Daily Archives: July 31, 2010

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Can Microsoft imitate Apple one more time

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Can Microsoft imitate Apple one more time
Remember back in early June when Steve Ballmer said the Apple iPad was “just another PC”? He’d like to amend that slightly to “just another PC that’s now kicking our a**.”

In a meeting with analysts yesterday, Ballmer spent a fair amount of time talking about Apple’s iPad and trying to explain why there are no Microsoft-based devices that remotely compare to it.
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[ Also on InfoWorld: Cringely is nothing if not an equal-opportunity satirist, as he proves in “Apple’s Steve Jobs: He’s no Old Spice Guy” | Stay up to date on all Robert X. Cringely’s observations with InfoWorld’s Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt distills the Ballmer discussion of the iPad into 11 words: “We’ll talk about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah.” (Apparently, Ballmer is also adopting the Steve Jobs 11-word rule.)

The “blah blah blah” part included a) an admission that the iPad has sold “more than I’d like them to sell,” b) “we’re coming full guns” to the slate market, and c) they’ll be “coming when they’re ready” — so don’t bother camping in line outside any Microsoft stores just yet. (Greg Packer, this means you.)

Meanwhile, the one Windows-based slate Ballmer could dig up to demo at last January’s CES — and got virtually heckled off the stage by the blogosphere afterward — may end up not being a Windows device after all. Now that HP has gobbled up Palm, its Slate PC may run Palm’s WebOS, a much more attractive tablet interface than Windows 7. Given how badly HP got jobbed by Microsoft MCTS Training during the whole “Vista ready” labeling debacle, I imagine this would be sweet revenge.

So, once again, Microsoft finds itself in the position of needing to imitate Apple to stay relevant.

Of course, imitation is part of Microsoft’s DNA. Copy something successful, then ram it down people’s throats. CP/M becomes MS-DOS, the Mac GUI gets reborn as Windows, though maybe “stillborn” is closer — it took Redmond 11 years to come up with an interface that approached the Mac’s features and simplicity. Intuit’s Quicken begets Microsoft Money. The iPod spawns the Zune. And so on down the line.

I’m not saying Microsoft has not come up with some innovations over the last 35 years. I still think Excel is the best software Redmond ever made. The Xbox, Microsoft Surface, Project Natal — er, Kinect — are all first rate. But its bread-and-butter strategy continues to be “imitate, then destroy.” And that strategy has grown less successful over time.

Now Microsoft has to play catchup to the iPad, as well as the 3,247 Android-based tablets we’ll be seeing over the next 12 months. Given how long it’s taking Redmond to catch up on cell phones, it may be two years before we see any tablets worth talking about. By then, it will be too late.

Still, this could explain Microsoft’s new slogan, unveiled at its annual Microsoft MCITP Certification Global Exchange confab last week: Be What’s Next. In this case, what’s “next” is Apple, a company it seems Microsoft now desperately needs to become.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Microsoft Get Back to Work

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Microsoft Get Back to Work
Steve Ballmer assured analysts and the world that Microsoft MCTS Training is hard at work developing a Windows 7-based tablet to compete with devices like the Apple iPad. It is also putting the finishing touches on Windows Phone 7, and preparing to launch the innovative Kinect controller for the Xbox 360. The problem for Microsoft is that these are not its bread and butter markets, and its dominance with business customers is slowly slipping away while it dabbles in consumer gadgets.

Microsoft has always had a consumer side. Microsoft Windows has been established as the de facto consumer desktop operating system. Internet Explorer enjoys a dominant market share among Web browsers. Still, it seems that most of the efforts Microsoft makes in the consumer market are unsuccessful.
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Some Microsoft consumer technologies–like the Zune music player–have been technically sound, yet have failed to capture the attention of consumers or dent the dominance of the Apple iPod. Other consumer technologies–such as the Xbox 360–are a success in the market now, but operated at a loss for so many years that breaking even probably won’t happen soon. Then there are the abject failures like Microsoft BOB, or the recently executed Kin social phone.

Microsoft, Google, and Apple seem to all suffer from such an intense desire to dominate markets and crush the competition that they jump into every market at once and end up doing a half-assed job at everything rather than a focused and excellent job developing the products and services their brands were built on. It’s a sort of “throw every gadget, application, and technology at the wall and see what sticks” business strategy.

Historically speaking, fighting a war on too many fronts simultaneously is almost always a fatal flaw. It spreads valuable resources too thin, resulting in weakness, and eventually collapse. Just ask Napoleon.

Does Microsoft need a tablet? Will Windows Phone 7 be a success? Mobile platforms like tablets and smartphones are a computing revolution that Microsoft can’t ignore, but Microsoft needs to be sure it is looking beyond the impulse to compete for the sake of competing, and that its tablet and smartphone efforts fit into a larger strategic vision that makes sense.

Microsoft holds a virtual monopoly on the desktop operating system, and office productivity software markets, as well as a comfortably dominant position with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Exchange. Instead of consumer-oriented products like music players, and gaming consoles, Microsoft should focus its efforts on its core business customers.

At the same time, though, Microsoft can’t expect to just coast on the coattails of its former glory and rely solely on those products–at least not the way they are today. Microsoft needs to look at the direction technology is going–virtualization, cloud, mobility–and figure out how to adapt its core portfolio to continue meeting its customers’ needs in an evolving marketplace.

Microsoft has those efforts going as well with Azure, and the recently-unveiled Windows Azure Platform appliance. But–if Microsoft MCITP Certification would focus its resources on initiatives like that rather than consumer gadgets it might have much greater odds of success.