Microsoft's Upheavel

Buoyed by Microsoft's announcement of Live Mesh, I thought now's the right time to talk about some things I've had on my mind for a while. I've had a love-hate relationship with Microsoft for the better part of a decade. I've loved some of their products and have hated some of their long-term "strategic" decisions. This is exacerbated by the fact that one of my closest friends is an Apple employee, an unabashed fanatic (holding Jobs-ism as close to his jugular as his reverence for religion) and well the term Machead doesn't do justice to him. But I digress...

What is so special about Microsoft? Even after years and years of being battered by multiple competitors it's still one of the most profitable and (at times) one of the most innovative companies around. Just imagine the magnitude of the previous statement: the present day Microsoft has several large-scale competitors in each business it operates in. Let's put that into perspective with this simple image:

Now the image above is only a listing of some competitors that you've probably heard about. There are hoards of others. On top of that, the company has major partnerships with many of its main competitors!

Microsoft also operates simulateously in the consumer and enterprise marketplaces with serious leverage in some areas. Translation, if things go terribly wrong within a short period of time, not only will it have a sizeable impact on the world economy it will also affect the way we interact with machines in our daily lives.

So, does Microsoft really need an upheavel; aren't things just nice and dandy up in Redmond? I mean, all companies have some issues right. What makes Microsoft's problems so special? Well, consider three things: 1) crazy competition from companies that are bulldozing in the internet/new media space while gunning for Microsoft's failure as perhaps a major component in their strategy to succeed, 2) the greater the leverage in a market, the greater the capacity to be the biggest loser, and 3) the bigger and  more diversified a company, the lower its response rate and focus. 

Back to the point of this post. Here are my top 10 suggestions for the company to get back on track and dominate our lives (pun intended :) ) like it managed to do in the 90s. A few caveats: I don't own an Xbox 360 or shares in any of the companies I'm gonna talk about.

1. Don't buy Yahoo! for an arm and a leg. Don't budge too far from the current valuation. It's more like a  poker game now between you, Yahoo! and unsurprisingly Google. Don't blow your hand. In general, I'm not favorable of this deal for a host of reasons but given that it's just a matter of time before it closes, this seems to be the best advice.
2. Build more value into the Xbox brand. Xbox 360 came out with guns roaring and for the past one year it seems as if Microsoft's content with playing catch-up to the Wii as long as they beat PS3 in monthly sales. This is a disastrous strategy. It's been almost a year since the launch of the PS3 and all you ever hear from developers is how easy it's to program for the Xbox 360 while they've barely scratched the surface for PS3. I won't say that hardware wise PS3 is more advanced that the 360 though I do recognize that as an overall package it's becoming more and more interesting every month. So, focus on long sustained profitability in the Xbox business and take some more risks in the marketplace. The gaming landscape is probably one of the best places to play some risks in. How about a machine re-design as a media & entertainment hub? And ya, only one sku this time. I'd go for a re-design of the box itself so that it looks more like a media hub than a gaming station but if that is out of scope, atleast load it up with a hard-drive hefty enough to last for a couple of years.
3. Integration of more technology (especially from the R&D side) into the existing businesses e.g. why can't the WorldWide Telescope see a simultaneous launch on the 360? And it has been a while since the launch of Virtual Earth, how come that experience does not translate to the 360? I hope the Mesh with eventually include data on the 360. How cool would it be to have all my 360 hard-drive data synced up to other machines where I could enjoy the same movies I download on the 360, on my PC!
4. I for one think that Microsoft handled the whole next-gen optical media war pretty sensibly. Now, don't go and blow it all away. Be disruptive! Meshify it, if that's what they're calling it. Just move towards downloadable content and stay the course. There's a better delivery and backup scenario hiding somewhere in there.
5. Microsoft needs to strengthen its grip in the enterprise marketplace. They need to expand their business offerings to becomes a one-stop shop for businesses. I have friends who use Lotus Notes at work and can't wait to switch to Outlook on their home PCs. That's the kind of software experience and expansiveness they need to deliver on. I haven't really heard much about the Dynamics suite to comment.
6. What's up with the branding?!!! Please, we need more consistency in naming. I follow the tech. industry and even I can't differentiate between products under the different umbrellas sometimes. Though some of the new brandnames are just awesome e.g. Mesh and Silverlight.
7. Speaking of Silverlight, what an amazing piece of technology. I'm just floored. This is the kind of stuff that Microsoft needs more of. This year alone, Microsoft's made some announcements in some amazing technologies in Surface Computing, Silverlight, Mesh and the WorldWide Telescope. However, there're some gaps in marketing and distribution. I haven't heard anyone aside from core MS platform developers speak of Silverlight. Work this out! I guess some of these things will just take time.
8. And speaking of time, quick product releases and mass distribution. I don't want to know what Windows Mobile 7.0 will look like and that it would provide some serious competition to the iPhone, I want to know WHEN I can have it in my hands. Microsoft needs to reduce the time to market for some of its products or atleast not talk about said products if they're years away from launch. I do think that Steven Sinofsky is doing a superb job with the sercrecy around Windows 7.0. Apple really has the timing of products in the bag.
9. Something needs to be done with the whole Devices division. I don't have any inside information so I can only surmise based on what I see coming out of it and so far it has been underwhelming. How does the Zune help? And even if there's some strategic need to be competing against Apple and partners in the music player space, why not go all out and define a music and video experience that we can't imagine outside of Apple. If the Zune was integral to Microsoft's success I think they would've made some bolder bets with the device. Now, I can't see how moving away from the platform bit and competing in devices is helping Microsoft. My only advice, if you're going for such products, go all out and create new markets with them. The Zune should've been an all-in-one integrated device similar to the iPhone. It should've been what the N-Gage touted to be.
10. Focus! Notice how Apple under Steve Jobs re-focused itself. They have a defined number of products and defined user experiences for those products. And in that domain, everything works right (mostly). I know we're looking at different scales of operations but I'm sure that Microsoft could muster some focus in the plethora of products it has at hand. This would definitely weed out some products that the company should not be doing business in currently. Good thing is, they've finally killed the SPOT watches.

That's it for now, I'll have similar posts for other tech. companies in the coming months.

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Stages of Life

We all have different perspectives on life. I hope yours don't resemble these in any way:

This one's hilarious:

Sorry, until I fix the long due layout of my site, I can't display large images properly. You can click through to see them on their hosting pages. I'll have the blog template up soon enough.

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