Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Just trying to see if you (parent and g-parent) consider an MBA an overall negative signal, regardless of someone's background.
Steve Jobs and CEOs in-between kind of make a counter-example.
They have to make capital allocation decisions, based on the direction the market is taking. An MBA might be able to tell whether China or India needs more marketing dollars, but they won't know whether it's better to invest billions into different R&D efforts.
The executive in charge of mobile isn't going to tell the CEO "look, Windows phone is busted, just fire us and put everything behind a major effort to sell small-medium businesses turnkey enterprise systems."
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/microsoft-said-to-b...
After ten years of Ballmer, what Microsoft needs now is a professional manager to sort out the mess he left. They have no shortage of great technology people; what they need is someone to bring the organization to heel behind a universal vision.
Microsoft is not on the verge of great growth or in the position anymore to build "the next big thing." That ship has sailed for them, as all the people capable of building the next big thing have been run off by the ineffective management (or never hired in the first place) and work at Google or Facebook now. Microsoft is, however, at risk of losing a significant portion of their revenue should the PC industry continue its slide and start being displaced in the enterprise.
Nadella is the best choice that is available. I still hold that the best candidate out there for the job is Mark Hurd, but he apparently wasn't interested for the same reason a lot of other outside candidates weren't interested: Microsoft has an infamously poisonous corporate culture, and everyone who worked for an outside CEO would be trying to undermine him and take his job.
Unless that vision is just next quarter's earnings, they can't afford a MBA type who doesn't have a deep understanding of technology.
(eg - what google and apple unleashed on the world in the past 10 years was a major historical shift - coming from product/technical people at their core. arguably, this shift was one that only a newbie or outsider could pull off. 20/20 hindsight to say "microsoft could have dominated those arenas" when they had so many other verticals of strength to tend to. (and 20/20 hindsight for me to say this as well...))
IMHO microsoft needs to keep focusing on hacker-friendliness - they have a great lock on the corporate world, but the corporate world is starting to look to the hacker community for direction.
what do i mean by this?
big companies can't be trusted to just get brand loyalty and keep buying your stuff until they go out of business. look at RIM - Blackberries were mandatory company accessories, now it is BYOD. Look at the server market - the biggest consumers of servers (FB, GOOG) are using designs they made themselves. Tougher for Dell and HP to keep selling ready-made servers. How long before other major corporations are doing the same?
the enterprise market is more tech savvy than times past, and only getting more so. high-level technical creativity and intuitive understanding of product potential is vital.
This is a honest question as I often am not aware of the whole picture (and have a hard time picking the right sources for that kind of information -- not sure who to trust in a marketing war).
Even for big corporation, what would be a good number of servers for them to reach a critical mass where it is worth keeping all those HW engineers and increased support staff? They want to sign a contract, get regular supported servers, with warranty, etc, and focus on their core business. They get it from the regular folks of HP, Dell, IBM, etc.
Of course there are exceptions but are they numerous enough to say Dell and HP are doomed? I hardly think so. Corporations in HPC market might take a stab at creating something like this. The folks running app/DB/web/whatnot servers for ERP, financial, etc applications?
Anyway, I feel like the OP is exaggerating a bit.
They also need credibility with consumers and techies on their R&D and hardware/platforms side. Not that they don't have decent stuff now, but they have approached it like a large enterprise rather than as a hip tech company and it's really unsexy for people to proclaim their love of Azure vs [insert ANY other PAAS/IAAS here]. Just as an example.... Windows Phone and the whole Windows OS strategy is something else they should publicize better. At this point, hardly anyone is building Metro mobile apps because it's really unclear WTF Microsoft is doing beyond Windows 8.1, and what will happen to Nokia or their very few other hardware partners if sales don't take off. The Surface Pro is a really nice tab and fits well into a lot of IT strategies, given it hits both the "I want a sexy tablet!" and the "I need my freaking Excel and my goddamn PowerPoint animations!" sweet spots. MS has a ton of potential and loads of talent. They just need to motivate it toward the right objectives, and I think choosing a new CEO from within will help them get there way faster than hiring an outsider, especially one from a non-tech company.
⚫ This spot's proving very difficult to fill. Both in terms of finding the right person, and in getting them to accept. It's been 160 days from the initial announcement of Ballmer's retirement.
⚫ Given Ballmer's long-standing deficiencies and publicly-voiced dissatisfaction with his performance, this also speaks to very poor succession planning on the part of the Board. This would be they: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/bod.aspx
⚫ Enterprise + cloud is probably a safe pick for now. It suggests a de-emphasis of consumer and mobile, and a retrenchment to core strengths, if not enduring ones.
⚫ I'm not sold that bringing in external talent solves problems that insiders can't tackle. The insiders will be well aware of strengths and weaknesses, the challenge is in acting on them given existing internal relationships and politics.
The problem of insiders is that they may embrace the culture that brought the company to where it is now. It's not always a good thing.
The biggest lock-ins are from Office formats, and Active Directory integration with network and communications services. Crack either of those and the bulwark starts to crumble rapidly.
And with Office, it seems the Office 365 offering with the web clients has a very good shot at technically beating Google Apps... if they can sell it efficiently is another matter.
Apple is good at the monetization angle of this. There's no reason Microsoft couldn't do the same (except with software, not hardware).
Example: 90% of the time I'm on a webex/gotomeeting, I'm looking at one of three things: 1) Powerpoint, 2) Excel/Word or 3) a Browser.
Why can't Microsoft make that kind of sharing easier? My guess is that they were too arrogant to make things work for the folks not on the latest versions, or on different OS's.
It's 2014, that's not good enough. People expect your product to be sociable and flexible. And that's why it's Cisco/Citrix software that's showing the MS docs.
What makes you think they haven't done so already? Ever heard of Office 365, OneNote, Lync?
> My guess is that they were too arrogant to make things work for the folks not on the latest versions, or on different OS's.
My guess is that you haven't really looked into Microsoft's products for the past 5 years. I can tell you that they are doing quite well in the product development of their cloud and SaaS offerings lately.
There is one semi-cheesy third-party app which adds more obvious notification, but as it stands, email arriving in Outlook is way easier to see than IMs in Lync, even though Outlook knows all about your Lync conversations, including when you are missing one (i.e. it quietly puts the chats you are missing into your Missed Conversations, even while it is notifying you with a big popup about incoming emails). In 1999 AOL IM would just pop up the chat window on your screen where you could see it.
Install the Metro version of Lync </evil>
Remember you are not their client. Your CTO/CIO/CEO are. It's not you they need to make happy and they won't even try.
That kind of attitude doesn't work anymore. The Enterprise Architect does get listened to these days, because software is key to the health of the company's operations.
We're not in the days where downtime means you get an extra cup of coffee or the day off. Downtime could mean you go out of business.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Directory_Federation_Ser...
Going to be an interesting next couple years.
Microsoft's most successful products recently have all been in the Enterprise field, so that reflects well on him. But there have to be questions about his experience with consumer software.
Given the number of people that were mentioned as front runners in this CEO search over the last few months, this seems to be a job that nobody outside Microsoft wants. Nadella was always the most likely internal candidate, and it really feels like they're settling on him because everyone external candidate they wanted turned them down.
yeah, except the video game market and the whole hardware market...
It's definitely the most obvious area for growth that they have available. The enterprise market is more or less saturated by them already. They're sorta trying to push their cloud solution, but they're late to that game. They aren't going to sell a whole bunch more of MS Office... It's a segment that will continue to develop organically, but the place where they really wanna be dumping cash on is definitely the consumer market.
I know everyone hates on Balmer, but he seemed to follow a very sensibly strategy and there seems to have been a genuinely big effort to integrate their different platforms and services into something that pleasant to use and develope for. At least stylistically, Windows RT, 8, Phone and Xbox are identical. The underlying "meat" is in wonderful languages (C#/F#), with a great IDE (VS13), with - from what I understand - and well made new libraries. They've also aggressively tried to cut out the old moldy stuff, and have paid for it in the short term (ex: Windows RT not supporting Win32 & Windows Phone 7 not being very compatible with Windows Phone 8)
I feel Microsoft will only have the confidence to attack the consumer market when they feel their enterprise market position is a competitive advantage.
Microsoft's core strength is licensing software to businesses. Hardware and game consoles are a foray into a high-risk, low-margin business (well, low margin relative to software.) By contrast, Microsoft's operating margin on enterprise software is close to 50%. The margin on their entertainment and devices division is currently less than 1%. Comparables would say that a good margin in a hardware business like that is 10-20%.
Worse still, selling consumer electronics and media properties to consumers requires a sales channel that Microsoft has still not mastered. Windows and enterprise software are sold through a reseller model: Microsoft makes products and advertises them to a network of people who have discovered they can make a living selling and implementing Microsoft software (be they PC OEMs or consultants.) They have never been good at consumer marketing or retail sales. They've never had that "cool" brand image you need to succeed there, and the amount of money you have to spend on marketing is insane compared to their more profitable cash cow.
There's still plenty of room for them to innovate in the enterprise space too. Oracle and SAP suck donkey balls to use and Microsoft is actually really good at delivering rock-solid enterprise software with a good blend of usability and power. I just fear that if any new CEO focuses too much on the consumer side of the business, there are a lot of much more profitable options on the enterprise side.
The consumer side is a huge distraction to Microsoft, one that has produced a lot of red ink but never really any profit. Look at their historical results since, well, ever, and you'll see that the consumer products consistently lose money while the enterprise software keeps growing margins and top line.
All this banter about it being a bad choice or a good choice because Satya's current role is enterprise focused is just goofy. Had Elop been chosen we would not be acting as if Microsoft is only a phone company now and is abandoning the enterprise.
I think it's a fallacy to think a CEO with an enterprise background wouldn't (or couldn't) let the consumer division prosper. That he/she would hinder it or something.
This isn't my own opinion, mind you. I don't know enough about this whole issue to have an opinion of my own. I'm just explaining where I think the disconnect is. I think the people who don't like the choice of Satya dislike it because they feel Satya is doing as well as he can do in his current position, and Microsoft needs to bring in a different skill set in order to make the company good in areas where it isn't already.
Of course these are just my personal opinions.
If Bill Gates is removed as Chairman that will be a major change.
I know this one is.
That's kinda racist
Best thing for Microsoft would be to hire an outsider who will come in with an unbiased eye and clear out the deadwood to give new growth a chance or to milk the cash cows to their inevitable conclusions. To be able to do this you need Bill and Steve and their old guard out of the way.
MSFT's power and potential is in everything enterprise and Nadella understands this (or rather passionate about this) universe from top to bottom better than any other candidate.
Note: He's my boss, 4 bosses up.
Good to see you comment positively on this.
Does he share your views on openness? Does he listen to the opinions of forward-thinking Microsoft devs?
Do you think he'd read Hacker News?
Not sure if you are trying to pull out the old faded joke or being truly serious. Bing has about 18%-27% market share depending on Organic vs Powered By. No I am not nitpicking a specific blog article, infact its the first summarized link on a Google search for "Bing market share". Bing also powers Siri, which is another major contributor.
>Windows is largely enterprise.
Its revenue may be largely enterprise but its still a monopoly in the consumer side. Infact I can blindly bet that majority of users here on HN is using Windows.
[1] http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2307115/Google-Fails-to...
I'd be willing to bet that HN has a lot more OSX, Linux and BSD users than the typical split...
Yesterday a buddy of mine (and partner in crime - the proverbial kind) tried to install a new language and dev environment on his machine. 4 hours and much frustration later, he still couldn't do much.
On Linux the same tasks would have taken 20 minutes (and did, as I had installed the same environment several months ago).
I couldn't imagine doing any development on Windows unless it's C++ or C# on VS... Everything is a hassle compared to Linux.
I wouldn't call it that. My assumption is based off of the outcome in desktop market share and the fact of the monopoly title still being held by Windows.
>Yesterday a buddy of mine (and partner in crime - the proverbial kind) tried to install a new language and dev environment on his machine. 4 hours and much frustration later, he still couldn't do much.
Out of curiosity what was he/she installing? Unless its a *nix port of something, all it should involve is install and run.
Well its quiet opposite for me, everytime I try to set up a dev environment or anything GUI related (like media center) on Ubuntu, there is atleast one thing that happens not to work. Googling mostly comes up with a fix where I would need to recompile the whole thing, at which point I give up and switch to Windows.
However, for servers, I love Linux distros, it works perfectly out of box, I can't imagine running Windows for anything server related.
On Linux you use the Haxe install script, then sudo apt-get or sudo zypper install everything. Add a Vim script for context aware code completion, haxelib install a few things, all done.
On Windows - Haxe installed easily. Everything else was a nightmare - had to download everything from every vendor's website, then had to download a bunch of dependencies from various other vendor's websites, then he had to figure out versions of .NET (apparently he needed .NET 2.0 AND .NET 4), 32 bit vs. 64 bit. In hindsight if we were to do it again it'd be quicker, but it was a hassle.
Everything worked (eventually), but it wasn't fun. I'll never again take for granted how Linux pulls in dependencies for everything automatically.
It would be 'nitpicking' to point out that you were not 'cherry picking' one from many possible articles to support your point.
I'm glad it's a tech guy.
So Satya would be your choice if you want "stability", no fear of any dramatic changes and "easy as she goes" attitude. Honestly that is the least what Microsoft needs right now. Microsoft is currently pretty much in same situation as Apple was when Steve Jobs arrived. I know, I know, I see you jumping off your chairs quoting last quarterly results and telling me it is far from bankruptcy like was Apple. But have noticed a chart of PC sales for last 3 years? Have you noticed a giant slump in Office that is only matter of time to eat away the growth in server and tools?
In any case, I really think Micosoft needs a bold bet, not someone conservative. It needs someone who would come in and say, this size of 100K employees is bullshit, who has courage to remove about 60% of crud that has been accumulated in form of MBAs, PMs, "Business Managers", GMs and their 13+ levels of hierarchy. Someone who would have balls to say managers are overhead, less important and there needs to be 30 reports per manager (instead of current 3-7). Someone who can personally deeply dive in to products and send out "30 things to fix and improve" every Friday night. Someone who will go to end of the Earth to get the best talent in industry. Someone who insist on best customer experience and signs off his/her name on each product release saying that he personally has tested and used every customer facing aspect of the product and is happy with it. Someone who would never let crapeware like Windows 8 get through the door. Someone who insist on same OS for Phone and Tablets. Someone who would not hesitate to move org charts if things don't work out as intended.
As far as I'm aware Satya is neither of these. He is your regular MBA with tech experience who can keep the ship steady in good weather.
I would say Microsoft's consumer facing days are numbered.
We moved away from WPF after Windows 8. We gravitated towards ASP.NET MVC, but increasingly started using Angular JS.
While I love these new javascript libs, I miss the great tool set that Microsoft always provided. Without that, I think we can eventually move completely off Microsoft without looking back.
It's like bitching that Walmart hasn't cornered Starbucks. Jesus.
Tablets, phones, and portable media devices that aren't just punchlines and/or punching bags, maybe?
If you take the generic concept of "personal computer", what people were using those for five or ten years ago, people are now often using smartphones and tablets. Due to how the market is segmented for analysis, this isn't counted against Microsoft, but the money doesn't care how we segment it. The PC, in the long term, is going to be a niche market. Not today, not tomorrow, but in 5, 10, 20 years, a Microsoft that owns the entire PC market and little else will be a tiny, broken Microsoft.
If we count tablets in with PCs, then MS's "PC" monopoly is already gone. Tablets are selling around 1/3rd of what PCs are selling, so that gives MS a 75% share.
If we count smartphones in with PCs, then PCs almost disappear. Smartphones make up about 60% of the combined smartphone+tablet+PC market, with tablets making up another 10%, giving PCs 30%.
I'm sure you'd point out how PCs are still very popular, how MS still makes tons of money off them, how they're not going anywhere soon, etc. And I completely agree. But in the long term, it's not going to last, not in the form it exists now. I'm sure MS could do decently well for a very long time as they are, but they will stagnate and they will eventually shrink if they do so. They might remain powerful, but not to anywhere near the same degree.
For your Wal-Mart analogy, imagine if Wal-Mart totally owned retail sales, but "retail" was defined to exclude all online sales, and Amazon was selling 3x as much stuff as Wal-Mart once you counted online. Even as Wal-Mart owned the "retail" market and remained profitable, it would be completely reasonable to think that they might need to change.
There is a rather large market for the machines people do business with.
Pffft. These so-called international business machines have no future.
There's no doubt that MS can coast for a long time on PCs, but if they do, they're never going to dominate they way they did in the 90s, and they will eventually go away.
That concept of keyboard + mouse + touch screen is really good; you need a way to have custom line of business apps developed for it. Apps need to be easily installable on it. It needs to have integration capabilities with oddish hardware. App state needs to be 'sane' and persist extant data without wrecking it due to swapping out of memory.
IOW, the capability lineup looks a lot like a PC on someone's desk, even though the form factor might reflow to be a tablet placed in a dock with attached bluetooth keyboard/mouse.
Off topic: I might be the only one who came in here excitedly expecting to see a Female CEO of Microsoft. Kind of disappointed when I saw the picture and it's just another balding dude.
No I'm not female or a feminist, just kind of excited for drastic progressive change that I personally favor (I think more girls should be in tech, especially in leadership)
The reason startup or industry people don't rise in Microsoft is that they are rejected as not matching the 1990s way of doing things.
Examples: Their UI innovation was in WPF because someone forgot to tell them that UI dev now happens on web pages and iPhone. Hotmail is a joke. MSN is a joke. Web hosted office 365 is a joke. Exchange web UI and client main usage is for 1990s customers and not 2010 customers. C# is charging in the opposite direction of the entire webapp industry's development platforms. (aka, they were late to MVC, Hadoop, Linux server hosting, etc.) They push Windows OS lock-in to win (but that fails).
The right leader comes from Silicon Valley in a startup gone big. That right leader will then replace many of the other leaders in MSFT with Silicon Valley highly strategic leaders. When the CEO is a Microsoft person, they will keep the same Microsoft 1990s style internal leaders and nothing will change in the category of what needs to change.
I just don't agree. There's too much risk of a culture clash. At the altitude that MS flies- you need someone who knows how to pilot gargantuan ships. I'd way rather see someone from a fortune 50 company take the reigns.
There's a huge difference between developing a horse to be an olympic competitor and riding a horse to multiple championships.
People who thrive at building a startup often are not particularly successful taking over a mature business. Meg Whitman comes to mind, though HP has its own world of hurt.
I'm not sure if you're confused or I'm confused. C# is a programming language. What exactly about C# is "in the opposite direction of the entire webapp industry's development platforms"?
It's something to consider when thinking about this possibility.