Also, here is Ballmer's reaction [2] to this article.
[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/07/25/the-real... (print version)
[2]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2012/07/11/microso...
As the Internet emerged, creating a sort of supercritical soup of technological mixing and matching (not to mention viruses from a newly anarchic Russian sphere — the world is a big place), the relatively open PC platform became increasingly unstable and confusing. It was too open, too vulnerable to the natural chaos that hides in openness. At the same time, as consumer markets and graphical capabilities became increasingly important, and vertical integration began to offer serious advantages.
Huh? That's a just-so story made of MBA word salad. You could just as easily concoct the opposite narrative, which ironically is his complaint about Eichenwald.
But it's Eichenwald who has the stronger prima facie case. We're supposed to believe that Gates-to-Ballmer didn't have a major effect? I don't buy that. And that Amelio-to-Jobs didn't have a massive effect? I mega don't buy that.
Besides which, Eichenwald spent a lot of time talking to current and former MS employees, so what he wrote is at least based in real reporting.
Well ok.. I mean, "is the sky blue"? Tell me something I don't know. And next time, (to the author) tell me on page 1. Don't make me wade though 2 1/2 pages of historical crap to get your point.
My thoughts on the author's profound (sic) reason:
Change is constant. Those who recognize that win. MS didn't. They might in the future though. Look, not even [his holiness] Steve Jobs recognized change. He finally came around after failures; like the near collapse of Apple; or him being forced out of the company he help create; and of course Next. I remember when Next was first shown at Comdex. What an amazing machine. I was working for Novel at the time (anyone remember Netware?) at the booth. I ran over to see this Cube. It was beautiful. Ahead of it's time. Which is why it' failed. Actually I think Next marks when Steve did recognized change. He just had bad timing. Eventually it all came together for him... I mean look at the Mac now.
Of course I state all of this in hindsight. I didn't recognize change either. Though my guesses are better now. That comes with age. :)
Sorry got off topic.. look my point is, isn't not seeing change the reason ALL companies decline? MS will either reinvent itself, or when enterprise dries up, it will too.
By Enterprise you don't mean 'large companies that have 24/7 operations' because .. that category is not going away.
What do you mean by 'dries up'?
Eventually "enterprise" will mean big servers of data. And that's about it. Look at Google Apps (and others like it). It's fee for services to anybody. You pay for what you want and it's accessible to everyone - corporate and the joe on the street.
Now granted, Google Apps (and all the rest) have a long way to go. But they will get there. And sooner or later, companies won't have to buy 10,000 copies of Office, or spend $300,000 on a database.
I see the day when a company joins Google Apps, and says "I need 25TB on Big Table".
The complexity (and expense) isn't Office or a database, but relationships between the various bits.
Move it to Google ... the complexity doesn't go away. Might increase, depending on the legal bits.
Microsoft started to crack around 97. They failed several times to build a database application for Windows/Office.
Eventually, they managed to get MS Access (Cirrus) out, and Visual C++ 1.0 had been out for a while already.
That period was the last time that Microsoft really did anything exciting. aside from .NET perhaps.
Not to say that much of what they've done hasn't been good. But XBox, they ground that one out. Bing, they ground that one out. Courier, killed. Surface, Windows 8, ground it out in response to external events.
Ballmer needs to go, but even Ballmer leaving won't fix them. Maybe Jim Allchin was their last great hope as a leader, but that opportunity has now passed.