About “Five Not-So-Easy Steps to Save Microsoft”

While I’m not in the habit of link blogging, Jason Kolb blogged a similar take to my recent themes about Microsoft entitled Five Not-So-Easy Steps to Save Microsoft. Jason starts with:

Let me stick a disclaimer on the front of this post: I cut my teeth on Microsoft technology and have been a big supporter of them in the past. I would really like this company to survive because otherwise I’m going to have a lot of useless knowledge cluttering up my brain. However, I am a realist and this is a company in a dangerous situation. It saddens me to see this once great company slowly dying, and I hope they do something to stop the bleeding before it’s too late.

Microsoft is in an interesting situation right now. Their monopoly is fading fast, and the only product they have that’s driving any significant level of buzz is the Xbox 360. They’ve gone from  absolutely dominating the technology space to almost falling out of the cutting-edge technology consciousness. They’ve done very little in the past couple of years to enhance their standing as a leading technology company, and I think a lot of people view them as living in the past.

He continues with (emphasis mine):

I think Microsoft is in a precarious situation right now–it’s on the verge of becoming irrelevant. The reason Microsoft has been so dominant over the past twenty years is because they have not only courted programmers, but they (it) made much easier for programmers to use their technology as a platform than anything(body) else. This resulted in the majority of mainstream software being written for Windows. Which resulted in more people buying Windows, which resulted in more developers writing for Windows. It was a catch-22 in favor of Microsoft, and they made money hand over fist because of it.

That’s what I’ve been saying recently, though my posts came from a slightly different angle. Jason’s take is that operating systems and language no longer matter (emphasis mine):

The result of this software lifecycle shift has been that developing for a mass audience has a lot less to do with the operating system and a lot more to do with the end-user experience. The language and platform no longer matter, it’s just the end result now. In fact, more than which operating system or language is used, it’s now the ability to scale on an as-needed basis that is the primary requirement for applications. Microsoft fails miserably at this requirement because of their licensing model and the way they try to monetize their software, which they haven’t really changed since the 1980’s.  Just from keeping an eye on the Net I sense a mass migration to open source development platforms, and the search trends seem to back that up–as a bonus bad omen, the news volume for their languages is practically non-existant.

While I don’t disagree with his main premise, I don’t completely agree that the language and platform don’t matter; they are still what is used to create and host applications, be they local or on the web, and those things take time to learn and build expertise in. Jason even acknowledges that at the start by saying “…otherwise I’m going to have a lot of useless knowledge cluttering up my brain.”

In my (humble :) opinion, the problem is more in Microsoft’s licensing model which makes it so much easier for people to choose open-source. And I believe people are choosing open-source in droves over Microsoft’s solutions as I know I am starting to. Jason addressed this point in the last paragraph above by saying: “Microsoft fails miserably…because of their licensing model and the way they try to monetize their software, which they haven’t really changed since the 1980’s.”

Jason then goes on to recommend the following five (5) “not so easy” steps to fix Microsoft, which I think are spot-on (except for the last one, that’s at the same time both obvious and too vague to be an action item):

1. Release .NET as open source.
2. Release Windows as open source.
3. Release a SaaS version of Office, ASAP.
4. Find a Steve Jobs clone.
5. Start innovating again.

Jason of course goes into far more detail and his post is definitely worth a read if you care about these things. Oh, there is one final pull quote I’ll reference on his second step to drive the point home (emphasis mine):

What’s really going to hurt them, however, is the licensing model for the server products. When you compare the cost of running and scaling a Windows-based application versus running and scaling on Linux, it becomes a no-brainer. I can’t think of a single good reason for developing a SaaS application for Windows when you’ll be paying Microsoft licensing fees every time you need to scale, and you could be getting that software for free using Linux. Microsoft needs to consider the operating systems loss leaders and an incredibly powerful way to market their other products, before everyone stops developing for them and everyone stops using them as a result.

Via Ben Coffey.

P.S. I have numerous posts that are in various stages of completion covering some of this same ground from, again, a slightly different angle. But when I finalize and post them, please don’t think them a copy-cat of Jason’s post. :)  This is such an obvious area to discuss these day’s, there are lots of similar independent thoughts, for hopefully obvious reason.