Steve Ballmer has been repeating himself lately. He
keeps saying Microsoft "grew up as what people like
to call a desktop company. To this day, I'm not sure I know what a desktop company is, but I know we were a
desktop company." Ballmer's uncertainty is disingenuous
given that Microsoft's mission statement was "A PC on every
desktop and in every home." But his assertion leads his listeners to acknowledge that Microsoft has a track record of
diversification that proves a desktop company can conquer
the enterprise. Ballmer is neatly laying the foundation for
people to accept that Microsoft is prepared to change its
business model again and overtake "Web 2.0" competitors
such as Google and Salesforce.com. Ballmer's term for this
new competitive model is "Software Plus Services" (my
emphasis). But beyond addressing competitors that offer
Software as a Service (SaaS), Ballmer's term goes directly to
the heart of the real competitive challenge Microsoft faces:
how to protect and grow Microsoft's huge software revenue
while finding a way to monetize Web-based services.
Microsoft vs. Microsoft
How can Microsoft avoid competing with itself as the
company takes on SaaS? All indications are that SaaS has
galvanized the company around a strategy that amounts
to a grand unification of Microsoft's disparate products.
The company isn't looking solely at providing services
to go along with all of its software—as, for example, with
Exchange Server and Outlook Client on the software side,
Outlook Web Access (OWA) on the service side, Outlook
Mobile as a device form factor, and Outlook Voice Access
on the Unified Communications (UC) side. Doing so is
a given: Chris Jones, corporate vice president, Windows
Live Experience Program Management, has said, "Looking
ahead five years we believe every piece of software could
come with a service and that customers will come to expect
that." Nor do I think Microsoft is simply creating a business
model for subscription services such as Windows Live and
Microsoft Dynamics, or just getting serious about advertising revenue, or even hosting business-critical technologies
such as Exchange.
Rather, I think the key to Microsoft's "grand unification"
is indicated by the four pillars of Software Plus Services
that Ballmer has been touting in such remarks as, "[T]he
only model that will be able to really supersede where we
are today, needs to bring together the best of four very different phenomenon [sic]: the best of the desktop PC world;
rich user interface; offline and online access; what I call
personal integration, the ability to bring things together and integrate them and store them and manage them and link
them together in unique and arbitrary ways, not restricted
to what somebody will let you do on some server or some
service."
Integrate, Manage, Store, Link
You can see how Ballmer's four pillars translate into Microsoft unification if you think about the initiatives generating
the most momentum within Microsoft: integration (e.g.,
Office as a front end for business applications and business
intelligence—BI), management (System Center becoming the ubiquitous management paradigm—both as a
brand and as an integrated component of products such
as Forefront and, soon, SQL Server), storage (SharePoint,
SQL Server, and storage per se), and linkage (UC bringing
together all communication at the PC)—and I'm not even
touching on the developer side of all this.
Explicitly, Ballmer has said, "We're building out a service-based infrastructure, not server by server, but new
management model, new development model, new storage, networking, computation model from the get-go. On
top of this new platform, the cloud infrastructure services,
we're also building directory services, rendezvous, device
management, the kinds of things that we deliver to you
today in our packaged products."
Strategic Direction?
It's always amazed me that Microsoft could never manage
to determine a strategic direction for the entire company.
Could it be that the company finally figured out how to
move itself forward under a coherent strategy that continues to produce software revenue but also creates new
revenue streams?
Commenting on Software Plus Services, Paul Thurrott
recently wrote, "The real surprise, of course, is that the
company honestly has no idea how it's going to make it all
work yet. Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said they
would need 3–10 years, depending on the product, to make
this transition" (WinInfo Short Takes: "Week of July 30," July
27, 2007, InstantDoc ID 96662.) I respectfully disagree with
my colleague and friend Paul. I believe Ballmer's time frame
refers to how long it will take to put together the pieces of
the grand unification strategy.
But then, this is Microsoft. By the time this article is published, the company might be on a completely new path. Let
me know where you see the company moving.
End of Article
I think 1 point to make is that " a PC on every desktop" and being a desktop company (or not) are not mtually exclusive. A PC doesn't have to run desktop software, so the mission statement holds true. And repeating yourself isn't really a bad thing (actually necessary for hard-heads like me!); shows conviction. Remember that IT is a very fluid market, and you have to go (sometimes writhe) with the flow to remain competitive. Would actually be dissheartening if I didn't see that a leader could demonstrate agility.
They - like any other company is after 1 thing - profit - by way of pervasiveness. Just like their svc stack; they'll morph the definition of idioms like SOA in order to show that their offering is not only cmplete, but meets the definition and is "necessary". Acrchitects have to be wary of this (from any compnay like IBM, TIBCO, BEA, Sun, etc.) who do the same thing. MS is going to do whatever it takes to be pervasive and profitable by looking at acedamia, doing research, etc. as a map, then building their own product map based on the throughways (or dead-ends) that are gleaned from that research (and that 'll foster that profitability/pervasiveness mission) - I guess like anyone else.
SaaS is going to have to convince people to let go of their data - but more importantly, because of the work that companies like MS are doing - dissuading us from the fact that "rolling your own" ain't really all that hard or expensive anymore! Interesting to see what they do there...
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They - like any other company is after 1 thing - profit - by way of pervasiveness. Just like their svc stack; they'll morph the definition of idioms like SOA in order to show that their offering is not only cmplete, but meets the definition and is "necessary". Acrchitects have to be wary of this (from any compnay like IBM, TIBCO, BEA, Sun, etc.) who do the same thing. MS is going to do whatever it takes to be pervasive and profitable by looking at acedamia, doing research, etc. as a map, then building their own product map based on the throughways (or dead-ends) that are gleaned from that research (and that 'll foster that profitability/pervasiveness mission) - I guess like anyone else.
SaaS is going to have to convince people to let go of their data - but more importantly, because of the work that companies like MS are doing - dissuading us from the fact that "rolling your own" ain't really all that hard or expensive anymore! Interesting to see what they do there...
galaxis13 September 14, 2007 (Article Rating: