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Ballmer Leaves Microsoft Board

Posted by Soulskill on from the retirement!-retirement!-retirement! dept.

jones_supa writes: After leaving his position as CEO of Microsoft a year ago, Steve Ballmer has still held a position as a member of the board of directors for the company. Now, he is leaving the board, explaining why in a letter to fresh Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "I have become very busy," Ballmer explains. "I see a combination of Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking up a lot of time." Despite his departure, the former-CEO is still invested in the company's success, and he spent most of the letter encouraging Nadella and giving advice. Nadella shot back a supportive, equally optimistic response, promising that Microsoft will thrive in "the mobile-first, cloud-first world."

10 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. "mobile-first, cloud-first . . ." by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

    . . . customer last.

    Burma Shave.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:"mobile-first, cloud-first . . ." by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Funny

      But +1 for Ballmer leaving.

      -1 for Ballmer leaving. What is good for Microsoft, is bad for humanity. I would like to see him stay.

  2. Mobile first? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WTF! Then why did he lay off me and all of my friends that work on mobile? No. They gave-up on mobile when they laid-off most of the mobile employees.

  3. Re:Oh really... by afidel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're already the second largest Iaas provider after Amazon (EC2 vs Azure) and the second largest business Saas provider after Salesforce (SF vs Office365/Dynamics cloud). As they cloudify more of their offerings they'll be able to capture plenty of revenue from mobile, and since they'll actually be eating their own dogfood their tools for large customers should get better and more and more small customers will just host with them.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  4. ah, come on... by swschrad · · Score: 4, Funny

    it's basketball. REBOUND, REBOUND, REBOUND!! (tosses chair. another chair. water jug. wig. money. case full of Surface II tablets, one at a time. tosses T-shirt cannon ....)

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
  5. Microsoft is a spent force by Ckwop · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft doesn't have many fans on Slashdot but even the most die-hard of fans must now see that they're in a real bad position.

    The used to be invincible in the consumer space but now the computing device of choice is either the tablet or the smart phone. Precious few of these are Windows based.

    The used to be invincible in the business user space but the move to mobile computing means business people are using iPhone and iPads, not Windows Phones and Surface.

    Then there's Bing, who's only claim to fame is being the world's greatest search engine. For. Porn.

    Then there's Azure. We actually looked at Azure and discovered that the same hardware in EC2 was half the price. If you going to twice as much you might as well give up and go home.

    Then there was the own goal of the latest generation XBox. They managed to piss everyone off for no discernible gain.

    The only area their grip is still strong is PC gaming. For how long, who knows?

    Microsoft is a spent force. They're out of ideas. In a few short years they've gone from being the 800lb gorilla to just struggling just to remain relevant.

    It reminds me of Brazil versus Germany at this year's world cup. I'm not celebrating any more; it's just sad at this point.

    1. Re:Microsoft is a spent force by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Funny

      Then there's Bing, who's only claim to fame is being the world's greatest search engine. For. Porn.

      Wait... it is? Seriously? I've got a friend who actually cares about this. I'll "let him know".

    2. Re:Microsoft is a spent force by David_Hart · · Score: 5, Informative

      Microsoft doesn't have many fans on Slashdot but even the most die-hard of fans must now see that they're in a real bad position.

      The used to be invincible in the consumer space but now the computing device of choice is either the tablet or the smart phone. Precious few of these are Windows based.

      The used to be invincible in the business user space but the move to mobile computing means business people are using iPhone and iPads, not Windows Phones and Surface.

      Then there was the own goal of the latest generation XBox. They managed to piss everyone off for no discernible gain.

      The only area their grip is still strong is PC gaming. For how long, who knows?

      Microsoft mice are still popular... (grin)

      The XBox and PS3 were pretty much even, there was no clear definitive advantage for Microsoft. Plus, we don't even know if Microsoft ever broke even with the Xbox.

      Microsoft's bread-n-butter has always been MS Office, Desktop OS, and the Enterprise space. MS is developing Office Apps for the iPad and Android, PC/Laptop sales have stabilized as people realize that they still need them to edit and create content, and the Enterprise space is doing better than ever with the advent of virtual servers.

      I'm not saying that Microsoft doesn't have challenges but saying that they are "struggling just to remain relevant" shows a lack of understanding about the business as a whole. As proof, in Q4 2014 Microsoft enterprise sales "increased $2.3 billion or 6%, due primarily to increased revenue from our server products". A $2.3 billion dollar increase in one quarter is nothing to sneeze at...

      http://www.microsoft.com/Inves...

  6. true reaon for leaving! by u19925 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dear Satya,

    I sincerely feel that microsoft stock is very high and is unsustainable over a long period. I cannot sell my stock while still on microsoft board. By leaving the board, I will be able to sell the stock before it crashes. Why do you think, I made you CEO in the first place?

    Your former boss.

  7. Re: C by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm sorry but you're incorrect. In 2007 Windows Mobile had the largest market share of any OS for mobile devices, with 42% of the market:
    http://bgr.com/2011/12/13/appl...

    They had tied Blackberry the year before, and edged them out in 2007 which was when iPhone was released. Then the next year iPhone took over.

    Going back pre-smartphone, when the only real players in the PDA arena were Palm and Microsoft, Microsoft surpassed Palm in 2004, and from then on it was all downhill for Palm as they tried to update an archaic OS to utilize advances in hardware.
    http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/65...

    Microsoft soundly won the PDA war, but then were totally decimated soon after the PDA market transitioned into the Smart Phone market. In turn, Palm, then Blackberry, then Microsoft all owned the market and then stagnated, failed to innovate, and were superseded by new OSes that didn't have legacy issues (or trying to maintain backwards compatibility, etc).

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