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Microsoft Server and Tools Head Muglia To Step Down

Posted by Soulskill on from the shakeup-continues dept.

snydeq writes "Longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia, president of the company's server and tools business, will step down from his position later this year, according to a Steve Ballmer memo issued Monday to company employees. Muglia has been with Microsoft for 23 years, leading development efforts in Microsoft Office, Windows NT and online services businesses. More recently, Muglia shepherded Microsoft's entry into cloud computing, guiding the rollout of the company's Azure platform. Muglia's departure follows that of Ray Ozzie, whose exit was made all the more notable by a memo warning Microsoft to start thinking beyond the PC."

79 comments

  1. Cloud by jav1231 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If he's responsible for the "cloud" moniker, good riddance.

    1. Re:Cloud by 0racle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Like most new markets MS enters, 'the Cloud' was firmly established by the time MS got there.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    2. Re:Cloud by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      Which is probably one of the reasons that Muglia works someplace else now. Microsoft's 'cloud strategy' is an oxymoron. Once again, they were playing golf while the market changed.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    3. Re:Cloud by jav1231 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we call it the Internet.

    4. Re:Cloud by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      And like most, they bastardized it beyond recognition.

      Not that it meant much before, but now it means even less.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    5. Re:Cloud by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 1

      This is new MS Cloud# accelerated with .NET! It's awesome extended.

    6. Re:Cloud by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is actually in a tougher position than "oxymoron" would suggest: They have an existing(and quite profitable/lock-in generating) business in server OS licences, Exchange and SQL licences, and CALs. Unlike many of their "cloud" competitors, who are either carving new ground or just making it really easy to buy VPS services from them without a call to sales, almost every MS Cloud success is an MS server loss.

      Since Microsoft offers roughly the same things as "cloud" services that you can buy from them in boxes(yes, Azure may well be architecturally different than the shrinkwrap stuff; but MS cloud and MS boxed software are basically just two ways of getting Exchange, Sharepoint, MSSQL, and .NET/IIIS).

      That is the real challenge facing their cloud people. They can't just sit back and do nothing, lest they eventually be eaten by dirt-cheap linux boxes, managed in chunks of 10,000 by specialized providers, dishing up web services for incrementally more than the cost of electricity and bandwidth. On the other hand, the better they do, the more formerly lucrative MS accounts just stop buying pricey server products and CALs and start buying cheap MS cloud services...

    7. Re:Cloud by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      There's that, and your ability to spin up thousands of disposable Linux licenses (and even Windows licenses) from cloud providers at hardly any cost at all. Cloud is cheap. Vendor lock-in isn't so much non-existent as a different value system entirely.

      Microsoft's grip on its clientele has been systems, end to end ones where you have to make only one convenient phone call, rather than face several vendors pointing fingers at each other. IBM and Oracle know this value, too.

      Yet it's like Henry Ford's Model T. You can buy it in any color you want as long as it's black. In the same way, Azure is Microsoft, and third parties, who once richly sold Microsoft's systems, are shying away from Azure because Microsoft's business models don't make financial sense for them-- in the same way you describe.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    8. Re:Cloud by theshowmecanuck · · Score: 1
      From the Wall Street Journal article on this:

      According to one person familiar with the matter, Messrs. Muglia and Ballmer disagreed about how to allocate resources within the division to new areas that aren't yet delivering big sales, such as cloud computing. Mr. Muglia's group oversees Windows Azure, an online service that lets businesses develop and run applications in Microsoft data centers.

      From the sounds of it, Muglia placed less emphasis on cloud computing than Ballmer wanted him to.

      --
      -- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
    9. Re:Cloud by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      You're right. It's the classic innovators dilemma. Ultimately, they have to do it though because if they don't, somebody else will.

    10. Re:Cloud by bhcompy · · Score: 1

      I was actually thinking that if he was responsible for all the stupid, non-intuitive changes to Server 2008, good riddance.

  2. His name is "Head Muglia" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cool name "Head Muglia"

  3. Last Comment... by D+Ninja · · Score: 2, Funny

    "And don't let the chair hit you in the butt on the way out!" - Ballmer

    1. Re:Last Comment... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "And don't let the chair hit you in the butt on the way out!" - Ballmer

      Well, the chair meme is from someone MS clearly didn't want to lose, while if you RTFA this one was clearly fired by Ballmer outright. Quite fascinating read that memo.

    2. Re:Last Comment... by countSudoku() · · Score: 1

      "And don't let the chair hit you in the head and back on the way out!" - Ballmer

      Let me fix that quote for ya! No charge!

      I gotta say; I love the new Xbox/Kinetic, as well as my trusty (but noisy fanned) original Xbox. Too bad they can't make any other product worth the cardboard they ship them in. Kin, Zune, Slate, WinPhone7, Vista, etc.

      Ballmer should take a cue and do his own exit before the board does this for him. Douche at the wheel is not a good sign of a company preparing to take over another market segment that they fail in consistantly.

      --
      This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
    3. Re:Last Comment... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, the head of a 15 billion dollar a year business unit doesn't get axed unless he did something to piss in Ballmer's cheerios.

    4. Re:Last Comment... by characterZer0 · · Score: 1

      Their keyboards and mice are excellent. I have been using them on my Linux computers for more than a decade. The logo comes off with sandpaper nicely.

      --
      Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
    5. Re:Last Comment... by Rary · · Score: 5, Informative

      ...if you RTFA this one was clearly fired by Ballmer outright. Quite fascinating read that memo.

      Agreed. Here are the really interesting portions of the memo:

      Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB.

      Translation: I sat down with Bob to discuss the direction STB should be going in, and Bob didn't agree with my vision, so I replaced him.

      In conjunction with this leadership change, Bob has decided to leave Microsoft this summer.

      Translation: Bob told me where to shove my vision, and will probably go off to start his own company that kicks our cloudy asses, because let's face it, I'm no visionary leader.

      --

      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

    6. Re:Last Comment... by icebraining · · Score: 1

      My new Microsoft laptop cooler is nice too.

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    7. Re:Last Comment... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 1

      The last MS keyboard I tried mapped the function keys by default to other uses. You had to hit some key combination to return them to function keys. Inconvenient and non-standard, the MS way.

    8. Re:Last Comment... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe he *actually* pissed in Ballmer's Cheerios. That shouldn't be a sackable offence though, since it's likely to make said Cheerios *healthier* than they would otherwise be :-)

      BTW, when did Cheerios lose the capital letter a la xerox?

    9. Re:Last Comment... by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 1

      Ballmer should take a cue and do his own exit before the board does this for him. Douche at the wheel is not a good sign of a company preparing to take over another market segment that they fail in consistantly.

      I think Ballmer is doing an excellent job of doing to Microsoft what should be done to it and should just keep doing it as long as possible.

      --
      Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
    10. Re:Last Comment... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahhh, so Ballmer keeps bringing down Microsoft one step at a time.

      Really... the board of directors should remove that guy from the head. He does not have a vision and is not realistic.

    11. Re:Last Comment... by jdfox · · Score: 1

      BTW, when did Cheerios lose the capital letter a la xerox?

      Apparently it happened sometime between May 18, 2005 and Feb 03, 2006.

      Now we need to establish the perp and the motive.

  4. Slashdot Title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it makes no sense.

    1. Re:Slashdot Title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Running it through Babel Fish's "Slashdot to English" translation, I get this:

      Slashdot: "Microsoft Server and Tools Head Muglia To Step Down"

      English: "Bob Muglia, Head of Microsoft's Server and Tools Division, Is Going To Step Down"

      Then, if you run it through a "Corporate-Speak" filter, you get this:

      Plain English: "Steve Ballmer Fired Bob Muglia"

  5. Close by spun · · Score: 2

    I believe his full name is Tim "Tools Head" Muglia.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  6. Ballmer job security program by joe_bruin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And thus, with the exit of half a dozen of the highest level Microsoft department heads, there is nobody at MS that can take over Ballmer's seat as CEO if the board of directors decides to fire him. He's made it much harder to fire him now.

    1. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What are you babbling about? A nutless monkey could do that guy's job.

    2. Re:Ballmer job security program by OglinTatas · · Score: 4, Funny

      Outside appointment... Is Carly Fiorina still available?

      --
      More music, fewer hits
    3. Re:Ballmer job security program by wowbagger · · Score: 2

      "Is Carly Fiorina still available?"

      I thing Darl McBride should be freeing up soon....

      --
      www.eFax.com are spammers
    4. Re:Ballmer job security program by sexconker · · Score: 1

      And thus, with the exit of half a dozen of the highest level Microsoft department heads, there is nobody at MS that can take over Ballmer's seat as CEO if the board of directors decides to fire him. He's made it much harder to fire him now.

      Any schlubb could do better than Ballmer.
      No one has the credentials and image to seem (to the public and the pundits) to be a good choice.

      The only good choice after Ballmer is to somehow coax Bill back.

    5. Re:Ballmer job security program by jeanph01 · · Score: 1

      Well now this makes sense ! And if this is the case then Microsoft is slowly sinking.

    6. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stephen Sinofsky? Qi Liu? I'd take either of those guys over Muglia as Ballmer's replacement.

    7. Re:Ballmer job security program by Red+Flayer · · Score: 1

      And thus we see the fruits of the labors of Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs begin to ripen.

      Once they complete their infiltration of the MS Board of Trustees, no one will be able to stop the BTC (Black Turtleneck Crew) from taking over all of Silicon Valley.

      And verily, so spake the Lords (all praise to the Lords) that the treasures of Redmond be distributed among their conquerors thusly:

      Server operating systems and tools to He of the Swift Vessel;
      Accessories and consumer devices to the Paragon of Tech Pop Culture;
      Gaming to They of Childish Toys in the Land of Sudoku;
      All that remains shall be consigned to eternal Blue Screen of Death in the ever-burning butane flames of Redmond.

      Thus spake the true Lords of Technomancy. From bit to byte, zero to one, hallowed be the Lords.

      Or something like that. I was just eavesdropping on the worshippers, I may be a little off in recollection.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    8. Re:Ballmer job security program by gbjbaanb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      cue comments regarding my goldfish being a better CEO than Ballmer.... no, what this means is that the other executives in their playroom don't have anyone with "I'm next" on their hat, so that (like my goldfish really) means they won't be able to decide who to choose as a replacement, and so Ballmer stays.

      Of course, anyone who likes Android, Apple or well, anything that isn't Microsoft, should be overjoyed at this news. MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

      Mind you, one thing that comes to mind is the quality of Bob Muglia. The man that once said to the Seattle Times, with a straight face, "We're going to increase quality in Windows Vista by firing all our quality assurance people!"

      Also, it appears this has been brewing for a few months. From minimsft blog:
      Somewhat trustworthy source: All BobMu's org's 10s will not see another review cycle. Terminated in groups of under 500 each month to avoid Warn. Can anyone confirm?

      Friday, October 22, 2010 7:54:00 PM

      Chances are the next CEO will be Kevin Turner, a bean counter like none other (apparently). Just the kind of guy to 'turn round' Microsoft's fortunes by basically reducing the number of beans to count. Or, as someone said on that msft blog: KT CEO - that will be a nice touch indeed - walmarting of Microsoft-- how appropriate

    9. Re:Ballmer job security program by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      If and that is a big big IF things ever got bad enough at Microsoft for the board to replace Ballmer involuntarily Bill Gates would probably return as an interim CEO.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    10. Re:Ballmer job security program by mswhippingboy · · Score: 1

      It would be interesting to see if BG can come back and kick Jobs a second time.

      --
      Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
    11. Re:Ballmer job security program by mswhippingboy · · Score: 2

      Sorry, I what I meant was:
      It would be interesting to see if BG can come back and kick Jobs' butt a second time.

      --
      Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
    12. Re:Ballmer job security program by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      with the exit of half a dozen of the highest level Microsoft department heads

      Well, if I had been at MS for 23 years, the last half of that as the head of a major dept (salary+stock+ret plan=retiring very comfortably), I'd be thinking about quitting/retiring as well. Fuck what Steve or Bill wants or needs.

    13. Re:Ballmer job security program by Capt.DrumkenBum · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Outside appointment... Is Carly Fiorina still available?

      Oh yes please! Look what she did with HP, a company that made a few good products, now just imaging how fast she could drive Microsoft into the ground. :)

      --
      If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
    14. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you babbling about? A nutless monkey could do that guy's job.

      I thought a nutless monkey WAS doing his job...

    15. Re:Ballmer job security program by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Dammit!!!! You beat me to the punch!

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    16. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sorry, I what I meant was:

      It would be interesting to see if BG can come back and kick Jobs' butt a second time.

      Does it REALLY matter WHERE he kicks him?

    17. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, a competent executive is needed to do that particular job. Instead, Gates left a nutless monkey in charge, and anyone who can read a stock chart can see the result.

    18. Re:Ballmer job security program by Weegee_101 · · Score: 2

      Of course, anyone who likes Android, Apple or well, anything that isn't Microsoft, should be overjoyed at this news. MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

      I love Mac OS X, I think my Android phone is fantastic, and I've been a Linux advocate for years, but I'm not thrilled at this news at all. It doesn't matter where you work, the common workstation has Microsoft products on it and STB is the last business unit of Microsoft that has been putting out good stuff consistently. If Microsoft goes belly up it will have a negative effect on the technology industry by costing businesses tons of money to readjust, and anything that threatens the tech industry threatens my chance of having fun toys like Apple computers, Android phones, or home servers I can run Linux on, by threatening my source of income.

      Seriously people, Microsoft products generally stink, but a sudden or quick change of the status quo can mean negative things for the entire industry. The very slow, gradual failure that Microsoft has been going through these past few years (thanks to successes the of STB) are a good way for it to disappear.

    19. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Somehow, the vision of a Napoleon Dynamite-ish BillG trying to kick ANYONE with his awesome kung fu skills comes to mind.

    20. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > If Microsoft goes belly up it will have a negative effect on the technology industry by costing businesses tons of money to readjust

      In what way will MS going belly up stop your Windows XP or Windows 7 computers working ?

      If MS has a kill switch so that their failure means that computers stop working then you must switch _NOW_ rather than risk having to pay some ransom or having to switch overnight at some unplanned time.

      If the computers do not stop working when MS fails then the cost to businesses over a two or three year period will probably be less than what they would have to pay MS for the privilege of running Windows/Office.

    21. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Chances are the next CEO will be Kevin Turner, a bean counter

      Company go through 4 stages:

      1) They are run by their owners (Bill Gates)
      2) They are run by managers (Ballmer)
      3) They are run by accountants (Kevin Turner?)
      4) They are run by lawyers (receivers)

    22. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course, anyone who likes Android, Apple or well, anything that isn't Microsoft, should be overjoyed at this news. MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

      I agree - and neither do the institutional clients, the morons who bought 8 million Kinects, the fools who forked out money for Windows 7, all their partners who bundle Microsft products with their product lines and ...

      Don't get my wrong, I don't think MS is a great (or even well run) company, but to call them dead is to ignore how many years they have where they can push their weight around. And they can survive - they might not be the biggest bully in the park in 10 years, but it doesn't seem like they will end up like Bell Labs.

    23. Re:Ballmer job security program by Swampash · · Score: 1

      Ahhh, nothing like a good ol' Stalinist purge. I presume that very shortly we'll see shocking reports of how Ozzie and Muglia were RESPONSIBLE for all of Microsoft's huge fuckups...

    24. Re:Ballmer job security program by Alex+Belits · · Score: 1

      Look what Rick Belluzzo did to HP and SGI -- but then caused no harm to Microsoft while working there.

      Of course, a more realistic explanation is that he worked for Microsoft all along.

      --
      Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
    25. Re:Ballmer job security program by Alex+Belits · · Score: 0

      Another paid Microsoft advocate.

      Seriously, THAT talking point was dead before Microsoft invented it.

      --
      Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
    26. Re:Ballmer job security program by oldhack · · Score: 1

      Ha! I, never, ever, in a million years, would have thought I might root for Billy boy.

      --
      Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    27. Re:Ballmer job security program by mjwx · · Score: 1

      I love Mac OS X, [snip] and I've been a Linux advocate for years,

      Another paid Microsoft advocate.

      Go easy on him, he's clearly a very confused individual.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    28. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MS dead? Hardly. Remember the time when Apple had gone completely off radar and then started to rise & shine again when they rehired Jobs? Microsoft is the same - they have solid ground, great people working for them, just the "head" sucks. Replace the head with a visionary (hell, bring back Gates!) and soon MS would dominate the world once more.

    29. Re:Ballmer job security program by Tom · · Score: 1

      MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

      The problem with the dinosaur metaphor is and always has been, that we are lacking a meteor.

      I'd rather link it to a beached whale - it is certainly dead, but it will take a while to die, and while it does it is dangerous to come near it.

      And don't forget that a juggernaut like this doesn't just go away. There will be the stench of rotting whale meat for a long time. When they finally go belly-up, there will be some assets that they can sell off, like the licenses to windows, office, etc.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    30. Re:Ballmer job security program by gtall · · Score: 0

      I know, that's why I'm rooting for her to take over. Ballmer is a tough act to follow but I think she can drag them down even faster and put MS out of our misery.

    31. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most MS employees (and there are a lot of us on here) would agree that most of these "retirings" have been for the better. The fiefdoms need to be torn down, and this is part of it. You can't compete against a company with a king who rules by the mantra "because I fucking said so" when you are a loosely coupled collection on corporate nation-states with an endemic case of "not-invented-here".

      Why do you think you see so much internal MS stuff being leaked? Its not some grand corporate astroturfing campaign of vaporware and internal "memos". Its employees who do it on their own, presumably in the hope that whatever project they're sinking their blood sweat and tears into actually sees the light of day, when middle managers and divisional managers are fighting every day to keep their little kingdom intact.

    32. Re:Ballmer job security program by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      MS still makes profit, the problem is that MS lacks vision. While they created semi-successful products like Xbox under his watch, they haven't really gained ground in new markets. For all the success of Xbox, the product overall is still in the red and may never truly break even. They've fall behind Apple and Android in consumer products. They've barely made a dent in Google for search. They had to give up against Facebook, etc. While focusing on things other than their core products, they slipped and delivered a Vista so troubled that the best thing most people have said about Windows 7 is that it didn't suck as much as Vista.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    33. Re:Ballmer job security program by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

      Yeah, right. And in 2012, we're going to have a political revival in the US, with uh, a flying monkey elected to the White House who speaks Greek, Russian, and three dialects of Mandrin.

      So, simple question: what is the desktop alternative to Windows?

      Wrong - whatever your answer was. There is no alternative, simply because there is nothing which can be simply migrated to. Windows is the single clear migration path from Windows.

      How about alternatives for:

      * Sharepoint (which has been getting deployed new since - at least? - 2003)
      * Network AD infrastructure. Don't tell me or : can they be extended at the schema level by Exchange and a million other products out there which do so, and "just work"?
      * Legacy desktop applications. WINE might do one or two decently, but then they're out in the cold if they need some sort of special interconnect/compatibility: few people use "just Word" or "just MS Office" - they use it with something else.

      There will be years and years of support behind these products. People are still moving to them. Microsoft is still a very profitable company with their current product portfolio, and there are nontrivial improvements over their previous generation in the works as we speak.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    34. Re:Ballmer job security program by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      alternative to the PC desktop. You're thinking in terms of how things were, not how things will be.

      Look at those smartphones - not one uses Windows Desktop. Even MS says they're the future of computing devices, which is why they're so desperate to get market share.

      Legacy apps - sure these will be around for a while, but will increasingly become virtualised (ie run on a server and accessed remotely via Citrix/RDP/screen scrapers even - just like the old mainframe apps that I used to write scrapers for so they could appear as nice Windows apps whilst still running unchanged). Even Exchange could be replaced with Google apps for Enterprise. That might be relatively primitive compared to the full exchange ecosystem, btu how many users actually uses all that Exchange-provided functionality, and do you really think Google is going to sit back and say "job done" with what they provide, or are they going to continually improve their offerings to the point where its a serious alternative. When, not if, do you think that will happen?

      There will be years of support, but you're missing the point - there's still support behind COBOL apps and AS/400 servers, but the focus of new dev isn't with those systems is it. Pretty soon (if not already) the focus of new apps will be with more 'mobile' systems, and Windows will be considered a legacy system in itself.

      So, you stick your head in the sand, stick your fingers in your ears, and keep thinking that nobody ever gets fired for buying Microsoft (you might have heard that phrase in the past)

    35. Re:Ballmer job security program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there is a huge difference between 'consumer electronics' (ie what the phone craze is) and desktops. corporate desktops have been, for a long time, the microsoft bread and butter. they've pulled into the gaming and consumer market relatively recently: they now dominate the gaming market in almost every regard - PC and console both. they'll eventually get handhelds 'right' too, i'm afraid.

      maybe i'm wrong and desktops are dinosaurs, but i suspect most people feel more comfortable in front of a keyboard and mouse, with a large display, when they have to do more than look up quick information in contacts. 'desktops' will be here for a long time coming, as will all the new infrastructure put in place to make centralized management thereof somewhat easier (eg. xendesktop).

  7. By Google. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Like most new markets MS enters, 'the Cloud' was firmly established by the time MS got there.

    Firmly established by Google.

    I'm the head network admin for a medium sized city govt in the western US (pop 250K) and we just made the decision to outsource our entire municipal government email and office suite for more than 1200 city employees to Google Business Solutions and completely ditch MS Exchange and Office totally. It's going to cost less than our annual MS Software Assurance fees.

    1. Re:By Google. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It IS cheaper, but it certainly can't do as much (yet). The Google solutions are barely fit for home users (and yes, I've used them).

      In this case, you sort of get what you pay for. It will be interesting to see what your city gov. employees do when they need to print a contract or something.

    2. Re:By Google. by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2

      Firmly established by Google.

      Hardly. The cloud concept and name had been around long before Google came on the scene. Google also did what Microsoft often do and bought themselves into the game when they purchased the company Upstartle for the word processor and technology from 2Web Technologies for the spreadsheet.

      Now I don't have any problems doing this, and I think they did a good job integrating the two systems together. But don't give them the credit for this revolution.

    3. Re:By Google. by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Might could be, but often time MS bloats its products with features that you don't need, then expects you to pay for them in terms of cost and performance.

    4. Re:By Google. by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 1

      It will be interesting to see what your city gov. employees do when they need to print a contract or something.

      They can always use the free Office viewer applications made by Microsoft. Still, I can't see user satisfaction being particularly high going with a cloud solution that doesn't offer much in the way of advanced features. This is obviously a decision made by people who don't actually use Office apps much.

      Surely the better solution would be to go with OpenOffice. Or you could still use Microsoft Office, but just don't upgrade to every version that comes out. At my company, we went from Office 97 to 2003 to 2010. Going from 97 to 2003, people hardly noticed the difference!

    5. Re:By Google. by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 1

      Now I don't have any problems doing this

      Oops. I meant I have no problems with Google doing this. Obviously I didn't make Google Docs myself!

  8. Tools Head? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

    I believe his full name is Tim "Tools Head" Muglia.

    10,000 years ago, when I was still in High School, we had pot heads, crack heads, but no tools heads. We just called them all collectively "heads."

    "Ya see that guy over there? He does 'tools.' If you need some 'tools', go to the 'tools head'."

    "Wanna do some 'tools'?"

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  9. Tools by newsman220 · · Score: 2

    He was in charge of tools. Heh Heh.

    1. Re:Tools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I'm on da Tools squad."
      "You ARE da Tools squad!"

    2. Re:Tools by EnsilZah · · Score: 1

      How is it that he got outranked by Ballmer then?

  10. Encom by BumpyCarrot · · Score: 1

    Who fights for the users? (I know, I know... RMS)

    --
    Do you see what I did there?
  11. Overheard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "But Steve, you can't run a Win 8 server with a Kinect!--You just can't!"

    "Bob, you are the weakest link, goodbye!"

  12. my favorite MS Servers and Tools product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Services and Tools For Unix, their POSIX/Windows interop product. So they could offer Linux STFU, etc.

  13. from Bill to Bob by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From: Bill Gates

    Cc: Bob Muglia

    "I am reading about the Gateway adoption of the Corel software. I am interested to understand what this means better and how it relates to any contracts we have with them". link

    "Why would the Office group be giving out the Office 2000 formats to competitors? To me this seems crazy" link

    "One thing we have got to change is our strategy — allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by OTHER PEOPLES BROWSERS is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.

    We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

    "Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to doing something to destroy Windows.

    "I would be glad to explain at greater length.

    "Likewise this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well. link

  14. I guess they dont like opinions at M$ by hesaigo999ca · · Score: 1

    I guess if you have an opinion at M$ that is not the same as them, you can't work there?