributions like RISC and relational databases. Micro$oft has done nothing.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Well, if they're focused on cloud computing, they better make sure Job Objects can be nestable.
Similar to 'process groups' in unix, it's kinda imperative for any kind of manageable distributed computing.
So far, you can only have one level of job objects, which is kinda like having a file system
that only supports subdirectories in the root.
cloud computing is a very bad idea. The very same things that Ballmer spoke of as being exciting and profitable are the same ones that terrify me for lots of reasons. I'm not paranoid about privacy (that's gone) but it will get worse, and the possibilities for monopolization, piracy, and loss of data integrity increase exponentially. As a small business, it makes no sense for me to embrace the risk, and as a dinosaur in the digital world, I naturally balk at centralization disguised as convenience.
... they burn billions on research money, yet a lot of their products are mocking someone else's creative inventions (MS-DOS, Windows, IE, Zune, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, ...) paired with half-assed and often user-annoying implementations.
Instead (or because of that) they have to spend their time spreading FUD and threatening everyone with patent suits. Thank you, Microsoft!
True, but MBAs and the [microcephalics] in general are famous for believing their own BS.
Calling marketing as 'research' doesn't make it research, no matter how true believers the MBAs get.
The problem Microsoft really has is a lack of vision. They've kinda made everything they have set out to make, and now they really don't have a grasp on what's next. Regardless of their size and resources, they aren't driving the industry the way they used to. Office is ok, and the ribbon bar is cool, for sure, but, it took them ten years of piling stuff into toolbars and menus and chasing around competitors u/i dongles in Office that they lost site of Office as a vision. Same can be said about Win7, VStudio... it's all nice and all, but really kinda visionless and above all soulless.
Nothing the company makes excites me any more. Even when they do do something cool, they wrap it up in so much EULA speak and corporatease, I feel like I just did a shot that went down smooth but made me throw up at the end. "Windows Genuine Advantage"... good Lord, they may as well just rename their marketing department to be the "Ministry of Truth."
And, now, we have Cloud.
Does Microsoft really get internet based computing? I mean, its pretty hard to argue they believe in hosted solutions when Windows costs more per ad click to run a site off than Linux ever will, and, even worse, their most consumer facing internet product, internet explorer, is so reviled that it undermines their whole brand. Even in a 100% Microsoft shop, everyone around here uses Chrome or Firefox and wishes Microsoft would just give up on the internet.
This is my sig.
When even cell phones increasingly have the compute power of what desktops did a few years ago. The only reason you need a cloud is for data, and right now, data is still expensive to do over the internet. If longer lasting and higher capacity solid state drives become mainstream, even the data reason goes away as you can have all your data on your shelf, in the kitchen cabinet, your pocket at work, and so on, and even then, most people really don't need to store every single picture they took, forever.
This is my sig.
What the hell are you blatering on about, junior? Were you even in computing "back in the day"?!
It's widely known that Microsoft was notoriously slow on recognizing the importance of the internet.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Microsoft gave $9 Billion to its R&D department?
Geez; how'd Steve Jobs convince them to donate that much?
You've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow,
Nine billion dollars, I recall
You really don't know clouds, at all.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
Other operating systems have pulled ahead and probably will continue to do so. Office has been nearly feature complete since Office 97 (which is perfectly serviceable for 99% of people), and Open Office will eventually get there, if it hasn't already. Internet Explorer continues to slip.
Microsoft continues to win in business software like Exchange and Outlook, and things that integrate with them. My guess is that they're putting a hell of a lot of money in SharePoint, because what other CMSs integrate that well with things like Exchange and Office and Active Directory? SharePoint will help them maintain their business dominance as they get clobbered in other areas.
I'm not sure what the cloud can do for them, there seems to be a lot of "magic happens here" in it. This could be a way for them to move Exchange and SharePoint up to a service pool in the sky.
Microsoft usually takes a few times to get things right. The next iteration of Xbox ought to be a monster, but I wouldn't rely on their cloud for a few more years.
How many billions of dollars have to be flushed down the toilet in Microsoft's attempt to gain new market strongholds?
It seems the best use of this money would be to give it back to the stockholers.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
At a previous employer, I was asked by management to estimate how much time I spend doing "research", left undefined. The explanation - it's for tax purposes, and we can get a credit for research.
I'm not going to say I read the relevant laws to find the definition, but I did follow company policy and made a best guess based on what I thought should reasonably qualify under a sane tax system. So although I didn't claim anything that a normal person would call foul, I'm sure there were some hours that wouldn't qualify.
Hours were turned into dollars, and the results collected and turned in as "research and development" spending for tax purposes. We met both the letter and spirit of the law, as much as was possible. But we were not a product company, nor a major innovator in our market(s). We did lots of research with very little to show for it. The intended purpose of the law of course would be to encourage invention if not innovation, and have a more efficient and/or productive economy, resulting in snowballing gains as different sectors picked up on advances in other areas. Makes sense.
I'm sure someone else will point out how many cool things MS research announces then fails to turn into a marketable product, so I won't go into that. I'm also sure that Microsoft's obligations to its shareholders have continually been ignored as dividend payouts have been begrudgingly given, on the odd chances they are given at all. While sitting on piles of cash. As a shareholder, i'd like to see MS Research almost entirely dismantled, dividends you can count on, and for fuck's sake replace the entire marketing silo with a small panel of the following makeup who will say which products get to market and how:
A graphic designer
A soccer/hockey/whatever mom or dad
Someone employed in middle management of a non-technology company
One person of any type who has never seen an episode of survivor or american idol
One person who knows the words to every Lady GaGa song (artist to be updated by annual shareholder vote)
One person who belongs to every social network known to man and has no concept of privacy (must have an entry on http://failbooking.com/)
Bill Gates
A rat terrier (for product testing), alternatively a young japanese man will substitute as needed
A 14 year old girl (preferably familiar with glitter and whose favorite color is pink, replaced annually for obvious reasons)
A business analyst with a marketing related education, who counts as 1/2 vote
There's your entire marketing department, and they will make better decisions and cost less money. You can probably pay them in MacBooks, Comp tickets, maid service, fairy dust and unicorn shit, rainbowed versions of normal objects like neon beer signs and the like, permanent Bing #1 results for keyword 'smush', certificates for a discount on the next purchase of a Windows(tm) product, used panties, arcade crane game baubles, and insurance benefits with an occasional kick to the balls, respectively.
It's like they JUST realized that they Google and Apple were the behemoths now and that MS is the underdog.
Network PC anyone?
Well I guess someone has to spend money to prove it's not what we need. But seriously: what if MS wasn't around? That's the real question.
...tell me your local cable company won't start metering your internet access once your computer is replaced with a - déjà vu - dumb terminal. They'll have you by the short curlies, once you cannot do diddly-squat without a connection.
And once that happens, it will spiral out of control. If you believe otherwise, perhaps you might consider the possibility of some genius with a greedy streak at Verizon/Comcast/Time Warner/on Wall Street thinking "Hey, since we have metered access now, then why can't I create a market for blocks of time?".
And then consider how gasoline prices respond to speculation.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
= Perpetual micro-payments. Just like the cell phone industry.
Evil..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"We're going to change and reinvent our company around leading in the cloud."
Good, I hope they will stay in the cloud, far far away from my PCs.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
This is going to be ugly.
Amazon's S3 ain't running on Windows. Amazon's EC2 ain't managed by Windows. Google's search engine ain't powered by Microsoft.
We're talking about scabability and amount of data beyond anything Microsoft as ever dealt with. Good luck.
I'm quote confident Microsoft won't be asking you for advice, seeing how incredibly verbose your writing is.
You know, poorly implemented, cloud computing has the potential to be the thing that actual does finally lay waste to the internet (many apologies to LOLcatz and ChatRoulette). And who better to poorly implement cloud than MS?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
focuses on cloud."
Dealer: Shit, that’s the best stuff you ever smoked, Bill, isn’t it? ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What are they getting for $742,009.13 an hour?
9 billion is a *LOT* of research, smells more like a tax dodge to me
Well I've said it elsewhere but with all this cloud build-out we may soon have the same bubble that brought us dark fiber.
While cloud computing may not appeal to everyone and all traditional IT workloads, people who understand it and use it effectively will find very real benefits with scenarios that are ideally suited for the cloud. Microsoft sees cloud computing as one of the compelling approaches for implementing technology, and intends to be a leader in this space, and to provide cloud computing as one of the options customers can leverage on the Microsoft platform. However, making a major investment in cloud computing does not mean Microsoft intends to abandon its software business and move entirely into the cloud. In fact, cloud computing complements the on-premise software model very nicely, and supporting both means that customers can choose what's relevant and useful to them. This strategy also reflects how Windows Azure is not intended to be just someone else's data center for hosting purposes; Windows Azure is designed to support the next-generation, Internet-scale applications that need massive scalability and reliability.
-David [blogs.msdn.com/dachou]