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?"
more importantly: (Score:5, Funny)
does it blend?
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Microsoft is becoming more and more irrelevant in the computer world... and yes, even though they have 90% market share they are becoming irrelevant.
Forcing people to buy your product doesn't make you the best.
Ballmer doesn't fit and will leave MS... but MS will try to keep their MS tax by making their products available only online and a pay as you go.
Re:more importantly: (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha. You are truly Captain Wishful Thinking. You people that think if you come on a board with a bunch of like minded "thinkers" and say something, that makes it true. "Microsoft is irrelevant!" "See how I've made my hatred known by saying something nonsensical and dismissive of an entity I hate!?". You just did the equivelent of a 13 year old girl's "wha-EVA!"
If you hate MS that much, a better tact would be to not underestimate the enemy in your little nerd battle. They're not irrelevant, to say they are is laughable and shows how provincial and limited your experience in the computing industry is.
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Guh? Non sequitur much? When did I say Linux was irrelevant or that I hate it? In fact, I work in a group which supports largely Linux compute servers and workstations, as it's far and away the dominant OS in EDA computing.
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actually that is where you are wrong. For every million dollars ms spends on R&D they get something like $100 back.
And do you have any numbers actually supporting this?
Nearly every other division of MSFT is losing money with the exception of windows and office
You know, it may help to look things up before posting: it's so easy to Google for "Microsoft financial report", and it would really make you sound less stupid. Have a look here [microsoft.com]. MSFT has 5 divisions; 3 are big money makers (Client, makers of Windows, Business - owners of Office, and Server and Tools, mainly selling SQL Server), Entertainment and devices (mostly known around here for the XBox), made less money (only 178 millions in the 3 month ending Sept 30), but was still in the black, and only one division, Online Services, actually lost money (no surprise there).
If you marginalize either one of those products MSFt goes bankrupt in less than 10years.
You're so wrong it's not even funny. Look at the numbers again; in the 3 months ending September 30, the consolidated income for MSFT was $5999 million. The biggest earner was the Business division, with an operating income of $3311 million. Even if you completely remove all revenue from Office while still keeping all the related expenses (research, development, sales and so on), MSFT still ends up with an income of more than 2 billion in the three months, or 8+ billion anually. You're so far removed from reality I have to ask: doesn't it hurt to pull so much weird stuff from your nether regions?
Re:more importantly: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nobody buys MS that doesn't want to"? Say that to about every user that's had a problem with something with MS.
Meanwhile, just because they're the biggest company doesn't mean they're relevant. It just means they WERE relevant. Past tense.
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If it got to the point were someone didn't want MS anymore, they go find something else. Simple as that.
Many companies have invested millions of dollars in Microsoft software as a core part of their computing infrastructure. That's not something that can be replaced quickly, easily, or cheaply.
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It sounds like some sort of perverted technoecosystem that might be interesting
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As you say, my daughter's Ubuntu machine plays perfectly nicely with my Gentoo infrastructure, and my son's WinXP machine does too, for that matter. I'll presume that my daughter's boyfriend's Mac will plug into my network and run just fine, whenever that becomes necessary.
It all runs on standards - real, open, cross-platform, public standards.
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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,
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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
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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 com
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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 majo
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Nobody buys MS that doesn't want to.
There have been many times when people complained to me about their Windows problems. I've often mentioned they should look at the alternatives. Almost always I get the same response: "What alternatives? Isn't every computer Windows?"
Most people still think Apple computers are completely foreign and are unaware of any other options. So to most people the options are a Windows computer or no computer.
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Some people even believe apples are things you eat!
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That's a ridiculous statement. I have bought and wiped clean close to a hundred MS pre-installations because getting either another os or applying for a refund was more expensive.
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I doubt too many people care. Just as long as someone tries it!
Magic 8 Ball had this... (Score:5, Funny)
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Reply hazy, try again. Just kidding without a doubt we get your point. I mean all signs point to yes, most likely the average /.er can get the point. Yes - definitely, it is certain and it is decidedly so. You may rely on it. At least, as I see it, yes.
Does Ballmer really fill Gate's shoes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you ask?
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Why no, not really.
Why do you ask?
His hands fit rather well on the legs of that chair though... *ducks*
Re: Does Ballmer really fill Gate's shoes? (Score:4, Funny)
His hands fit rather well on the legs of that chair though... *ducks*
I wonder where you'll end up when you duck while Ballmer is bending over a chair. I don't like the outlook to be clear. But word is he excels when it comes to chairs.
Re: Does Ballmer really fill Gate's shoes? (Score:4, Funny)
I have heard a rumor that Microsoft is going to replace Windows with a new operating system code named Chair. I have not heard much in the ways of details, except that the new os has legs.
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Only if Steve Ballmer is running it, otherwise they coexist peacefully.
Re: Does Ballmer really fill Gate's shoes? (Score:4, Funny)
*Looks at Ballmer and Gates*
I will near complain about not having options again.
*shudders*
Can Ballmer fit Gate's shoes? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Crystal ball (Score:2, Funny)
I can say with confidence (Score:4, Funny)
Given the state of things (Score:4, Funny)
Bollocks (Score:4, Insightful)
What a bundle of bollocks. I've read better in /. comments.
My vote? None of these. They're all in the "dumb and dumber" category.
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Did you click through to the descriptions of each? Two of them actually make some sort of sense. (The rest don't.) I can see MS going into a slow decline, or surviving without adapting much. Of course, that assumes that Windows 7 doesn't suck anywhere near as much Vista when it comes out - if it does suck, Microsoft might as well find themselves a black hole to go jump in, because Linux is becoming a viable alternative even for Joe Six-pack.
On another note, every time I see the phrase "cloud computing" I
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Does anybody?
I intended to print the article to read on the train, but I wasn't going to do it six separate times, no wai!
Re:Bollocks (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux is becoming viable for people who just want to surf the web or write term papers. Microsoft is sufficiently entrenched in the enterprise and SMB market, and will continue to do just fine. Linux might be good enough for stand alone home desktops, but it lacks polished tools to ease enterprise deployment. I understand that they are there, but they aren't mature. Linux needs a Group Policy equivalent that is as polished and easy to use as Group Policy. Linux needs an Exchange server equivalent that integrates with an LDAP directory. Once those two are up and running, then maybe people can start talking about Microsoft coming tumbling down.
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Perhaps the fact that the relative advantages of the two platforms has changed in the last 5 years is a reflection that neither has stood still in that period.
MS has poured enormous resources into Enterprise software - Exchange, Sharepoint, WMI, SMS, unattended installs, group policies, etc.
Meanwhile, Linux has focused on attacking the consumer polish. Both platforms are much improved compared to 5 years ago.
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).
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Exactly. More wishful tinking by Microsoft bashers. What a silly waste of time.
6. The "same procedure as every year" scenario. (Score:5, Insightful)
MS will continue to force OEM installations on the market, non-it companies will still be afraid of FOSS and MS lobbyists will still do their part on locking down IT departments in public sectors. (In even some of the most "socialist" countries Windows is still used on 99% of desktop PCs in public (school, administration) services, where no special software is needed.
Cloud computing, Web 3.0, "web-bases OSes (!)" and whatnot buzzwords won't change that.
What we could hope for is that the Recession will create focus on cost linked to software licenses, and more focus on saving old hardware. (With software needing updating.)
The greatest thing that could happen is that MS invented some 100% waterproof way of securing Windows against piracy (of Windows itself). Ofcourse, *if* that would happen, they'd just drop the prices substansually in 3rd world contries to regain the lost marked share. (Just look at the netbook rebate. They had to loose half the market shares before slashing prices)
What "cloud?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember "grid computing"? Remember "application service providers"? Remember how that was supposed to change everything? Right.
The current appeal of "cloud computing" is that some companies are willing to give it away to get market share. That won't last. Google is cutting back on their freebies. The day is probably coming when "Google Apps" won't be free. Gmail is already a paid service for businesses. Google runs those services mostly to cost Microsoft money.
As a business, "cloud computing" looks a lot like shared web hosting. The price competition is fierce and the service levels aren't very good.
A few niche applications have been outsourced well, like "Salesforce.com". In fact, that's the leading commercial outsourced application. But Salesforce doesn't compete with Microsoft.
None of this looks like a real threat to Microsoft.
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I can imagine a niche for cloud computing, maybe even a big one. But...my crystal balls say that it will not completely dominate computing. No way, no how.
I want more control of my computer and data, not less. I want to decide if and when to change versions of software.
Imagine waking up one morning, at the peak of panic on a late project, only to find that all your cloud apps have been "improved" with a new interface that takes a week to learn.
Cloud computing is driven by software publishers, eager to
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remember that MS said all versions of software running on their cloud will be the latest version only. They will not support previous versions, so your nightmare world is likely to be true.
That said, they'll probably change their mind when it comes down to it.
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But Salesforce doesn't compete with Microsoft.
oh yes they do. MS Dynamics CRM had its hosted version launched recently. http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/crm/product/hosted.mspx [microsoft.com]
Microsoft is like a very beautiful rose (Score:2)
You let it grow on the vine, until the rose bush is taking over the green house and killing any other plants. Then when you think you have the most beautiful flower every, cut it off, put it in a vase and let it slowly wilt until it becomes a faded memory that even Mr Science can't revive.
Vista is a view of the once venerable XP, in the same way that a wilting rose is a view of a once beautiful budding flower.
My prediction? Microsoft is a Rose will hit #1 on the billboard charts in 2009.
This is all FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Desktop Operating Systems: Granted, Microsoft's cash cow of Desktop operating systems better evolve. I don't agree with the statement on Office 12 which is much better than previous versions. The same can't be said of Windows Vista or Windows 7. They better start working on IE 9 which should be open source and standards compatible for starters. The future of desktop OS is the browser and technologies like gears, silverlight and AIR.
2. Server OS: Microsoft will probably retain the 50-50 ratio on the server side and Server 2008 is excellent with AD. However, it may have to think long and hard about Hyper-V because virtualization is going to be the future on the server OS side.
2. Gaming: With the XBOX division, they will be making their $$ of Xbox live and not by selling the console. Xbox live is very stable and provides an excellent online gaming experience. Sony's victory of Blue Ray won't be longer because for movies and all, its going to turn to a streaming model. So MS better start putting TB drives in there or make them generic for the users to swap them out.
3. Application Dev: Eclipse is a good alterative but MS Visual Studio is one of the best IDE's out there. It is not going to die anytime soon.
4. R&D: Microsoft's labs may not match Google currently but they are coming out with some cool stuff. Photosynth comes to mind. With their "surface" technology evolving it will be interesting.http://livelabs.com/projects/ [livelabs.com]
Re:This is all FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, MS is now finally making profit with Xbox. However, the project has cost the company $6 billion in losses over
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Microsoft never ever had a 50-50 split on servers. Check Netcrafts top hosts and see what they are running and count how many are Windows. Then keep counting down past the top ten. They have 25% on average! And given the current economic situation, the last trend was to dump Microsoft and switch server to BSD and Linux where possible. You will see this trend continue again now that CEO's and CTO's now know that Linux is a st
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Also given the fact that more people now can work with Linux. Ten years ago, Linux was far from commercial. Today, every major computer company (IBM, Sun, HP, etc) supports Li
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You do realize that this is a engineering website for computer scientists right? Don't you have an Xbox you should be playing with?
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This means nothing. For one, you are obviously exaggerating (100 Oracle servers???) and two, that MySQL server could be one cluster and handling 100 terabytes of data transfers like at my old telecom vs just data storage on the Oracle machines. This would imply that the MySQL server are doing the workload of 100 Oracle servers... so I would ask what your point is of pointing out the number of servers and not t
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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 Exchan
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Eclipse don't really have any editors build in. Not even a java editor, but why does it matter? The entire point with eclipse is that it's a platform where plugins provide the features that users need. So why does it matter if xml is provided by a bundled plugin, or a 3 party plugin?
Oh and I do think eclipse with cdt provide a better environment for c++ development then Visual studio. It seems that Microsoft have used all their time on c# and somehow forgotten their c++ compiler and env.
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It's not smart to rely on third party plugins. The eclipse out of the box experience for editing XML sucks. The eclipse out of the box experience for designing web apps sucks (compared to netbeans and VS). There _isn't_ a good free XML text editor for eclipse other than a half-assed dead, ancient one you can find if you scour the Internet enough.
Eclipse needs work, and it needs usability enhancements. Netbeans is better for most things that I've done with it - this isn't to say it's better in everything
Microsoft will NOT tank (Score:5, Insightful)
It's still got 10 to 15 years of lingering life in it before it falls.
Re:Microsoft will NOT tank (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
see how long SCO stuck around far after they were no longer relevant.
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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 mos
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You mean MS will end with a pointless lawsuit without merit to keep their stock afloat while Balmer tries to line his pockets as long as he can before the whole thing crashes and burns and nobody cares about it?
When you are that large, you need to be everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
The article accuses Microsoft of going in too many different directions at once, but when there are so many possible outcomes, how can they not. Microsoft can't affort to miss out on the next big thing, whatever it may be, so they play in every market.
Microsoft was already late to the internet (Netscape), virtualization (VMWare), Business Apps (SAP), internet search (lots of companies), and then improved search + ads (Google), Virtual Meetings (WebEx), next gen programming (Java/Eclipse), media players (IPod), video game systems (PlayStation/Nintendo), phones (IPhone)... and they can't afford to miss the next big thing. Sure, in some of these industries they were in the market, but maybe their product was inferior and it didn't take off (Zune, early revs of Windows Mobile).
So they must maintain a market presence in business apps, touch computing, mobile computing, cloud computing, game systems, video streaming, health care... just in case that is the next big thing.
What most Microsoft bashing tends to miss is that being in the market isn't enough.
Sometimes first to market is enough (Playstation 2 vs Xbox). Othertimes it is tie-ins with 3rd parties (IPod with the ITunes library). Sometimes it is price driven (Linux) and sometimes the quality of the product matters most (IPhone). I never see anyone do a full review Microsoft except as a list of bullet points for the markets that they play in.
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.
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Not to mention how Microsoft is branching out to new platforms like the iPhone. Microsoft's Seadragon app came out first on the iPhone according to this news article [builderau.com.au]. It makes me wonder if they will eventually be releasing their huge money making office type apps for the little bugger and this is just testing the waters...or maybe at least release some apps to give official exchange compatibility to the iPhone. I am sure that would sell like hotcakes.
Re:Only the "slow decline" option seems plausible. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not even mentioning the stuff they make that people actually like. Visual Studio +
MS is at considerable risk of losing its status as de facto standard, and of suffering significant erosion of its margins, and I hope both things happen; but the notion that it will actually die is implausible at best. Companies with far weaker products have held on for ages on legacy deployments alone.
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That's why "decline" was in quotes. The definition of decline would either have to be based on influence, or rate of growth.
Wang Labs as example (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always felt Microsoft is likely doomed to follow Wang Labs [wikipedia.org] decline from huge success to irrelevancy. The only real question is the timeline.
Wang, like Microsoft, dominated for a long time with proprietary OS and software, generating gobs of money and being a huge company. Then one day it seemed like the world just walked by them and they stopped selling new stuff and just sort of faded away.
Microsoft's decline will could be more complex, largely due to the Xbox and Windows Mobile markets with their own cycles, but Microsoft seems stuck in their tell-the-market-what-it-wants mindset instead of adapting to changes.
Slow decline it is (Score:2)
And has been for quite some time. Yes, they still make money. But do they make anything good or desirable? No. And they have had numerous chancers by now, they blew them all. Quite frankly, the only thing the Windows is still needed for (in most cases) is gaming. Everything else you can to better and cheaoper MS free.
Re:Slow decline it is (Score:5, Insightful)
You are 100% correct, if you completely ignore corporate America using Windows.
Lets take a large corporation as an example and look at the costs you ignored:
Dozens of in house Windows apps, which would either need to be re-written or at least fully tested again in an emulation environment.
Training for the end users for a new OS.
Training for the end users for a new Office suite.
Training for the end users for any critical applications.
A new desktop management software roll-out for IT.
Any server changes for IT.
Training for IT in the new OS/Suite/Apps/Management software/servers.
Time to convert from the old systems to the new ones.
and a few dozen problems that will spring up during the transition.
Now, after the millions spent on the above, you can wait a few years for the ROI in your new MS free environment.
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Like iTunes? Buying a Mac is so much cheaper, I suppose, since it's so easy to buy whatever hardware you want and put OS X on it. "Can I use my iPod?" or "Can I use iTunes?" is a common question with regard to Linux. Amarok is cool, but iPod and iTunes DRM stuff is still an issue. Unless you want to personally spend your time getting rid of the iTunes DRM on a ton of music and transferring it..
There's also Windows Server stuff? Yes, I know there are other server OS's out there, but Windows Server 200
Jerry Seinfeld Commercials (Score:2, Funny)
I don't know.. lets ask Jerry Seinfeld, he seems to be an expert on shoes!
this is entertainment, not prediction (Score:2)
Next, they ask people to vote on each one - as if voting will make it happen.
Well, so what? we know that the whole of web 2.0 is based on popularity contests, and massaging the egos of the ravening masses, in the hope that on their way to have their say, they'll accidentally click on an advertisment and earn someone a few tenths of a bean in revenue.
So long
Most laughs - door number five (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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From TFA:
Borvell = Borland & Novell.
Missed one mac os x for all systems comes out and (Score:2)
Missed one mac os x for all systems comes out and ms is forced to crack down and make windows stand up to it leading to a new os that is just as big as windows 95 was.
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.
Why (Score:2)
Why wasn't this posted as a poll?
I'd go for option 4, like always.
chop chop (Score:2)
why did they miss number 6? The latest court case (Vista ready)(or yet another anti-competitive one to be seen here soon) finally finds MS overstepped the mark and is totally untrustworthy and needs to be broken up into 5 or so Mini-Microsofts.
It nearly happened last time, stranger things have happened.
Good/Bad for Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has some good and bad things going for them.
Good stuff includes a large bank account, established market share, some measure of trust in some organizations (yes, heavily qualified but true), some interesting technology on the horizon.
The things going against them are formidable though:
1) They are the market leader; or rather, they hold the lion's share of the market. The market leader traditionally bears the brunt of costs to develop new technology. This is not just coding costs, but intangibles like pushing standards that have significant up-front costs and barriers to acceptance. With the heterogenous mobile computing environment, their previous strategy of closed "standards" no longer work.
2) Their traditional cash cows (OS, Office) are becoming commodities. Everyone and their little sister seems to be putting out OSes with enough functionality to be "good enough". Microsoft now has to fight for the niche markets. This is more expensive than appealing to the masses. In contrast, startups can target the niche easily. For MS, it could be death by a thousand cuts as they bleed money going after tiny markets. (Sound eerily like the Republican Party???)
3) Barrier to entry for new markets is getting very expensive. Google has built an infrastructure on search and Internet connectivity. To enter this market is difficult. In fact, many people think that Google is purposely developing throw-away technology knowing that Microsoft is going to jump/react and try to match it.
4) Vista sucks. Their next revision may be a lot better, but Vista missed a critical salvo. Windows is not going to die anytime soon, but the problems with Vista has tarnished an already battered image.
5) Competition is much fiercer.
Predictions schmedictions (Score:3, Insightful)
Making predictions about the future of computing (or about anything else for that matter) is useless. Most likely things will develop in a totally unforeseen way that is not described in the five models. That is why I didn't read the fine article.
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)
MS is an oil tanker (Score:4, Insightful)
You can switch the engine off and it will continue to move forwards for a long, long time, simply due to its mass and momentum. The same is true for MS. They have a lot of long term contracts with companies that cannot simply cancel them. Companies in turn have long term plans that include licensing plans for MS products.
The IBM case and how big blue "lost touch" with its customers around the early 80s, when they missed the rise of the PC and how mainframes lost their importance, does not really apply either. There is no "PC" that MS would have missed. And the times are quite different. Computers are today in every home (ok, not every, but close). And for the average person, computer means MS operating system. Yes, that was similar with IBM and computers back in the 70s. But when you bought one for your home, you had no option to get a mainframe (unless you were some super rich geek). So you had to get "something else", which was a PC with a MS OS. Today, people get a "computer for their home", so they don't look around for an alternative.
Yes, one of the things MS benefits from is the lazyness of people. And that's why this oil tanker is going to go forwards for a long, long time to come. They'd really have to do something insanely stupid or piss off their users in some really insane way to change this, because nothing could come from the outside that could change that. People are too used to MS systems and they will continue using them because they're used to them. Why learn new tricks when the old ones were already hard to grasp? Unless users are really, really pissed and fed up so they start looking for alternatives, this won't change.
A few things.. (Score:3, Insightful)
MS's venture into the PDA/Smartphone realm has been problematic. It seemingly remains low on their list of priorities. A WinMo phone currently implies a further investment in third-party commercial applications to actually get suitable experience. Meanwhile, Apple and Google are getting a number of things right. Apple's out of the box experience is usable for most, and the App store is a much more well organized approach to third-party applications. Android is similar, but with the added benefit of the
Technology goes the way of fashion (Score:3, Insightful)
We are nearing a point where technology - both hardware and software - are going to reach a plateau. Let me use Microsoft Word as an example. Twenty years ago the software available to do desktop publishing was pretty poor. The interfaces were primitive, there were severe limitations of what could achieved, and the integration of intelligence to aid humans (spell checking, thesaurus, grammar checking, language translation, etc) was non-existent. There was a massive amount of room for improvement, and thus Word was created and has steadily grown in features and capability ever since. Because there was so much improvement to be made in that market, there was room for Word to progress, perhaps ahead of the curve, to set itself apart from similar products. So what is left to be implemented in modern word processors? What groundbreaking feature remains to be invented that can really set one product far above the others? There's not much. GUIs can be tweaked and redesigned. File formats can be updated and made more portable. But the simple fact of the matter is competition, like Open Office, can chug along in development at a leisurely pace, and before anyone realizes it, Open Office is suddenly completely on-par with Microsoft Office.
We're heading towards the same end with operating systems, web browsers, and even hardware. Every now and then something new will come along (multitouch iPod / iPhone comes to mind - Microsoft was idiotic not to encourage that simple and logical progression with the Windows Mobile OEMs) that will set a product far apart. However, eventually we will have, for the most part, equivalency throughout.
So what will dictate what companies or products are popular and which are not? Take a look at the fashion industry. The whole skirt-length, tie-thickness phenomenon will occur in the technology arena. Fads will come and go. Specific products will become popular because of subtle differences between them and competing products that the masses somehow identify as "modern" or "cool". Eventually the recycling process will begin, probably on a 15-20 year cycle, but perhaps even faster in the technology market. Some company will dredge up a GUI or method of doing something that was popular a couple product generations back, and it will make a resurgence for a while. Speech driven interfaces will become popular, then eventually be perceived as stupid and primitive. Gesture driven interfaces will become popular, then people using them will eventually be seen as old-fashioned and out of vogue. Direct interfacing to the human neurological system will become practical and popular, then later will be seen as too unnatural and invasive, leading full circle back to some other method of interfacing.
So I don't think any one company is going to dominate for any duration, because they will not be able to make their product different enough (for better or worse) to make it stand up against the alternatives. This is where open source will really make a huge impact. The odds of a company like Microsoft managing not just to survive, but to dominate these kinds of drastic changes in technology paradigms is very, very unlikely.
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.
This guy lives in Microsoft's Ivory Tower... (Score:4, Informative)
Yet this same company has produced a great server operating system (Windows Server 2008) and sharing server (SharePoint 2007)
SharePoint? A great sharing server?
SharePoint is like someone at Microsoft heard of a Wiki as explained by a Martian, and hired some people from Lotus to implement it. It's inflexible to set up and configure, only works right on Internet Explorer, and is insufferably clumsy to use. It could only be described as "great" by someone who has never touched any software unblessed by Redmond.
Re: (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 g
my scenereo (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But what happens 12 years later? ;)
Re:My Crystal Ball Predicts... (Score:5, Funny)
You mean I've only got 12 months to live? 2010 is the real year of the linux desktop as predicted by the Mayan calendar!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't knock AOL and their disc distribution strategy. It's because of people like you, complaining about it all the time, that I am right now two discs short of a complete 160-piece drink coaster set for entertaining guests.
-dZ.