InfoWorld's Crystal Ball Predicts the Future of Microsoft 376
museumpeace writes "InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman has brainstormed five different scenarios for Microsoft in the coming decade and solicits the reader's vote on which is more likely. Does it tank? Does it go open source? Does it out-Google Google? Does Ballmer really fill Gates' shoes?"
no crystal balls required for this ailment (Score:1, Interesting)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=MSFT
looks like fuddles isn't planning to leave broke.
Only the "slow decline" option seems plausible... (Score:5, Interesting)
But "slow" is *really* slow. Like... Give them 20 more years, and they may have "declined" to the size that IBM is now.
Most of these scenarios take the "cloud" for granted. Since the death of mainframes, businesses have been reluctant to adopt hosted apps, even when they are hosted in the company's own datacenters. The number of highly successful cloud app deployments for business will be countable on one hand. A single major outage will derail the cloud computing train for another 10 years or so and history will repeat itself for the 5th (6th?) time... Any scenario that predicts Microsoft's downfall based on the failure to adapt to cloud computing is flawed. #1 & #5. Same with the scenarios that predict Microsoft success based on the cloud. #3 & #4...
In the sort term, I see Microsoft having a huge hit on their hands with Windows 7. CIOs everywhere will pat themselves on the back for saving so much money by skipping a generation, and the software itself will be improved thanks to the massive open beta that was Vista. The new version of Office (running locally) will also be a hit. Internet Explorer will continue to lose marketshare, but Silverlight adoption will increase. That covers the next 4 years. Anybody who claims to have a credible idea of what's going to happen after that is simply guessing.
Re:Magic 8 Ball had this... (Score:1, Interesting)
off topic:
Back when I was in Gulf War I, I had a magic 8 ball with my gear that I used to confirm or refute the crapflood generated by the rumor mill. At first I did it just as a joke, but it was uncanny in its accuracy, and much faster than waiting for word through chain of command. A few guys in my squad would borrow it for reassurance about situations back home.
I still have that 8 ball, but over the years the fluid level dropped about 1/8 inch, rendering it useless. I wonder, is there an easy way to refill it, and having refilled it would that destroy its karma?
Yes I realize it was all subjective validation and selective memory, but it was a comfort in trying times.
Re:This is all FUD (Score:1, Interesting)
Eclipse is not good, Kdevelop sucks, Anjuta sucks, <insert open-source IDE here%gt> sucks. No one has ever created anything could could even begin to rival Visual Studio.
I say this as someone to runs Linux 100% of the time as my workstation and only run Windows/VS in a VM when I have to for work. I would love a good open-source IDE. For now I stick with vim.
Microsoft put an absolute metric assload of development effort into tweaking VS for developers. It's fast, looks nice and works pretty well. Eclipse is a slow, memory hogging, buggy, piece of shit that looks like it came out of someone's ass.
I'd have to opt for the Borvell scenario (Score:5, Interesting)
Although not for all the reasons they listed under that scenario. I was there when the pronouncements of the paperless office doomed every word processor to the scrap heap of history, only to see the amount of paper actually expand. But now offices really are using less paper and I believe the need for heavy duty word processing, particularly one for every workstation, will...no, is diminishing. That chops at one of Microsoft's major profit centers and, even if you disagree about the future of paper, it's still a declining industry segment any way you shred it. The need is diminishing, the alternatives are getting better and more abundant.
The internet appliance trend will continue to eat away at OS market share. On less expensive hardware the cost of Windows becomes a larger percentage of the cost of a new machine. Unless the user has a need that justifies the cost, if users have a choice they will, at least some of the time, choose the alternative. The desktop market isn't growing as fast as the appliance market and more functional and more powerful appliance devices, like Netbooks (oh, no, we're gonna get sued!) are going to continue undermining the sales of higher end laptops and at least a few desktop sales. Mobile devices, smart phones all take their razor nick of blood out of the beast.
I don't see MS disappearing for a long time but I do see them diminishing over time. And I also believe there will be an "Enron" moment when it becomes apparent that earnings have been sliding for a long time.
Re:This is all FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
The future of desktop OS is the browser and technologies like gears, silverlight and AIR.
God I hope not. Gears might be fine, but I really hope that people don't fall into letting Internet apps be held hostage by Microsoft and Adobe.
Microsoft will probably retain the 50-50 ratio on the server side and Server 2008 is excellent with AD.
I don't know how well Microsoft will retain the server-end. To me, a lot of it comes down to Exchange. If you want to use Exchange, you have to have an Exchange server and you pretty well have to run a Windows domain at that point, so you may as well let Windows dominate your network. On the other hand, if OSX and Linux come out with decent competitors to Exchange, then Microsoft is going to have to watch its back.
I think most people underestimate the importance of Exchange for Microsoft, but it's a big factor in keeping people using Windows on the server and Office on the desktop, which is in turn a big factor in keeping people using Windows on the desktop.
With the XBOX division, they will be making their $$ of Xbox live and not by selling the console.
I'd say there's a good chance XBox will survive, but you can never tell with the console market. Every new console effectively breaks compatibility anyway, so there's not a huge barrier for people to jump ship when the new generation comes along. The big advantage MS has right now (from what I understand) is that developing for the XBox and Windows PC at the same time is pretty easy, since they use a lot of similar tools. If Microsoft starts to lose its hold on the desktop gaming PC market, then they could lose that advantage.
Microsoft's labs may not match Google currently but they are coming out with some cool stuff.
I'm not sure Microsoft's R&D is the problem. Supposedly their research labs comes up with pretty cool stuff, but MS's management doesn't seem to want to turn that cool stuff into products unless they can figure out how they can use them to leverage Windows, Office, or the web presence (MSN & Live).
I think what's going to have to happen is that Microsoft will have a turn-over in management-- if not in actual management personnel, then in management philosophy. They'll have to start coming up with actual new products, or else actually improve their products in ways that are helpful to users/administrators (as opposed to ways that are useful to Microsoft and the RIAA/MPAA). Somewhere along the line, someone will figure out that it's the only way to stop the hemorrhaging.
PIM environment wins (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft, Apple, and Google battle it out for the new PIM (personal information management) environment which replaces the desktop environment. Microsoft relies on lock in and cloud applications. Apple relies on multimedia integration and mulimedia services. Google relies on the FOSS/OSS community to port applications to their cloud. As the years go by all three give up on lock in. The PIM environments of each company become so commingled, outside of each company branding it with their own look and feel, nobody is able to tell them apart. Consumers buy devices instead of software. The days of "I run windows, osx, linux" end.
The scenarios were from June ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They blend. (Score:1, Interesting)
Which frauds would these be, then?
Damn, I just realised who I replied to. Never mind.
Re:more importantly: (Score:3, Interesting)
see response below, people are locked in right now and have to make significant investments to get out. My workplace is a multibillion dollar company and they hate using MS products due to unnecessary fees but recognize it's even more expensive just to make the transition and so have been doing so little by little.
Nobody said Linux is perfect. However, at this stage both apple and windows are worse for many corporate needs among other things (for non-graphic design related where mac and linux are equal).
Oh, and people have been finding something else.
Re:more importantly: (Score:3, Interesting)
It sounds like some sort of perverted technoecosystem that might be interesting to see...
Re:more importantly: (Score:3, Interesting)
Something that prompts the user to move to a different OS (or effectively, a different computer) is on the same order of magnitude as something that prompts someone to move to another country. "No one is forcing anyone to stay in the U.S. They can leave at any time." It's not about whether or not someone is free to leave. It is about whether someone has any place they feel comfortable leaving TO. Mac OS is getting more users this way and Linux is gaining ground. Things ARE changing. But so too is computing in general. Some say we will not use general purpose PCs in the future... as a techy, that is really hard to imagine, but one never knows.
But just as Bush's approval rating has been at ridiculously low levels, no one has moved to oust him from office... instead, people are waiting for him to leave before things get better. Not sure why that is exactly. But I suspect the same is true of Microsoft and Windows.
But the more Microsoft pushes for software as a subscription service, the more people will take notice and start to make changes in the way they spend their IT dollars. OpenOffice is starting to look pretty good to many businesses right now.
Their problems are easily solved (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously. At this point, it's fairly obvious that Microsoft is going to be creating an all-new version of Windows that breaks backward-compatibility, and runs all the old stuff in a VM. As long as they release a new version of Office for the new OS, they won't lose much market share.
Honestly, that's the best of both worlds. The old Windows cruft goes away, but old apps keep working until they can be re-written.
Re-writing apps is hard, and that's what has kept Windows from *truly* evolving. Yeah, major commercial apps get re-written pretty quickly, but it's all those unique "business critical" apps that have been created by low-paid, inexperienced, in-house programmers that never get updated. Too many companies depend on those things, so MS has kept that junk running, at the expense of actually making Windows better.
As for Linux and MacOS, well, until they get something like Active Directory and Group Policies working, they aren't really what you want on a corporate network. MacOS and Linux are MUCH more difficult to manage. Yeah, at the actual workstation-level, things are easier to configure, but doing mass configuration of lots of machines is a hassle. There are no good GUI tools, and no real standard tools in general. It can be done, but it's too difficult.
If windows / MS dies apple may be forecd to open i (Score:3, Interesting)
If windows / MS dies apple may be forecd to open it up.
Re:Microsoft will NOT tank (Score:3, Interesting)
It's rare that a company remains on top in their field especially in technology so they could very well end up like Apple. Maybe they'll end up a bit better than apple. Maybe someone will come to their senses and discover a way to easily create software that runs on any platform and then the market will be divided purely based on which ever OS people like the most.
I think the only thing that is certain is that they won't retain their monopoly position. Whether or not it's because a government steps in. I think it's more likely that MS will shoot themselves in the foot.
Re:Bollocks (Score:4, Interesting)
I think another aspect is just what others were originally talking about too. People have always maintained that Linux makes a hell of a SERVER OS for enterprise. The bottom line is that Linux is stable, cheap, and has an abundance of free and high quality server products that get all sorts of things done well. When you combine that with the fact that users in general don't care (and can't even tell) what software is running on a server they're getting stuff from, then you have a win-win scenario in favor of Linux there.
The GGP though, when referring to Linux in the enterprise, seemed to be referring to Linux on enterprise DESKTOPS. Big difference there. While my organization uses Linux and FreeBSD pretty heavily in the server room, it's still all Windows on the desktop. Big reasons for that include a whole mess of propriety Windows-only software programs for which there are no open source alternatives (if you can find an open source Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal system, Building Permit/Planning system, or Veterans Benefits processing software, please let me know).
I think in that scenario (business desktops), there is a point to be made. There is a lot of REALLY obscure software out there for Windows that just doesn't exist for other platforms. Not to mention that from a job security standpoint, an IT Department sticking with Office rather than OO.o is a smart move. If office has a problem, then everyone blames MS. If OO.o has a problem, they're going to blame you for not using Office. Home users generally don't use the obscure programs and don't care as much about their productivity suite.
Overall though, Linux is still making headway. Once upon a time it was at best a server OS to all but the dedicated hobbyists. Now it's a server OS and rapidly becoming a valid consumer desktop OS. Not a bad combo, even if enterprise desktop still isn't conquered yet. Mac OS X hasn't really captured that market either. Still though, it's acceptance as a viable home desktop means more interest, more developers, etc. An increase in both of those can only bode well for the possibility of more enterprise class desktop apps for Linux (or just written in cross platform manners - I used to be very opposed to that idea after some sour experience with Java's AWT and Swing, but lately I've been seeing some REALLY good cross platform programs written in Python and the like that are quickly changing my mind).
Re:more importantly: (Score:3, Interesting)
How would my company not have been locked in? They've spent millions and have to spend millions more just to get away. That is the lock-in part.
Most companies appropriately believe they need the latest version of everything. It's pretty critical in a majority of industries, actually. Or are you saying that we should all be using windows 3.1 still?
It's kinda like patching IE: you're using it on a closed off network it's fine but when you get to reality you need it to be as up to date as possible to deal with the retards who go to bad sites.
I question your view on linux. Apple is better than linux? How exactly? You mean how it "just works" like how they blackboxed a whole set of apples with a patch recently? I'm not saying Linux is perfect, but anyone can put in the effort to do what they want similar to BSD. From a development standpoint it's kinda hard to not want that instead of having to cry to a proprietary company to do what you want based off their own interests.
Re:This guy lives in Microsoft's Ivory Tower... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, I wouldn't use the word "great"; but... I see the foresight MS used in bringing out SharePoint.
Better than email is a whole, real, Document Management System. And although implementing a DMS is smart, traditionally they didn't do "web". So Microsoft brings a DMS into its stable of product offerings, and makes it a WebDAV server, and integrates its access control features into Active Directory. That was smart.
Did I just use the word "stable" in a sentence describing a Microsoft product? Gad - they've gotten to me.
Anyway - the idea behind SharePoint was a good one, and I don't know of a better option out there. (Novell wants us to buy Teaming+Conferencing, but like iFolder I expect it's a good idea that will fade away).
Re:The Geek In Fantasyland (Score:3, Interesting)
A bit of reasoning here. Before even beginning to try to lump the question of MS' future into a global "relevance", one must determine what that relevance ~is~. Better still, to better analyse what future market impact their products will have, it is better to examine their product directly vis-Ã-vis a) market shares and sales techniques compared to b) product quality and c) other existing products (themselves analysed through the first two criteria). Sooooo...
a) & c) Microsoft is for sure the major player in the proprietary desktop market. They got there not through promoting/developing product quality, but through marketing techniques (hooking first-time users by shipping pre-installed in most every PC shipped) and its incompatibility with other OS's/media. Although innovative, Mac only became popular through the sale of Mac computers - important, because the market 'staying power' of a product is directly related to its quality - but it only recently began to deal with incompatibility issues. Lastly, "free" *nix has the majority of the Server market, its ground gained through a long evolution and accessible development - again a market share maintained by the quality of the product itself - but these are still largely incompatible with other OS's/media.
b) & c) The quality of their product is improving but negligible compared to other products out there (ease of use, compatibility, security, etc.). For the time being, the only widely-accessible "better" desktop product out there is the proprietary Mac OS, but for the time being it is usable only Mac computers/emulators. This leaves the various *nix distros - for the desktop market, there are many available *nix solutions (Ubuntu, etc.), but these fail on ease of use (installation, etc.) compared to other proprietary OS's.
The direct opposites in the above are MS and *nix - the former gained/holds its share through marketing techniques before quality, and the latter, even if it is free and more 'difficult' to use, depends totally on its quality in maintaining its market share. Mac seems to be the middle ground between the two.
My conclusion: MS will be around as long as a) they are not surpassed in "ease of use" by other other-OS/media compatible PC-installable OS's, b) they continue their 'pre-installed' deal with PC manufacturers and c) the Mac OS continues to be (easily) installable only on Mac computers. If any of these conditions should change, MS is going to be losing market-share big-time.