Microsoft Is Dying!0!0110!
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Am I the only one who keeps seeing these ridiculous articles about Microsoft dying, and reading only blindered screeds about how Microsoft's CONSUMER efforts are an utter failure, and wanting to scream, "LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE MARKET, YOU MORONS!!!"? Do these people have any clue how much the SMB market has invested in Microsoft's enterprise stuff, and CONTINUES to invest in their product set? And not only on the infrastructure side, i.e. Office/Sharepoint/Exchange - the platform's development stack as well! When many, many companies rely on your server OS running your web development stack backed by your relational database offering, to drive big, long-life-cycle LOB and web-facing applications, you are DOING PRETTY WELL. Every business offering they make, they have legit competitors, no question. But no one can question that they are putting a TON of resources into improving those offerings, especially on the web side, where they have dumped a lot of time and effort into making ASP.Net a much better, more competitive offering. I really like Linux, and completely understand why it has the mindshare among the startup-type crowd. And Google is offering a compelling Office + Exchange alternative, especially for smaller setups. And SQL Server's got "NoSQL" on it's tail. But in all these cases, Microsoft is the Top Dog - and those competitors have had enough time to mature that it seems to me Microsoft still has the edge and the position of strength. I personally have worked off numerous platforms, but keep coming back to .Net because it's where the overall developer demand is, and where a lot of innovation is still taking place. Somebody with a bigger voice than me, PLEASE tell these Apple/Android idiots that whether or not Microsoft is loudly and publicly pushing "Consumer" over "Enterprise", AT LEAST GET YOUR ARGUMENTS RIGHT. Microsoft will die when somebody (or somebodies) takes away that ENTERPRISE play, NOT when they make a subpar tablet and can't sell it!!! And all kids should get off my lawn. Thank you.
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Yes, if a new Microsoft CEO screws up so bad that they run the development tools division to the ground, then I would care a lot. I can work with other languages and technologies, but my .NET skills are what I have the most experience in and what employers care about the most. With that being said, it would take years of horrible decisions (bordering upon malicious sabotage) to kill their development tools division, and I'd have plenty of forewarning if it was happening.
jesarg wrote:
it would take years of horrible decisions (bordering upon malicious sabotage) to kill their development tools division, and I'd have plenty of forewarning if it was happening
There's a positive feedback loop involved where companies start hiring for the non-MS-dependent technologies, and developers start to retool for them. MS has some control over the ramp-up of that feedback loop, and their recent decisions that piss off developers, and the press they're getting over it, is only accelerating the ramp-up. When the loop gets going in earnest, MS technologies will become like Cobol, possible to stay employed with them as your exclusive skill set, but a shrinking pool of jobs for you to choose from.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Am I the only one who keeps seeing these ridiculous articles about Microsoft dying, and reading only blindered screeds about how Microsoft's CONSUMER efforts are an utter failure, and wanting to scream, "LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE MARKET, YOU MORONS!!!"? Do these people have any clue how much the SMB market has invested in Microsoft's enterprise stuff, and CONTINUES to invest in their product set? And not only on the infrastructure side, i.e. Office/Sharepoint/Exchange - the platform's development stack as well! When many, many companies rely on your server OS running your web development stack backed by your relational database offering, to drive big, long-life-cycle LOB and web-facing applications, you are DOING PRETTY WELL. Every business offering they make, they have legit competitors, no question. But no one can question that they are putting a TON of resources into improving those offerings, especially on the web side, where they have dumped a lot of time and effort into making ASP.Net a much better, more competitive offering. I really like Linux, and completely understand why it has the mindshare among the startup-type crowd. And Google is offering a compelling Office + Exchange alternative, especially for smaller setups. And SQL Server's got "NoSQL" on it's tail. But in all these cases, Microsoft is the Top Dog - and those competitors have had enough time to mature that it seems to me Microsoft still has the edge and the position of strength. I personally have worked off numerous platforms, but keep coming back to .Net because it's where the overall developer demand is, and where a lot of innovation is still taking place. Somebody with a bigger voice than me, PLEASE tell these Apple/Android idiots that whether or not Microsoft is loudly and publicly pushing "Consumer" over "Enterprise", AT LEAST GET YOUR ARGUMENTS RIGHT. Microsoft will die when somebody (or somebodies) takes away that ENTERPRISE play, NOT when they make a subpar tablet and can't sell it!!! And all kids should get off my lawn. Thank you.
Actually, what gets to me most in this context is that the feed provider - e.g., CodeSource, does not filter for source bias. The negative reporting is published from the same sources, day after day after day. The basis for most of the negative claims are sophomoric analyses of consumer mentality, rather than insightful commentary on the competing visions and technologies of Microsoft and its competitors. Even when technical analysis is provided, it often sniffs around at the edges of the technology, looking for marginal differentiators, rathering that tackling the bigger issues of integration and extensibility. C'mon, CodeSource: I'm sure that you can do better than this! Spare us the pithy one-liners and do some source validation!
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Am I the only one who keeps seeing these ridiculous articles about Microsoft dying, and reading only blindered screeds about how Microsoft's CONSUMER efforts are an utter failure, and wanting to scream, "LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE MARKET, YOU MORONS!!!"? Do these people have any clue how much the SMB market has invested in Microsoft's enterprise stuff, and CONTINUES to invest in their product set? And not only on the infrastructure side, i.e. Office/Sharepoint/Exchange - the platform's development stack as well! When many, many companies rely on your server OS running your web development stack backed by your relational database offering, to drive big, long-life-cycle LOB and web-facing applications, you are DOING PRETTY WELL. Every business offering they make, they have legit competitors, no question. But no one can question that they are putting a TON of resources into improving those offerings, especially on the web side, where they have dumped a lot of time and effort into making ASP.Net a much better, more competitive offering. I really like Linux, and completely understand why it has the mindshare among the startup-type crowd. And Google is offering a compelling Office + Exchange alternative, especially for smaller setups. And SQL Server's got "NoSQL" on it's tail. But in all these cases, Microsoft is the Top Dog - and those competitors have had enough time to mature that it seems to me Microsoft still has the edge and the position of strength. I personally have worked off numerous platforms, but keep coming back to .Net because it's where the overall developer demand is, and where a lot of innovation is still taking place. Somebody with a bigger voice than me, PLEASE tell these Apple/Android idiots that whether or not Microsoft is loudly and publicly pushing "Consumer" over "Enterprise", AT LEAST GET YOUR ARGUMENTS RIGHT. Microsoft will die when somebody (or somebodies) takes away that ENTERPRISE play, NOT when they make a subpar tablet and can't sell it!!! And all kids should get off my lawn. Thank you.
If you ask me, it's not that their consumer products are not good, cool or slick, is that their PR department and the distribution channels are useless, many of their consumer products are launched either on the US only or in a narrow set of countries, here for example I would have liked to get my hands on a Zune HD, but it never came here officially (I could have got it on Ebay, but the price would have raised significantly), recently, I wanted to change my computer and I was looking to get a Surface Pro, but even now, it's not available officially here.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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If you ask me, it's not that their consumer products are not good, cool or slick, is that their PR department and the distribution channels are useless, many of their consumer products are launched either on the US only or in a narrow set of countries, here for example I would have liked to get my hands on a Zune HD, but it never came here officially (I could have got it on Ebay, but the price would have raised significantly), recently, I wanted to change my computer and I was looking to get a Surface Pro, but even now, it's not available officially here.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
I didn't go there above, but you are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. Microsoft's PR and Marketing people bear a HUGE amount of responsibility for the failure of Microsoft's consumer hardware offerings. I was the one guy who got an original black Zune 30GB - Xmas gift. Still have it, use it occasionally. It was good hardware, not at all what you'd expect from MS. The HD upgrade made it even nicer - and it had a really slick OS on it, too! Last month I upgraded my phone - initially picked up a Lumia 920. I thought it was a GREAT phone. I had been using an iP4 and an Atrix 3G, and between the three I can honestly say that I strongly prefer WP8 over iOS and Android. That said, before the week was up I went back and traded for an iP5. I did so for a combination of reasons, but they can all be boiled down to this: I have a lot more faith in Apple continuing to execute its "vision" than I do in Microsoft executing it's own. They frankly suck at marketing to the consumer. The Surface ads were their worst yet. Short of having Lindsay Lohan go around promoting Surface 2, I don't know where else they'd go from here. Who knows where they would be, had someone competent actually run that marketing dept?
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Is 31 too young to start on my "damn kids" rants?
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"0!0110!"... In my hysteria, I may have lapsed into binary for a moment there.
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I dont think you guys are considering the fact that once you lose relevance or brand equity ,it will be difficult to get it back. Microsoft has to move into consumer space if not they will find out one day that even their enterprise space has been whittled away. What do you think will happen if apple and google move into enterprise space? What i think will happen is that most of their current customers will also follow since they already trust them. if microsoft has refused to even try out some of this things we call failures now, they will be in a far bigger mess than they are now. In business you always have to think of the future, no one can predict the future 100%. Apple stocks for example have fallen $5 just this morning, no one could have predicted that just last year.
Layinka wrote:
Microsoft has to move into consumer space if not they will find out one day that even their enterprise space has been whittled away. What do you think will happen if apple and google move into enterprise space?
Err...I am rather certain that Microsoft is front and center in the consumer space right now. But perhaps you were referring to telephony (but then no idea how that relates to enterprise.)
Layinka wrote:
What do you think will happen if apple and google move into enterprise space?
Pretty sure that the cloud offerings from google are really about the enterprise.
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Layinka wrote:
Microsoft has to move into consumer space if not they will find out one day that even their enterprise space has been whittled away. What do you think will happen if apple and google move into enterprise space?
Err...I am rather certain that Microsoft is front and center in the consumer space right now. But perhaps you were referring to telephony (but then no idea how that relates to enterprise.)
Layinka wrote:
What do you think will happen if apple and google move into enterprise space?
Pretty sure that the cloud offerings from google are really about the enterprise.
What i mean about apple n google moving into enterpreise would have been better expressed as "Take over" instead of "move in". My point is if microsoft decides,like everyone is saying to just stick with whatever they feel they are strongest in right now, and dont move into other things, pretty soon,even that there area of supposed strength will be threatened. Consumer space? i was responding to what people said earlier and their classifiaction of MS into enterprise and consumer.
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Am I the only one who keeps seeing these ridiculous articles about Microsoft dying, and reading only blindered screeds about how Microsoft's CONSUMER efforts are an utter failure, and wanting to scream, "LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE MARKET, YOU MORONS!!!"? Do these people have any clue how much the SMB market has invested in Microsoft's enterprise stuff, and CONTINUES to invest in their product set? And not only on the infrastructure side, i.e. Office/Sharepoint/Exchange - the platform's development stack as well! When many, many companies rely on your server OS running your web development stack backed by your relational database offering, to drive big, long-life-cycle LOB and web-facing applications, you are DOING PRETTY WELL. Every business offering they make, they have legit competitors, no question. But no one can question that they are putting a TON of resources into improving those offerings, especially on the web side, where they have dumped a lot of time and effort into making ASP.Net a much better, more competitive offering. I really like Linux, and completely understand why it has the mindshare among the startup-type crowd. And Google is offering a compelling Office + Exchange alternative, especially for smaller setups. And SQL Server's got "NoSQL" on it's tail. But in all these cases, Microsoft is the Top Dog - and those competitors have had enough time to mature that it seems to me Microsoft still has the edge and the position of strength. I personally have worked off numerous platforms, but keep coming back to .Net because it's where the overall developer demand is, and where a lot of innovation is still taking place. Somebody with a bigger voice than me, PLEASE tell these Apple/Android idiots that whether or not Microsoft is loudly and publicly pushing "Consumer" over "Enterprise", AT LEAST GET YOUR ARGUMENTS RIGHT. Microsoft will die when somebody (or somebodies) takes away that ENTERPRISE play, NOT when they make a subpar tablet and can't sell it!!! And all kids should get off my lawn. Thank you.
If your point is that the Microsoft Corporation, as a business, is doing fine, then I agree with you. Afterall they are the 5th largest corporation (measured by capitalization). And yes, their business is mostly the enterprise side. However... Apple came from nowhere to become the SECOND largest corporation - so no one should think that the consumer side isn't relevant. MS has got the enterprise side sown up, for sure. However every corp needs to GROW to survive, and MSFT is struggling to GROW. It appears that they want now to shore up their mobile and consumer devices side of things - can you blame them? Not only is MSFT struggling to gorw, they're also struggling with entry into the Mobile Space and with Developer and Consumer Mindshare - and mind share is so very important. It's what propelled Apple into #2 position (behind Exxon Oil). So when you hear/read that MSFT is yesterday's news and their offerings are being ignored and hated, what you are witnessing is peoples' sentiment - and this is a clue about Mindshare. These days a tech firm can fall in as little as 5 years. It may have taken 20 years to kill Motorola, or 10 years to kill Nokia, but the horizon is shorter today and Microsoft has to do everything they can to grab Mindshare in order to secure their future. I still believe that with their enormous enterprise position and almost bottomless bags of cash that they will get over the current problems with their Win8 tablet sales - even if that picture is hard to see in the near term - but so far I see absolutely NO progress with Mindshare. People routinely mock Microsoft and their products. On Sept 10th when Apple had their showing of new phones I was looking through Flipboard and I couldn't help but be aghast that EVERY SINGLE tech story was about Apple and their new phones. Now THAT'S Marketing power, my friends, and without Mindshare that's not possible. I think Microsoft's products are good enough (for them to have a good business) but the company absolutely SUCKS at Marketing and Promotion and they should really STUDY Apple in order to get a clue for what to do. And if they really want to increase Mindshare then they need to clue in that people hate them for a REASON. Yeah, Karma's a biotch.