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Satya Nadella At Six Months: Grading Microsoft's New CEO
snydeq writes The future emerging for Microsoft under Nadella is a mixed bag of hope and turmoil, writes Woody Leonhard in his review of Nadella's first fix months at the helm of Microsoft. "When Nadella took over, Microsoft was mired in the aftermath of a lengthy and ultimately unpopular reign by longtime CEO — and Microsoft majority shareholder — Steve Ballmer. Given the constraint of that checkered past, some might argue that Nadella hasn't had enough time to make his imprint on every aspect of Microsoft. Yet there have been many changes already under Nadella's watch, and patterns are certainly emerging as to the kind of company Microsoft will be in the years ahead." Leadership, product lines, financials — Nadella's scorecard shows strong strategic leadership, particularly around the cloud, but Windows and devices are murky at best, with Microsoft employees "taking it in the shorts, and not only in Finland."
Why doesn't somebody tell me these things?
Well if MS can make mobile devices more productive for the businesses ... then there's something good coming out of new CEO.
Usability next Windows does matter a lot, even with this mobile and cloud focus. The PC platform is starting to recover a bit, mostly due to Windows XP demise.
The importance of Microsoft is a thing of the past. It has been eclipsed in all major areas except its Office software. It has tried frantically to wedge its foot in the door in such disparate areas as phones, games, personal electronics, media, and finance. It has been out-competed at every turn by other, more agile and newer, companies. It is simply a matter of time before most people life their lives free of the Microsoft parasite and unless you are a corporate lackey, you can actually do so right now.
Somebody is off their meds again.
CEO — and Microsoft majority shareholder — Steve Ballmer.
Ballmer doesn't hold a majority stake in Microsoft. In fact, no one does. Ballmer holds the largest individual stake, but his stake is in single digits as a percentage.
It's the one product they have that is Compatible.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
How hard can it be to be replace Ballmer? Vista, Zune, Media Center and Metro. Half of them really bad, the other two (Zune and MCE) were abandonned. MCE was a really good product (still using it on one of my machines), Zune could have been something too.
They need to innovate, Tablets are replacing laptops, computers are fast enough to not need replacing (Mine is around 7y old) and competing office suites are good enough to replace Office in most cases. That means less Windows & Office licenses in the consumer market (beginning to change in the business market too)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Given Nadella's short time so far as Microsoft CEO, some might argue that it would be stupid to try to review his progress so far. He hasn't had time enough to supervise a whole release cycle of Microsoft's most important products (not Windows nor XBox nor Office), but who says it would be a pathetic attempt at click-bait to write some nonsense about what he's done so far. Corporate culture takes a decade to change in an organization as large as Microsoft, but let's go ahead and scribble down whatever stupid thoughts pop into my head. There's no statistically significant evidence, but let's grab some random noise off the latest data and pretend like it makes a meaningful trend. We can't see the path forward, but I don't know why I shouldn't make a blend of wishful thinking, delusional futurecasting and gibberish to create a document that will drive ad revenue. The products of Microsoft are varied and numerous in amount. One thing they produce is Windows, or as the Indians call it, "Maize". In conclusion, Microsoft is a land of contrasts.
[The car analogy is left to the astute reader].
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The new CEO makes Ballmer look like a genius and a far sighted visionary.
What I find particularly interesting is that your argument applies, pretty much word for word, to Mozilla just as well as it applies to Microsoft.
This probably shouldn't be surprising, though. Mozilla arose as a response to Microsoft's 1990s-era tactics. Mozilla's only remaining product that still sees any use, the desktop version of Firefox, was meant to compete directly with Internet Explorer back when it was the dominant browser. As the Microsoft of the 1990s has slowly faded, morphing into the rather different organization that it is now, the driving force behind Mozilla has lessened.
This may explain why Mozilla is such a mess right now. Like Microsoft, their cause is gone, and they're being out-competed at every step by Apple, Google, and other organizations. Their new products are me-too responses to what others have been successful at doing years earlier. They've trashed their existing products through horrendously botched UI redesigns. Their leadership and mission is in turmoil. There has been one scandal after another, from all those shenanigans involving their former CEO offending certain small but vocal groups to the recent MDN email and password data leak.
While some may have seen Microsoft and Mozilla as opposites, today I think they're more alike than they are different. They're both becoming increasingly irrelevant in a fast-changing world that really has no need for either of them. And neither really knows how to compete in this very different landscape.
apple should charge for OSX on any pc and what will happen if windows 9 flops??
Apples hardware choice is way to limited and there will be a lot of good hardware out there that will need a good OS. Linux is too scattered and is lacking apps that you can get on PC and MAC.
MS needs to make windows 9 good and forget about windows 8.
Too early to try to measure 'success'.
shows strong strategic leadership, particularly around the cloud
So far there isn't anything particularly different about his time there as far as degree of success in the 'cloud' market. In terms of Azure, it's a tricky proposition for a company that is ostensibly a high-margin company. Going toe to toe with Amazon, a company that has repeatedly shown it is not shy about operating on margins so thin they are at high risk of actually operating at loss in a given quarter (I would say the same thing about IBM's foray into the space).
I suspect Windows is there to stay for the foreseeable future (it is about the only product they have with a pretty proven market acceptance that is also consistently profitable). Devices I think will go away, as it should. They let Google and Apple get ahead in the broad ecosystem strategy and the vertically integrated strategy respectively, leaving no room for MS really. MS has to figure out how to somehow undercut Android cost for partners or give up on owning the underlying platform. Either way making devices in house will not be winning them any favors, Apple has shown the most success and the most loyalty and yet their share still is going down in the face of the huge ecosystem of android vendors.
xBox would make more money as something sold to a third party, who probably would do better with it than microsoft has.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I was an MS employee for 10 years (roughly from the mid-90's to the mid-00's).
It is a company that is fundamentally dysfunctional, especially in the way it identifies its top performers.
Nadella rose to the top under that system. There is no way he is the man to fix it.
A few years ago I had a lapse in judgement and interviewed to go back. What I saw was scary. The technical questions were way too easy. I suspect that the employees asking them found them hard. The hiring manager was a Director and had trouble understanding moderately clever/optimized solutions to CS200 problems. Portions of the interview process that dealt with management style, corporate culture and cultural fit left me with the impression that things had gotten way worse since I'd left as far as micromanagement and internal politics went.
In the end they made me an insulting offer, which in retrospect I am eternally grateful for because it was really easy to turn down without any second thoughts whatsoever.
They can certainly both be priorities, but they can't both be first - at some point, there will be circumstances that require one of these gets prioritized ahead of the other.
#DeleteChrome
Dude, you've cracked. Turn off the computer, put down the copy of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and go lay down for awhile. Deep breaths. Relax.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
If they don't, where is the money (viz income) going to come from in the Operating System space?
Windows is going to be a cash cow for some time to come. I really don't see that changing even with the debacle that is Windows 8.
Satya is IMHO between a rock and a hard place. Balmer has left him up shit creek without a paddle.
Not really because he has one HUGE card he can play. Microsoft has approximately $100 billion in cash and cash equivalents. They can simply buy other companies if their core business starts to erode faster than they can build up new businesses. They have almost enough cash to buy both General Motors and Ford at their current market caps. They could buy Hewlett Packard in cash and have enough left over to buy Best Buy, Blackberry, and the wildly overpriced Tesla Motors.
Microsoft may have serious problems in their Windows and Office business but they are by no means stuck for options if they care to exercise them.
Actually, it thinks its self medication is working.
From 18,000 job cuts m$ has a fine leader at the helm. Maybe we can see more reasons to flush the H1B visa?
You forgot to wave your arms in the air while you were running around yelling "Fire! Fire!".
And some of there webcams. (the Windows drivers suck, but the hardware is quite nice on Linux)
Well, even Feyd Rautha looked good after the Beast Rabban, so I don't know what that proves. Maybe Microsoft planned it this way. The last few years have been such a disaster with Windows 8 and Windows Phone that almost anyone would look good. All the new CEO really needs to do is get rid of Win8's worst features, which may have been part of the plan. I'm not sure what the new guy (I can't ever remember his name - I want to write Nutella) has actually done. He's pretended to like open source, but MS has done that before.
Nadella is a puppet as long as Gates and Ballmer on on the board of directors. And I'm not sure Bill would have allowed a true renegade to take over the CEO position anyway.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Plan Scare-the-crap-out-of-idiots is proceeding nicely.
Time to enact plan Separate-scared-idiot-from-money! Alex Jones Ads for Ebola-Stop are Go!
Plan name-plans-with-names-to-hide-their-real-purpose has been delayed pending Nancy's return from vay-cay.
Actually I think its business as usual with Microsoft. I think that nothing can be done about Windows 8 at this point. Its another Vista failure and Microsoft will be quick about moving beyond it ASAP. Xbox side of Microsoft is leaning itself out and so I suspect to see a aggressive marketing strategy this Fall. Microsoft's biggest failure is not Windows 8 but rather Windows phone. I doubt this will turn around and Microsoft will have to decide if doing phones directly or even indirectly is possible.
This is a big deal because while Google does not make money on Android per say. It does make ad revenue from its OS and hardware partners. Apple is of course Apple and while they may not be the best selling anymore or have the smartphone market exclusive they used to. They have a following of wealthier consumers who will continue to feed their coffers. Microsoft is trying the bottom feeders of the smartphone world and that won't fix what is wrong. I think you really have to say that Microsoft has a lot of question marks on many of its core services and products. Its not as though most of those products are going away or that Microsoft is in some serious financial trouble. But Nadella has some real work cut out for him in order to lean out and re focus Microsoft from a former CEO bent only on being more like Apple. The question is, how long will Microsoft board give Nadella to fix Microsoft?
No longer are immigrants an underclass, now they can take over upper level management. I am all for this democratization. We need to encourage immigrants to enter into even more powerful positions. Woudn't it be great if the CNBC staff of talking heads were all replaced by illegal immigrant gang members. What about congress. Perhaps we could replace Nancy Polossi (sp) with an illegal. After all it is not fair that Nacy should have this position of leadership just based on the fact that she and her family has been in the USA forever. By abdicating her position to an undocumented migrant she would be showing that she really does care about the disadvantaged minorities.
Why do we allow indians to enter the USA, when India does not allow Bangledeshies to enter India. I know because Indians have balls, and USians do not. It is only right that the strong should take over the weak.
-Elect and illegal immigrant to congress today.
I'm on my second 5-button Intellipoint mouse. The software for programming the buttons is so much better than any of the competitors I've tried. Really wish they hadn't killed it. Apparently I'm not alone, they go for a premium on ebay.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
As long as everyone gives 110 percent, both can come first!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Microsoft, for some reason is struggling to let go of its old business model.
Investing in emerging economies such as India is literally an "all in" gamble.
The new CEO isn' t a politically correct figure head. You got that wrong, he's an Indian diplomat. Microsoft is making a long range bet to secure and monopolise the Indian market on all levels. From the consumer to the workforce. They cannot let go of the old business model that was successful in 90s and what made them what they are today.
Ultimately (IMO), this is doomed to failure. Already, Linux and other FOSS projects are making an impact in that market they hope to secure, particularly with the consumer base (however you do see a high number of windows phones).
This IMO is what is happening with Microsoft and being ignorant to the dark side of the Indian culture (disloyalty, dishonesty, theft and corruption) will be their undoing. As this emergence to a more civil degree appears to be lagging.
It most certainly can turn a company around for the better. Layoffs can improve focus and actually increase morale over time as long as their done right. We'll have to wait and see if MS does theirs correctly.
It's a bit ironic to me that in trying to aim for the future, Microsoft is taking for granted and ultimately risking the core audience on which they've had a solid lock for the past twenty years.
That was my big take away from the article as well.
There are exactly two major Microsoft product lines I have any interest in, either professionally or personally: Windows and Office. One remains by far the most flexible platform for a general purpose computing device today. The other remains the standard for word processing and spreadsheets. All of these are useful to me almost every day.
However, I really have no interest in "the cloud" for everyday computing needs. As I've suggested many times, I think Microsoft really missed a trick by chasing the cloud hype instead of pushing "private clouds" -- a model with very practical arguments in its favour and where their breadth of products would have given them a distinct advantage over any other major tech firm today. But storing all my personal stuff or my sensitive business documents off-site, accessed over inherently unreliable and slow connections, with unknown security and privacy implications? I assumed that was a joke until I realised big businesses weren't laughing.
Similarly, I have no interest in paying recurring revenues for software that isn't either constantly adding significant value or dramatically better than anything I can get as a one-off purchase. For me personally, no software has ever met that benchmark so far. I do use properly licensed copies of things like MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite, and I would and did happily pay for major upgrades that added significant value from time to time. But a rental model for everyday software that is so stagnant they couldn't get people to upgrade any other way? No thanks. There were and are many things these software companies could do that would be worth a lot of money to me, but why would they bother when they can just phone it in and rely on the lock-in lemmings to keep their bank account topped up anyway?
And I have even less interest in half-baked devices with ambiguous use cases. I'm typing this on a real keyboard, with a real mouse next to me, and a set of monitors that would make your puny 300+dpi tabletconvertiblenettopsurface with its physically small screen cry. Every now and then I have to suffer using a laptop in a meeting, and even the good ones are so pathetic compared to real workstations in every possible respect except portability that I cry. Nadella is welcome to promote a word processor running on a device with no keyboard. I'll take my 100ish error-free wpm typing speed and punctuation I can input with fewer than three not-real-key presses, thanks.
I think all of the above are basically hype-driven rather than benefit-driven. The cloud has some advantages, but they are oversold. Recurring revenues will be great until the benefits almost inevitably start to tail off compared to what people got before, the bean counters start protesting, and some young upstart company becomes the next Microsoft by adopting the radical policy of making useful software and selling it without a rental EULA full of catches. And these multi-purpose tablet/laptop hybrids are just Jacks of all trades so far: they lack the convenience of a phone or small tablet, and they cost significantly more than a proper laptop of otherwise similar spec with little practical advantage unless you really need touch-based input (which almost nothing running on such hardware today actually does).
So a strategy based on this will probably be very successful in the short term, when purchasing decisions made by suits at Fortune 500 companies are still driven by the hype, but if^Wwhen the correction happens -- and in some cases there are already signs that the hype is fading, and with hybrid devices it's not clear they will ever really take off in the first place -- Microsoft is going to be a mighty big ship to steer on a radically different course, with its two biggest engines poorly maintained and running well below capacity.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Also, if you're a gamer you have to use MS. Dev tools on all other platforms are at best a "meh" compared to those on MS as well, with the worst being Eclipse, and the next worst being xcode.
"... review of Nadella's first fix months at the helm of Microsoft..."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Fire everyone and become a VC, buy a Fortune 200 company every year, suck it dry and throw away the husk. Move on to the next one.
The guy has only been on the job 6 months and we want to give him a report card. Can't we at least wait one year? Changing a large corporation is like turning an oil tanker, you have to plan far ahead, take your time, and be patient.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
MSFT stock is at its highest since 2000.
Parent is not wrong. Hyperbolic, but not wrong. Megalithic interests are being blindly (or at least unquestioningly, uncritically, and unendingly) worshiped while actively working against and to destroy the 99.9% (or however you wish to frame it).
What this generation seems to miss: WHY doesn't socialism work? WHY is it so feared? WHY is it to be despised?
A: It's just an excuse for phony make-believe "capitalists" to run amok, take over, and perch themselves high atop where responsibility,
accountability, decency, and respectability can be avoided.
It is no mystery; the entire premise of the U.S. is it is a great experiment that must be VIGILANTLY defended.
Say what you will about rich white slave-owners and how there never was such an ideal situation that ever remotely lived up to
any claimed "morals" but you cannot ignore: they knew what they were escaping.
They knew what the score was. They knew what
would inevitably happen and tried to warn people..
Ad hominem attacks will not solve any problem. Debate the parent poster and make yourself useful, or kindly STFU please. YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
That's not The Problem. There's no single The Problem. There are lots of problems, including an obesity epidemic(Hence the sugary soda ban in NYC).
The biggest problem we have right now is that we have a bunch of people who are intellectually unserious and cling to various pop psychology or pop philosophy memes and claim that is the absolute truth to solving all of our problems. I'm not talking about just idiots on message boards, comment threads, on HAM radio, etc. I'm talking about Congressmen and Governors and business leaders who really have no idea what they're doing, much less that we have problems or how to solve them.
There ARE political ideologies that suggest the hideously controversial suggestion that we have complex problems that need serious, complicated, nuanced answers. The second biggest problem we have is that those political ideologies are given equal weight to the whack jobs who think that Ayn Rand is some kind of philosophy giant or something.
So, given that debate isn't going to solve the first problem, or the second problem, and that there's nothing of substance to discuss other than a rant about Atlas Shrugged and a bizarre smattering of links about ebola.
Which is somehow in mainstream news but covered up and we're being lied to? Also laced with factually incorrect fears to boot. Hint, airborne ebola isn't a thing like airborne flu. Don't huff fresh pig or monkey shit off of the ground and you'll be fine. Also when the CDC took the infected Americans into custody they did so with insane levels of control over the whole process.
Anyway, there's nothing of substance to debate. The dude's probably not a troll; it doesn't pass the "is this funny to assholes" test, sounds like the dude cracked.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Intresting that you say priority #1 is protect the border, our founding fathers set our initial immigration policy as wide open boarders, with 12 years residency required for citizenship.
Socialism seems to be working just fine in all the social democracies...
Yeah, but they didnt have an endless stream of filthy Mexicans invading their precious White Anglo Saxon paradise and all the brown people were safely enslaved and unable to threaten the superior white race. MURICA!
France, no. Germany, yes because they are fairly low in debt. Sweden is more free market now after their socialist disaster. Norway has North Sea oil propping them up. Spain? Italy? ... well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "well", not well by my definition.
America isn't any better than those failed socialist states so what's the point of its oh-so-superior ideology?
Let's not forget that it has overthrown democracies & propped up despots in many places because freedom & democracy can't be entrusted to sand niggers, especially when they have oil.