Microsoft has become “Cloudserv” ~Tim Sneath
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It sounds like Mr. Sneath is implying that because Microsoft is moving away from Windows as the core of its business that this is a bad strategy. It sounds more reactionary than an opinion built on current or trending market understanding. The PC (and Windows as a subset of that market) is only continuing to lose market share in both consumer and enterprise spaces. It seems that it would be reckless to the point of foolishness for Microsoft to continue to make Windows the core of its business.
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Pretty much could tell that windows was no longer on their main agenda when they said there will be no more releases and will be windows as a service for win10, I can see it eventually being wrapped up it into a monthly paid product like office 365. I think if it does happen, people in masses will switch over to Linux based distributions. Microsoft probably wouldn't be that bothered either, think they found they make more money with their cloud services...
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Obviously not forgetting the Xbox as well, that's something that is a core of their business. The phones they scrapped because it was failing and had shit market share compared to Apple and Google, I think it was a good business move scrapping the mobile development side of their business.
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Author states in the first paragraph: "Microsoft has become “Cloudserv”— a company that focuses on back-end cloud services and for whom Windows is astonishingly a non-core business."
Um, that should be astonishing to no one, especially not someone who has worked at MS. To the IT industry, we've known for decades that Windows was on the way out and could not be relevant to Microsoft's long term vision. This guy seems shockingly out of touch for even a casual observer and insanely clueless for someone with a long term interest in the company.
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Microsoft has been evolving for a long time, it is just a slow process but it is getting there. I like the way they are going, just continually to push towards security should be goal.
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"Throughout the majority of my time at Microsoft, Windows was the company’s centerpiece, not just in terms of being the largest revenue contributor, but even more so, the gravitational force that influenced every strategic decision. The retirement of Silverlight and the at-best equivocal support for .NET on the client was driven by the desire for Windows to ‘own’ the platform."
All thing that have widely been seen as major mistakes. This was from the Balmer era and everyone was talking about how totally out of touch and clueless that strategy was at the time. Silverlight was a joke and make MS look really bad. .NET was great, and is now surpassing Windows itself by no longer being contrained by it.
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"...with the old core OS division (the kernel team) moving under Azure. (Again, hard to overstate the significance of that — the Windows kernel is now an implementation detail under a team that famously “loves Linux”)."
Um, the mood here is wrong. First, Azure might "love Linux" but this is neither here nor there, emotional avoidance like the author is implying here has no place in the business world. If the Azure team knows kernels better than the desktop team, and you'd expect that they would, then why would you avoid them just because you don't see them as the fanboi that you are?
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"Cortana is unmentioned in the email, although one assumes that it is divided across product units with the underlying platform under the AI Cognitive Services team and the Windows experience team being responsible for how it is exposed. This is strikingly different to how Amazon are treating Alexa, with thousands of people having been hired to that group over the last couple of years, including a good chunk of Microsoft’s old evangelism team if my LinkedIn network is anything to go "
Okay, but for Amazon it is a money making product that they sell. At MS it is a money losing "Clippy" that makes other MS products worse. Cortana is one of the reasons that Windows 10 is suffering, it makes it so much worse that if it just wasn't there. This guy seems upset everytime someone at MS does something smart.
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@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft has become “Cloudserv” ~Tim Sneath:
"...with the old core OS division (the kernel team) moving under Azure. (Again, hard to overstate the significance of that — the Windows kernel is now an implementation detail under a team that famously “loves Linux”)."
Um, the mood here is wrong. First, Azure might "love Linux" but this is neither here nor there, emotional avoidance like the author is implying here has no place in the business world. If the Azure team knows kernels better than the desktop team, and you'd expect that they would, then why would you avoid them just because you don't see them as the fanboi that you are?
I don't think this means what this guy thinks it means.
This would be a big step for Windows as a Service and a move away from the current platform hell it's stuck to. This "could" be a big boost to Microsoft.
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"Nobody would accuse Microsoft of being unsuited to the enterprise today. "
Actually, that's a very regular complaint. That MS has remained distracted by consumer practices and approaches is still very much something that many people are concerned about. That MS has improved since Windows 2000 by leaps and bounds is without question, i think. But does using Windows 10 today make me feel like MS has shifted from consumer to enterprise focus compared to Windows NT Workstation? Heck no, exactly the opposite. MS seems to be struggling on the desktop to even remember that they have business customers.
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"The recent shift to the cloud has proven immensely profitable, with Microsoft stock growing to levels that seemed unfathomable just a few years ago. The shift away from the client and Windows is clearly working as a business strategy — but it’s a seismic shift for the company and its culture."
He seems to figure things out by the end, but just stating what everyone has known for years.
