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Microsoft Spends $9 Billion On Research, Focuses On Cloud

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the time-to-double-down dept.

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.'"

2 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. In other words... by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...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?
    1. Re:In other words... by alen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have always said that they knew Windows and Office won't last forever. in the last 10 years they expanded into video games, business software, database servers, general IT servers for IT management, etc.The "cloud" is just a buzzword. few months ago i was reading some article about how someone was deploying servers for some internal project. and the article said they were building out a private cloud.

      most of the cloud nonsense is for small businesses. i've helped a few build infrastructure and it's a waste of money buying servers, Windows Server licenses, etc. easier and cheaper to outsource it to Azure, Google or someone else.

      for larger businesses hardware is so cheap that it doesn't make sense. We're about to buy a few $15,000 servers when the new Intel CPU's come out. 2 6 core CPU's, 72GB of RAM, 500GB to 1TB of hard drive space, all kinds of monitoring capability, etc for $15,000 each.

      i was talking to an IT sales person the other day and he didn't even try to sell an hardware to us. he kept on pushing services. servers are a commodity made in China by little kids. just like ipods. I guess services is the next frontier to try to squeeze some profits