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Pondering the Future of a Re-Org'd Microsoft
puddingebola writes "This story from Forbes touches on Steve Ballmer's announcement that Microsoft will reorganize. From the article, 'Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears to be planning a major reorganization. His apparent objective is to help the company move toward becoming a "devices and services company," as presented in the company's annual shareholder letter last October.' What follows is an analysis of the current state of Microsoft's current ventures: shrinking PC sales, Nokia management calling for a change of course, Office 360 lagging, a $1 Billion investment in Nook, the losses on Xbox. Once again, if Microsoft starts to lose the revenue of Windows and Office, how long does the boat float? And what of the suggestion, on the verge of another update in the Xbox console, that Microsoft should sell the Xbox division?"
What is "Office 360" is that Microsoft office for the X-Box? Sounds like input would be pretty slow.
How about just stopping the crappy product releases? Windows 8 is a joke, the Xbox 360 is over engineered, your server product make me laugh because Linux can do everything for free and better. When will Microsoft wake up the fact they release crap, users are getting fed up with it. They're losing market share because finally the average user is noticing that better, cheaper and more reliable software and hardware exist. The key to Microsoft becoming successful is to just reboot itself and start turning out high quality products.
Brilliant move! De-emphasize the divisions that bring in the big bucks *and* have a unique advantage over competitors for legacy reasons, while placing even more emphasis on the divisions that lose money and have mediocre market share.
Seriously, this move by Ballmer is about the direct opposite of what a business in transition should do. I wonder how much longer before the stockholders finally kick him out.
To a first approximation, Microsoft *is* Windows and Office. That's what keeps everyone locked in. That's what brings in the big volume licenses. Cede that, and the rest of the edifice collapses entirely. Ballmer might not like it, but Microsoft is a software company and lives or dies on desktop software. The truth is that they have to transition to a more mature company model, paying dividends and making a lot fewer splashes. They aren't ever going to be hip and cool and revolutionary. And their customers don't want them to be.
[Steve Ballmer's] objective is to help the company move toward becoming a "devices and services company,"
Maybe he can deliver me a chair?
Ballmer: "Guys, MS will live its biggest reorganization ever: I resign."
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The only thing inhibiting Microsoft's growth is incompetence at the top.
Because he was grandfathered in. The guy has no technical or business knowledge and the only reason he has anything to do with Microsoft is because he was lucky enough to have known Bill Gates and Paul Allen when they were forming the company.
This article did not discuss the reorganization plans. Instead it whined and complained about Microsoft's poor sales performance.
You somehow missed the start of last decade, when market started to become global.
From an employer's perspective, the difference between an US-based remote worker and an India-based remote worker is the salary (to a greater extent) and cultural differences (to a smaller extent, includes English proficiency). Speed of communication is just as good (instantaneous regardless of where you are) and cheap (VoIP).
Apart from some relatively small cultural differences (which can be ignored with little effort), everything else is advantageous for the India-based worker: smaller salary, less pretentious, able and willing to work overtime for insignificant compensation, etc. Even if Quality of Work might (arguably) be lower, you can get 5 IN workers for half the price of an US worker and (arguably) have quantity offset quality. But to date, my 10+ years global workforce experience tells me that IN-based work quality is about 60-70% of US-based quality (valid for coding and support, YMMV) for a much, much lower salary. Mexico, for that matter, is worse than that (mainly due to laziness; they're smart but hellishly lazy).
One more thing to mention: the horrible Indian accent and general incompetence you sometimes encounter when calling support has a very simple root cause: the employer got overly greedy and went for the cheapest outsourcing company they found. their mindset was: "why pay 1/4 of the salary and have good customer service when we can pay 1/7 of the salary and fuck our customers?" - Dilbert method FTW.
Note: My global workforce and outsourcing experience covers USA, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Chile, Mexico, India, Romania, China, Singapore, Japan and Egypt. I could literally write a short novel about each.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
VB6 migration path to VB.net: Fuck you. Recode.
Winforms to Web: Fuck you. Recode.
Silverlight to WPF: Fuck you. Recode.
WPF to anything:Take a guess.
Microsoft Office interface: Fuck you. Retrain.
Windows interface: Fuck you. Retrain.
Old Windows phone: Fuck you.
New Windows phone: Maybe we'll let your app on our store, and by the way. Fuck you.
Why anybody, at this point, would invest *any* time in any windows language or platform is beyone me. Think Android. Think iOS.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I don't think IBM should take your insults lying down. IBM knew when to shift. They may not be high-profile in the PC world anymore, but they've certainly spun off their product lines to companies that could handle them. Meanwhile, IBM themselves haven't exactly disappeared. A quick cut-and-paste from Wikipedia: "In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the #2 largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees (433,362),[7] the #4 largest in terms of market capitalization,[8] the #9 most profitable,[9] and the #19 largest firm in terms of revenue.[10] Globally, the company was ranked the #31 largest in terms of revenue by Forbes for 2011.[11][12] Other rankings for 2011/2012 include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #1 green company worldwide (Newsweek), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #2 most respected company (Barron's), #5 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).[13]"
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
As a naive individual with little to no business knowledge or training, could somebody please explain how Steve Ballmer is still CEO of Microsoft?
I would surmise it is a combination of the following:
* Balmer is among the largest shareholders in the company and good buddies with his predecessor who is the largest shareholder and Chairman
*Microsoft has a relatively unimpressive and compliant board largely hand picked by Bill Gates and Balmer
*The fact that despite their problems the company remains hugely profitable which makes it harder for the board to complain even if they were inclined to do so.
*The company's large market cap and strong cash position make them a very unattractive target for a buyout and difficult for activist investors
*There are credible rumors that Balmer culls potential rivals within the company
I'm sure there are other reasons but those are probably among the bigger reasons.
Microsoft needs to hire Ballmer a personal chauffeur to drive him around. Hans Reiser would be the perfect man for the job. He's tanned, rested and experienced.
They also should buy him a house . . . right next to John McAfee would be perfect. That seems to have worked before . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Apple is sometimes described as a company that came back from the brink, but for the most part still do what they always did: upper-middle-end computer-driven consumer hardware. IBM went from mostly hardware to mostly services.
I'd disagree - I think Apple did essentially re-invent itself when it switched from Apple Computer to Apple back in '07.
It realized it's future was mobile devices, and despite it's massively profitable iPod franchise, effectively cannibalized it completely with the touch-based offerings, iPhone and iPad. Prior to this change Apple was a Mac/iPod company, afterwards it was the iPhone company (and still is).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Case in point, this past week my business partner has spent roughly 20 hours upgrading to windows 8 and trying to get Office 2013 to work on her PC. That's 20 hours not spent working on client projects. And we have projects to work on so Windows 8 + Office 2013 have cost us $2000. Meanwhile this week I've worked 20+ hours on projects on my Mac. Just as I have for 10 years now. Yes I know I pay premium upfront for Apple products, but they've stayed out of my way and let me get work done.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.