There are some things Microsoft is doing very right.
Since the news on August 23 that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer will be stepping down within the next year, there’s been a maelstrom of responses across the tech world. We’ve contributed our share, too. In fact, something our CEO Sanjay Bhatia said on Stuart Varney & Co. struck a chord with me, and I heard a similar sentiment in a blog posted this week on the Official Microsoft Blog by VP of Communications Frank Shaw.
While making reference to Charles Dickens and Rashomon, he responded to all the critics and pundits evaluating all of the Rights and Wrongs in Microsoft’s last decade and a half: we’ve all got our own biases and perspectives, and each person will see Microsoft’s lifetime differently. If you’re focusing on all the bad, or calling the company “unfocused,” that’s what you want to see. He is free to see the exact opposite.
Well, certainly we’re not all going to agree with Shaw, even those among us who are die-hard Microsoft fans. Most likely, you will fall somewhere in the spectrum, rather than lie on either extreme.
Shaw contended that pundits have examined this company’s actions while “focus[ed] exclusively on some content of our consumer businesses, and then judge[d] us harshly while ignoring the successes we’ve had elsewhere.”
They’re focusing on the things Microsoft has faltered in, when what they’re strongest with, what the company is best at, has hardly been mentioned at all. In fact, it’s not often mentioned even by Microsoft: the enterprise market is booming, and Microsoft still has a crucial edge there. Enterprise products, services, and the cloud are proving quite fruitful for the company. Bhatia put it this way:
“Microsoft is already doing this very well, if you look at Office 365. Outside of hardcore gaming, which is the only area where they really do well in the consumer space, Microsoft needs to focus completely on the enterprise and help the ecosystem on things like Azure, SQL Server and big data, Windows Server, that’s where things are just thriving. They’re already doing this, but they don’t talk about it. They try to be a consumer-facing company like Apple and that’s not their history or their culture.”
It’s just that for so many years now, it’s tried to be just that: a consumer leader, when it’s already got this whole slew of other products and services that are already strong and in-demand in the enterprise market.
But wait! We CAN do it all! (Right?!)
Now, further into his thoughtful tangent, Shaw goes on to say that his company can and will continue to compete and product in many facets of technology, software, services, and products. He firmly argues Microsoft doesn’t have to choose OR, that is can do the AND thing: master devices AND services; dominate enterprise AND consumer; tackle cloud AND on premise.
At least at this moment, the VP of communication isn’t keen to take Bhatia’s advice to focus on what the company does best, and take it to the next level. He’s still not admitting that it’s OK to not be the sexiest, the leader, in the consumer markets. But there’s value in that old adage, being a “jack of all trades, master of none.” I hate to see Microsoft continue its quest to do too many things well, so that in fact, it only continues to lose more of its share of the enterprise market in the process.
What do you think? Is Shaw right here? Or is Bhatia’s advice right on the mark?
