I've been a little surprised by news stories like this one from the New York Times that have used the occasion of Steve Ballmer's announcing his retirement to crack on Microsoft's track record as an innovative software company.
In particular, there seems to be a commonly accepted notion that Microsoft has been a one-trick pony, unable to adapt to the changing tech landscape over the decades. Prime example: this quote from the above NY Times piece:
Generation 1 and 2: the operating system for personal computers (DOS, then evolving to the second generation, Windows).
Generation 3: the Office suite, which squashed earlier competing products (remember WordStar, WordPerfect, and Lotus Notes?) and made Microsoft an almost monopolistic fixture on desktops in the corporate IT environment.
Generation 4: foundational enterprise technology--Windows NT Server, Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server, SharePoint, etc.--which made Microsoft one of the leading vendors of enterprise software.
Microsoft's may be struggling to get out in the market with mobile and cloud technology and figure out what it's going to be in the future, but how can you make the case that they aren't a "multigenerational kingpin"?
One common thread in the Microsoft history is this: year in and year out people have tended to underestimate them. SQL Server was a joke of a database compared to Oracle until, suddenly, with version 7.0 it wasn't--especially at the price. Exchange was far inferior to Lotus Notes until suddenly every company in the United States was running their email through it.
This doesn't mean that Microsoft will figure out mobile or smart phones or cloud computing. But, it would be foolish to dismiss them out of hand. And, considering the number of businesses in the United States that still have Microsoft Office on their desktops (which is to say, almost all of them), perhaps the fact that they aren't winning all the B2C battles these days may not really mean that much.
In particular, there seems to be a commonly accepted notion that Microsoft has been a one-trick pony, unable to adapt to the changing tech landscape over the decades. Prime example: this quote from the above NY Times piece:
The rare tech company manages to thrive from one generation of technology to the next. Only a few of the big ones — I.B.M., Intel and Apple — have done it. And it is not yet clear if Microsoft has a clear path to joining that list of multigeneration kingpins.Huh? I'm not sure what the author, Quentin Hardy, is thinking. Microsoft was founded a year earlier than Apple, and you can say what you want about Microsoft's struggle to adapt to and stay relevant in today's tech market--smart phones, mobile devices, the Web, cloud computing. But, the notion that Microsoft has been a single generation company is laughable.
Generation 1 and 2: the operating system for personal computers (DOS, then evolving to the second generation, Windows).
Generation 3: the Office suite, which squashed earlier competing products (remember WordStar, WordPerfect, and Lotus Notes?) and made Microsoft an almost monopolistic fixture on desktops in the corporate IT environment.
Generation 4: foundational enterprise technology--Windows NT Server, Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server, SharePoint, etc.--which made Microsoft one of the leading vendors of enterprise software.
Microsoft's may be struggling to get out in the market with mobile and cloud technology and figure out what it's going to be in the future, but how can you make the case that they aren't a "multigenerational kingpin"?
One common thread in the Microsoft history is this: year in and year out people have tended to underestimate them. SQL Server was a joke of a database compared to Oracle until, suddenly, with version 7.0 it wasn't--especially at the price. Exchange was far inferior to Lotus Notes until suddenly every company in the United States was running their email through it.
This doesn't mean that Microsoft will figure out mobile or smart phones or cloud computing. But, it would be foolish to dismiss them out of hand. And, considering the number of businesses in the United States that still have Microsoft Office on their desktops (which is to say, almost all of them), perhaps the fact that they aren't winning all the B2C battles these days may not really mean that much.
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