You have to knock out the champ. It's an old adage in boxing (if anybody remembers that sport). Rarely does a challenger win a decision over a champion; the underdog almost always needs to 10-count the champ if he (or she) is going to win the fight and claim the title. Just going the distance and "winning" on points usually won't do it. Or, at least, that's the way it used to be back when boxing was relevant.
The same goes for software and especially for Microsoft. It might be an aging, struggling champion, but Microsoft is still king of the ring when it comes to what we might generically call productivity suites -- or what we'd more commonly call an "office" suite, thusly dubbed because the longtime ruler of the roost in that particular category of software is the still-intimidating Microsoft Office.
Many challengers have stepped into the ring with Office, and most have suffered the old-school Mike Tyson treatment (warning: don't click on this link if you don't like boxing). Corel and Lotus are still out there somewhere stumbling in a daze, wondering where the punch came from that knocked them out of the "productivity suite" game. It came from Redmond.
Well, as we all know now, there's an up-and-comer in the suite business, and it's no Francois Botha. (That reference will only make sense if you watched the video linked above, by the way.) It's Google, and it has decided to try to be the Buster Douglas to Microsoft's Mike Tyson by doing something Google almost never does: advertising Google Apps.
And how is the king of Internet advertising...well, advertising? With -- get this -- billboards! Yes! Real billboards on highways in big American cities! Forgive us if we find it hilarious that the sharpest company in cutting-edge technology is using a turn-of-the-20th-century method to get its message across about its competitor to Office. And to think that this is happening while the newspaper industry is dying...
Oh, there's probably more coming from Google on the Apps ad front, but for now, Google is using the old-fashioned billboard to try to convince Office users to get out of their easy chairs and give a new system -- and a new concept, really -- a try. (We haven't spotted the sign on the Mass Turnpike in Boston yet, but we'll let you know when we do. And we might even try to get a photo of it without causing a 30-car pileup. However, if you do read online about a 30-car pileup on the Mass Pike in Boston, you'll know whose fault it was.)
Billboards are a heck of a way to try to take on a software institution, but Google's got the resources and stamina to hang with Office (capital "O") for at least a few rounds. We can't wait to see what's next. Newspaper ads? Radio spots? Guys standing on sidewalks wearing sandwich boards? In the meantime, though, Microsoft Office remains undefeated. But remember, Google: You have to knock out the champ. And your first punch is likely to be a glancing blow at best.
What's your take on Google's billboards? Can Google knock out Office? Take your best shot at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 04, 20090 comments
OK, so that whole thing about Microsoft releasing a browser-less version of Windows 7 in Europe in order to appease voracious European Union regulators? Yeah, that's not going to happen. But browser democracy is still alive and well for now.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 04, 20090 comments
Don Quixote lives. Specifically, he lives in Redmond, Wash. and is more commonly known as Steve Ballmer. The Microsoft CEO has been jousting at the windmills of consumer search for years now, and this week he finally got the prize he has sought for some time: a somewhat less-distant second place to Google in the search market.
Yes, finally, Ballmer and Microsoft have signed a 10-year search deal with Yahoo, which basically makes Yahoo a sales arm of Microsoft and its new Bing search engine. Pending regulatory approval, Microsoft and Yahoo will partner to have less than 40 percent (or, some say, less than 30 percent) of the current search market share.
Being a strong No. 2 in search is fine and all -- and it might bring a much-needed revenue boost to Redmond -- but the problem here is that this deal basically represents two search losers going through the long, painful and expensive process of integrating operations only to, in all likelihood, come nowhere chose to catching the dominant and ever-innovating market leader.
Indeed, observers thus far seem to think that Google will mostly yawn at the Microsoft-Yahoo agreement, which has been a non-kept secret for years now. And while we're big fans of competition driving innovation in any market, we at RCPU don't really see how two companies that couldn't do separately what Google does as well as Google does it are going to combine to take on the search giant in terms of either innovation or market share.
And, as always, we're concerned that Ballmer's battle with the search windmills will further draw Microsoft's attention away from its bread-and-butter products, offerings such as Windows, Office and servers that do a lot more to enrich partners than a second-rate search deal will ever do. Granted, Windows 7 looks like a winner, but Vista should serve as an object lesson that Microsoft taking its eye off the ball in a critical product segment can have dire consequences.
Nevertheless, Don Quixote Ballmer is absolutely determined to keep up his futile battle with an opponent he can't beat, so partners will just have to live with a Microsoft that has an almost unhealthy fixation on Google and consumer search.
The old Avis rental car commercials used to have the tag line, "We're No. 2, but we try harder" or something to that effect. Microsoft and Yahoo will have to try very hard indeed to be anything but No. 2 in a two-horse race in search. Our money is still on Google.
What's your take on the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal? Send it to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on July 29, 20092 comments
The worst-kept secret in Redmond just got...well, a little worse-kept. We now have some idea of what Microsoft's retail stores will look like and what kinds of things they'll feature. One thing is for certain, though: they won't be as cool as Apple stores (nor should they be).
Posted by Lee Pender on July 29, 20090 comments
SPSS makes software that lets companies analyze trends in consumer buying patterns, apparently. It must have done something right, as IBM paid $1 billion-plus for the company. Oh, and Ounce Labs does compliance stuff. It will become part of Big Blue's Rational software operation.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 29, 20090 comments
Democracy has kind of been an on-again, off-again concept in Europe over the centuries, but it's on again now in more ways than one.
In an attempt to get European Union regulators off the company's back, Microsoft has proposed offering a "ballot" of browsers from which users can choose in Windows 7 (as well as in XP and that other operating system, as Mary Jo Foley reveals).
OK, so maybe this doesn't fit the specific definition of democracy. After all, some browsers will be more equal than others, as Kurt Mackie's RCPmag.com story linked above explains:
"Not every browser will make the ballot screen list, according to Microsoft's proposal.
'The Ballot Screen will be populated with the most widely used web browsers that run on Windows with a usage share of equal to or more than 0.5% in the EEA [European Economic Area] as measured semi-annually by a source commonly agreed between Microsoft and the European Commission, but not more than ten (not counting different versions of one and the same browser),' the proposal explains.
"In addition, the browser maker has to be 'actively' offering the browser for it to be included on the ballot screen."
While the whole browser-antitrust issue has mostly been as dead as Netscape in the U.S. for some time now, the EU is obviously still really worried about it. Microsoft's proposal seems fair enough, but it's also kind of ridiculous -- perhaps intentionally so on Microsoft's part.
We've always said here that Microsoft should be able to do what it wants with its own browser and OS. But beyond that, Firefox has been making progress in the U.S. and in Europe without any help from Microsoft. (It's your editor's preferred browser, actually.) Back in March, Firefox 3.0 actually surpassed IE 7 in European market share, at least for a while. Plus, bundling does not guarantee success for Microsoft; just look at Microsoft Money (RIP).
Still, if a browser ballot satisfies the insatiable European appetite for regulation, let the candidates have their places. At least we won't have to worry with it here in the U.S. We'll still be able to use IE to download whichever other browser(s) we choose. (Would that make us less democratic than Europe on the browser front, though? Hmm, a question to ponder.)
We at RCPU have long maintained that the new browser wars are meaningless and that browsers -- which are, after all, free -- are really just a commodity and aren't that important in the grand scheme of most companies' (or partners') revenues.
The fairly organic growth of Firefox demonstrates that no one browser is going to dominate in the years to come the way IE once did, meaning application vendors (and browser vendors) will have to make their apps work equally well in any browser (which should already be the case, anyway). At that point, nobody will care whether a user is surfing in Safari, Chrome, IE or Opera. And maybe the EU will get on to bugging Microsoft about something else.
Do you care at all about the new browser wars? If so, why? Send a note to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on July 29, 20090 comments
Almost everybody likes to see an empire crumble, so it came as no surprise that last week's Microsoft earnings report, arguably the company's worst ever, generated glee that some industry observers could barely contain.
First, there were the blog posts about how Windows 7, supposedly Microsoft's knight in shining armor and Vista slayer, wasn't going to help the company all that much after all, at least not in the short term.
Then, there were the wider predictions of the end of the Microsoft Era, and there was even speculation from Redmond magazine columnist Mary Jo Foley (who, for the record, did not seem gleeful at all about Microsoft's problems) that Microsoft might be looking at another round of layoffs.
While we at RCPU don't share the sense of bubbling excitement about Microsoft falling on hard times that some folks seem to feel -- as a newsletter for Microsoft partners, we generally want the company to do well -- we don't necessarily disagree with some of the perspectives we've read around the Web in the last few days.
As a couple of the links above suggest, Windows 7 might not help Microsoft all that much financially...in calendar 2010. We agree that many companies, given (everybody now) "this economy," combined with bitterness over the failure of Vista in the enterprise, will likely wait until 2011 to deploy Windows 7. (That should come as no surprise as XP is still serving many companies well, and lots of IT departments wait for Microsoft to release a service pack or two before they deploy an OS, anyway.)
Beyond that, even with Azure taking shape, Microsoft is frankly behind (or, at least, just catching up with) several of its competitors in cloud computing, a model we think will continue to grow as it becomes more reliable and less expensive relative to old-school on-premises deployment. And then there are the company's big rolls of fat, which hang over its belt in the form of all kinds of technologies that stray from the Microsoft core of operating systems, productivity suites and enterprise applications.
So, it wouldn't surprise us for Microsoft to continue to struggle into the next calendar year or maybe beyond. There will be more bad earnings reports; there will be more kids-seeing-Disneyland-for-the-first-time reactions from Microsoft haters. Steve Ballmer might even start to update his résumé, just in case.
But (and you knew this was coming) Microsoft is a resilient company. It has something many of its competitors still don't have: tons of cash and control of the desktop. Windows 7 might not set the world on fire in 2010, but it should be the new default OS by some time in 2011, just as (hopefully, although we're honestly not so sure) the economy as a whole begins to seriously crank up again.
Honestly, are consumers and companies going to switch to Apple, Linux or Google Chrome OS in massive numbers? If they were going to, they already would have by now. If Vista didn't drive them there, what would? And what's Apple's OS market share? It's still in the single digits, is it not? More importantly, will companies and consumers abandon XP for Windows 7? We think they will...eventually, when they have more cash and want to step up to a more powerful OS.
Furthermore, nobody has been able to dethrone Microsoft Office. And Google isn't the first competitor to try; remember Corel buying WordPerfect and Lotus rolling out SmartSuite more than a decade ago? Does Corel even still exist? And when's the last time somebody sent you a SmartSuite document?
Plus, in the enterprise, Redmond's server products are still very strong, and many companies are so heavily invested with Microsoft that they wouldn't or couldn't rip and replace at this point everything from Redmond that they've bought and deployed. And users don't like change, and that works heavily in Microsoft's favor. (Now, if only Microsoft could get Dynamics figured out...but that's another story altogether.)
Microsoft has a massive product-launch wave coming up, starting with the general release of Windows 7 in October. The company is moving forward in cloud computing and virtualization, as well as on more traditional enterprise fronts; there's even talk of a streaming version of Microsoft Office. If the economy really does start to crest as the launch wave rolls out and customers buy into it, Microsoft should be back in tall cotton in the next 12 to 18 months.
Things will likely be rough before then, though. And it does seem as though, with browsers encroaching on operating systems in terms of importance, cloud computing growing, some of Microsoft's more expensive offerings looking a little clunky in 2009, and the company itself searching for focus and an identity, the era of Microsoft as (nearly) undisputed king of the software mountain might really be over.
But Microsoft as the shrewd, wealthy, powerful force in the industry isn't going away, despite the fact that it has and will have arguably the toughest competition it has ever faced. Microsoft as the ruler of the desktop is likely to stick around for a while, too. And, most importantly, after a rough patch, Microsoft as the huge moneymaker for its massive channel should be back in force.
So, keep hope alive, Microsoft partners. Let the naysayers giggle and fist-bump each other for now. Your mothership is in some rough waters, and it might not be queen of the fleet any longer. But it's got the wherewithal to weather the storm, and that means that you do, too.
What's your take on the future of Microsoft? Is it just down for now or doomed forever? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on July 28, 20092 comments
There's a special Patch Tuesday fix coming out today -- but if you've been keeping up with your Microsoft updates, you won't need to worry about it.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 28, 20090 comments
The report from Redmond this week is that Microsoft's security initiatives are making progress. Of course, it helps to consider the source here.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 28, 20090 comments
These are the final days of Windows Vista, if indeed Vista ever had its day to begin with. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are done. Microsoft has apparently released them to manufacturing.
There's not much more that we can say about Windows 7 that we haven't already said. The bottom line is that it had better be good -- and it does look good. All Windows 7 has to do is save a fairly large portion of Microsoft's financial bacon that has taken a hit thanks to Vista, netbooks and (all together now) the economy.
Many of you have tried and reviewed it, and most of the reviews have been positive. Well, the lights are coming up, the new operating system is backstage, and the curtain is about to open. And not a moment too soon for Microsoft. Our only regret here at RCPU? No more Vista jokes. Alas, they were fun while they lasted.
Send your take on Windows 7 to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on July 23, 20091 comments
Like summer road crews trying to fill winter pot holes, Microsoft is scrambling to patch a security hole in Windows. But it's proving tougher to fix than that gaping chasm that ruined your tires this spring.
Posted by Lee Pender on July 23, 20090 comments