The statement typical Jobsian hyperbole, but we should under estimate just how serious Apple’s staff would take such a statement.
Apple’s intention to wage ‘holy war’ illustrates just how high the stakes as the online empires try to capture users.
Those Holy Wars and the reason they are being fought is something all of us should keep in mind when we’re asked to choose between Apple, Google or Microsoft.
The idea of tying the product into the company’s Office 365 and Microsoft’s cloud services make sense although it might be a matter of too little, too late.
Perversely, if Office for the iPad is successful, it could remove one of the last barriers for business and power home users moving off PCs.
Microsoft’s move also shows cloud services are now the main focus of the company; Satya and his team have given up any attempt to shore up the traditional – and immensely profitable – box software business.
That is going to mean Microsoft’s financial statements are going to look very different in the near future.
Regardless of the success of Office for the iPad, what were Microsoft’s core businesses are deeply affected as the company evolves to the post-PC computer marketplace. The challenge is for Satya and his management team to manage that change.
Microsoft’s task of securing its software was a huge undertaking, one that isn’t over yet.
Microsoft’s task of securing its software was a huge undertaking, one that isn’t over yet.
One of the great, and possibly under recognised, business achievements of the computer age was Bill Gates’ recognition that Microsoft’s online strategy was flawed shortly after releasing Windows 95. A few years later he had to repeat the task when the company found its products were almost dangerously insecure.
The problems at the time were vast, compounded by Microsoft’s failure to take security seriously – the first version of Windows XP came out without a firewall which ensured thousands of users were quickly infected by the computer worms rampant on many ISPs networks at the time.
As the story tells, it was a long difficult task for Microsoft to change complex and interdependent computer code involving 8,500 of the company’s engineers.
One suspects the cultural challenges were even greater in getting the managers supervising the army of engineers to understand just how serious the security threat was to Microsoft’s users.
The biggest challenge though was Microsoft’s own product line; because the company hadn’t ‘baked’ security into its software, key products like Microsoft Office relied on lax security practices to work properly.
Office and Windows also had the problem of legacy code and applications; one of Microsoft’s selling points over Apple and other competitor systems was that the company took pride in supporting older hardware and software, this in itself creates security risks when programs designed in the MS-DOS days still want to write to the system kernel.
For Microsoft the journey isn’t over, although the shift to cloud computing has changed – and simplified – the company’s security quest by making legacy issues in Office and Windows less important.
Microsoft and Gates’ success in seeing off the threats posed by the internet gave the company another decade of computer industry dominance, however dealing with security issues was nowhere near successful.
In the end however it wasn’t security issues that saw Microsoft lose its dominance; the internet eventually prevailed as Apple revolutionised mobile computing while Amazon and Google improved cloud services.
With Bill Gates reportedly finding himself getting more involved in the company he founded, the challenges of both the internet and security are two that he’s going to be very familiar with. It will be interesting to see what we write about Microsoft in 2022.
The Tizen and Firefox smartphone systems threaten to disrupt the entire industry and ruin the plans of both Apple and Google.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a three or four way war in the technology industry, with most sectors settling down into a two way fight between alternatives.
Mozilla’s promised $25 smartphone project threatens to open the mobile industry into a three way battle just as it appeared the market had comfortably settled down into an Android and iOS duopoly.
Now we see a three way race and possibly four if Samsung can get traction with its Tizen operating system that it’s bundling into the latest version of the Gear smartwatch.
One positive aspect of the four way battle is that three of the participants – Firefox, Tizen and Android are relatively open so compatibility between them isn’t impossible.
For Google and Apple though, this four way tussle presents a problem to their business plans.
Apple’s iOS ambitions of putting the software in smarthomes, connected cars and, possibly most lucratively of all, into retailing with iBeacon are threatened by a fragmented market and a rapidly eroding market share.
For Google, both Firefox and Tizen threaten the dominant position of their Android operating system that forms a plank in the company’s ambition to control the planet’s data and become an ‘identity service’.
So the stakes are high in the smartphone operating systems wars.
It’s early days to forecast the demise of either Android or Apple iOS, which is unlikely in the short term, but if Firefox’s operating system does take hold it will mean the smartphone industry is about to become a lot more complex.
Automotive systems are one of the key markets for Microsoft as the company tries to move into markets beyond the stagnating personal computer sector and should the reports be true that Ford is looking at moving to the rival Blackberry owned QNX system then Windows Embedded has taken an embarrassing blow in a key market.
More serious though is Bloomberg’s report that Microsoft plans to cut its licensing fees for Windows installed on cheaper devices.
While not unexpected, this will damage the company’s earnings given the Windows division made up 22% of Microsoft’s earnings last year.
It’s clear that the free Android system is beginning to hurt Microsoft both in the smartphone and personal computer markets.
For Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella, dealing with Windows’ place in the new Microsoft is going to be one of his most pressing challenges and will almost certainly define his first year in the role.
As the Internet of Things and Machine to Machine markets grow, Microsoft is going to have quickly decide if the company wants to compete in the market.
Cloud computing has changed the way we expect software to work and changed the entire industry’s philosophy.
“I don’t use ninety percent of what’s in Microsoft Word” has been the complaint of computer users for years as they struggled through the myriad features of box software products.
In the days of floppy disks and CDs, software developers tried to deliver as many features as they could; despite the fact that the ordinary user only needed a core set of functions and that most items on the menus went untouched.
The result was bloated, difficult to use software. The cloud computing model changes this, particularly in business fields like accounting software.
Last week saw a blitz of releases from cloud accounting services with Xero, Intuit and MYOB all making big announcements.
MYOB announced a wide ranging product refresh, Intuit their mobile service and Xero its new board directors that point the direction for its US expansion.
A key part of all the announcement was how the services are all boasting of their partner ecosystems developing add ons that improve users’ functionality.
Once consequence of having an army of developers plugging into the product means that companies don’t have to ship bloated packages that have dozens of features that are irrelevant to each users’ needs.
Xero’s Australian CEO, Chris Ridd, put this well during the week by observing that company aims to “address the basic eighty percent of needs”.
This is the exact opposite of the box software model of the past where vendors would try to pack more features into their products which gave rise to the term bloatware.
Microsoft’s Office package was probably the best example of this massive growth in the product size, with the installation files eventually taking up a full 4.3Gb DVD to deliver something that most people were happy with when WordPerfect 2.0 shipped on three floppy disks.
That change to the software model is a good example of how business practices and methods change as technology evolves; it also illustrates just one of the fundamental changes older software companies are having to deal with as cloud services change their industry.
We can still have all the features we want in a software package, but we’ll just have to connect – and probably pay for the add ons.
Today, we’re more likely to be scrambling to find an add-on rather than complaining about features we don’t need.
Walking away from a business is not always a simple task as Bill Gates is finding
Earlier this week Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen celebrated his Seattle Hawks winning the Super Bowl while his former business partner, Bill Gates, still struggles to escape the clutches of the software giant they founded forty years ago.
After a long drawn out process, software giant Microsoft has finally chosen its replacement for CEO Steve Ballmer however founder Bill Gates finds himself firmly trapped in the company’s orbit.
Hoodie wearing Satya Nadella‘s ascension to Microsoft CEO was probably the poorest held secret in the tech industry having been openly reported for several weeks.
Nadella has a massive task ahead of him as the industry that’s been so lucrative for Microsoft over the past thirty years evolves to deal with the post-PC era.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
How Nadella manages Microsoft’s transition will define his business career and tenure at the top job, it will also determine the company’s position in a marketplace where PCs running Windows are no longer relevant.
The biggest news from Microsoft’s announcement though was that Bill Gates will step down as Chairman of the Board and take a new position as ‘founder and technology advisor’.
Microsoft also announced that Bill Gates, previously Chairman of the Board of Directors, will assume a new role on the Board as Founder and Technology Advisor, and will devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction. John Thompson, lead independent director for the Board of Directors, will assume the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors and remain an independent director on the Board.
Despite leaving the CEO role over a decade ago, Gates finds himself back in a hands on role at the company.
The value of Bill Gates
It’s questionable what value Gates is going to add in the role of ‘Technology Advisor’ as Microsoft’s markets are very different to those the company was founded in and came to dominate in the 1980s and 90s.
For Nadella, it’s not exactly a vote of confidence from the board in appointing the company’s founder to hover over his shoulder offering helpful advice.
On a personal level this must be disappointing for the founder and former CEO as well in that his mind is on far greater topics such as eliminating malaria through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Trapped by Microsoft’s gravity
Gates’ situation though is a classic example of a business founder who’s never been able to get out of the orbit of their business. Despite their best efforts, they keep being dragged back to give a helping hand.
Bill Gates’ dilemma though shows how tough it is for business founders to escape the gravitational pull of their creations, even when it’s as big a business as Microsoft.
Paul Allen showed how to step away from a business and is enjoying life, Bill Gates’ story though is much more typical for business founders trapped in the enterprises they built.
