Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: microsoft

  • A monument to a modern pharaoh: Links of the week

    A monument to a modern pharaoh: Links of the week

    Starting a new job makes keeping the website up to date difficult but it is possible to get some reading done. Some of this week’s highlights included the auto industry’s changing business model, inside Microsoft’s Vista mistake and Apple’s memorial to a modern pharaoh.

    A monument to a modern pharaoh

    Apple Park is an anachronism wrapped in glass, tucked into a neighborhood says Wired’s Adam Rodgers. However his main point is Apple’s new five billion dollar new headquarters is really just a memorial to Steve Jobs and his ego.

    Dissecting a dying business model

    The car industry is one sector in a perfect storm of disruption and Australia’s General Motors Holden is slashing its dealer network to deal with declining demand and technological change.

    Notably in the story is what happens to the dealers when their contract with GMH is cut with the franchisees having to hand over tools, signage and manuals. It shows just how the corporation controlled its franchisees.

    Where Vista went wrong

    This blog has long maintained that Microsoft’s release of the Vista operating system was not only the biggest mistake the company ever made but also gave an opening for Apple, Google and Amazon to seize the computer market.

    So a post from developer Terry Crowley a former Microsoft developer is an insight into how the process went wrong. His view on internal cultures for companies facing market disruption is telling.

    “In fact, the more power you hold, the more accountable you need to be to open yourself to honest challenge on either facts or logic. This is even more critical in times of rapid change because the facts and consequential logic might change. Accountability and transparency means you are able to reassess your conclusions and react quickly.”

    The Life and times of Jerry Brown

    An excellent interview between US political commentator David Axelrod and California governor Jerry Brown ranges over topics from Ronald Reagan’s rise, today’s hostility to government and his Asian travels while in the political wilderness. It’s worth a listen.

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  • Microsoft sees off the Google threat

    Microsoft sees off the Google threat

    Earlier this decade it looked like Microsoft’s most profitable business line was doomed as Google Docs threatened to disrupt the Office franchise.

    Yesterday Microsoft showed how they had seen off that threat when reporting their second-quarter results that beat Wall Street analysts’ estimates and saw the company’s stock market capitalisation topped $500bn, the first time since the year 2000.

    Microsoft’s results were mainly due to its  cloud computing products with Azure growing at 93% year on year, Office 365 commercial at 47% and Office Consumer Products and Cloud Services at 22%.

    Earlier in the week, cloud security company Okta released its Business at Work study that looked at trends in the commercial use of online services which showed how Microsoft’s products are dominating the market.

    Microsoft’s advantage was underscored in a Gartner paper late last year. The Current State of Cloud Office and What to Do About It report found 10.7 percent of public listed companies surveyed were using Office 365 as opposed to 5.2% using Google. The rest had deployed hybrid or on-premise productivity suites.
    So Microsoft seemed to have seen off the biggest threat to one of their most important products which for Alphabet/Google should be a worrying development as G-Suite (as it’s now called) has failed to become a meaningful revenue centre – advertising profits still made up 22 billion of the company’s $25 billion revenues in their last results.
    Google’s failure to diversify should worry Alphabet investors, particularly given the headstart the company had over Microsoft Office in the early days of G-suite as then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer struggled to shift the company’s key product lines onto the cloud.
    How much the initiatives of G-Suite’s new leader Diane Green can go in making Google’s product more attractive is a big question as Microsoft have shown they can match or beat their competitors’ offerings in areas like collaboration and artificial intelligence.

    Despite Microsoft’s success in seeing off Google in the office productivity market the company still lags Alphabet market capitalisation of $570 billion but Microsoft have show they are far from a spent force in the software industry.

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  • Google’s grab for the smartphone market

    Google’s grab for the smartphone market

    This week Google released its latest smartphone, the Pixel, to mixed reviews. Controlling the most popular mobile operating system, Android, isn’t enough for the company.

    As Microsoft found, just supplying the operating systems for smartphones isn’t enough to influence the market. Apple, along with Nokia and Blackberry before them, showed that the path to both controlling the segment and being profitable relies on having devices designed for their software.

    Given the Pixel’s price point, it’s unclear how well it will do against the iPhone, Samsung’s models or the plethora of Chinese devices but for all the Android ecosystem’s players, having its controlling owner running in opposition to them can’t be comforting.

    Again though Microsoft’s experience is instructive, and encouraging, for the broader Android community as Microsoft’s attempts to push out Windows CE devices failed dismally. For Google to be successful where Microsoft failed would require a degree of corporate discipline the search engine giant is not renown for.

    In the Windows ecosystem, Microsoft strength was licensing and controlling access to the operating system. Android’s strength in the smartphone world is that Google doesn’t have the same veto power. To be able to exercise control over the market, Google needs a big device share.

    Ultimately though the success of the Google Pixel smartphone will depend on how many users will adopt it. It may be time for another round of smartphone subsidy wars.

     

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  • The cost of the cloud: How the disrupters are being disrupted

    The cost of the cloud: How the disrupters are being disrupted

    A common factor when talking to tech companies is their talk of disrupting industries, they themselves are not immune from change though.

    This week networking giant Cisco announced they would cut seven percent of their workforce, nearly 5,500 employees, as the company deals with the shift to software defined networking equipment continues.

    Industry commentators are warning Cisco are not alone as software and cloud based services change the tech industry with Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry estimating the sector may shed up to 370,000 positions this year.

    Today I had the opportunity to ask Autodesk’s Pat Williams, the company’s Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific, about the challenges facing companies transitioning to the cloud. At the beginning of the year Autodesk announced they would be cutting ten percent, over 900 jobs, as part of a structuring plan.

    “I think there was a model that we had that as we moved to a subscription business that said we would see a bit of a drop in revenue and we realised our gross margins would be pressed,” he said.

    “What we were trying to do was right-size the business,” Williams continued. “Sometimes you need to do that. It was a very intentional forward looking move we made.”

    Autodesk and Cisco are far from the first tech companies to suffer from the software industry’s shift to the cloud. Microsoft have been probably been the business most affected by the change.

    Cisco themselves have been dealing with this shift for a decade as well, with a major restructure in 2011 that saw 6,500 jobs cut.

    What is clear in a transitioning industry is that Microsoft, Cisco and Autodesk are far from alone in making cuts. As Autodesk’s Williams points out, it’s probably best for managements to be doing this proactively rather than waiting for the changes to force their hands.

    The stories of Cisco, Autodesk and Microsoft show all industries are facing changes. Assuming you’re safe in any sector is brave thinking.

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  • Microsoft quietly buries its smartphone ambitions

    Microsoft quietly buries its smartphone ambitions

    Last week Microsoft quietly buried its smartphone ambitions with the announcement they would shed 1,850 jobs largely from the remains of the Nokia business they acquired four years ago.

    Microsoft’s Lumia exercise was expensive for the company but even more costly in terms of missed opportunities.

    Those opportunities are now in cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. Shareholders will be hoping the current CEO Satya Nadell executes a lot better on them than his predecessor did with smartphones.

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