IMHO steveb is the type of manager that can milk existing customers/markets, but not effectively lead MS in a full scale war vs Google, Apple and Amazon. The only way I can see MS not becoming IBM 2.0 is billg return.
In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the #2 largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees (433,362), the #4 largest in terms of market capitalization, the #9 most profitable and the #19 largest firm in terms of revenue. Globally, the company was ranked the #31 largest in terms of revenue by Forbes for 2011. Other rankings for 2011/2012 include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #1 green company worldwide (Newsweek), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #2 most respected company (Barron's), #5 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).
Yes, that's exactly the case for engineers/designers/project leaders ;-) Smart people have a choice and IBM is a poor choice for anyone with ambitions, beyond a steady paycheck.
I would say that if you want your own company you wouldn't work for any company because at the end of the day you are still working on someone else's product. Doesn't matter if it's Apple, MSFT for Acme Box corp.
However when you say "Smart people", are you saying that IBM's Watson, the latest Intel chip or the latest drug are create by stupid people because their company is not mentioned on HN.
IBM is a poor choice for anybody with ambition to work with latest cool web frameworks doing 'social-X'. If your ambition is in chip design, AI, massive data processing, quantum computing and more theoretical work, then IBM probably isn't too bad a place.
The final transformation into IBM 2.0 will be complete when most of the people compelled to use MS products are not the same people who chose to buy the MS products. Are we there yet?
To become IBM 2.0, Microsoft would have to kill its R&D budget, outsource everything to India, and focus on short term gains. Really, Microsoft is really far away from that, you could say they are even more forward thinking than Apple with one of the last industrial research labs in place (IBM and its consultants has basically killed IBM Research). Disclosure: Microsoft employee.
Yes, I think MS still has room to avoid the fate of pandering to the enterprise. MS research continues to shine, but I recall that IBM research shone brightly in the 80's.
I hope that MS can stay primarily focused on people who make their own buying decisions, but I'm worried (eg [1]). "A computer in every home" would have translated very nicely to "a device in every hand." Alas, I'm not really sure what MS stands for these days beyond "backward compatibility" with its understandably addictive revenue streams -- which is also eerily reminiscent of IBM in the 80's.
Yes, that is now. But if Surface and a few more extremely expensive attempts fail, sooner or later MS will have to close the lab, fire many developers and concentrate on extracting value from it's existing shrinking markets.
Yes in a hypothetical future where microsoft loses massive amounts of money it may need cut spending and double down on it's existing competencies.
But that's a pretty damn facile statement.
It can be said of any company that has a revenue stream. The only ventures that's not true for are governments with sovereign currencies (and even then there are limits)
Well the future is hypothetical by definition, isn't it? MS has two choices now - invest in R&D and try to secure new markets or make maximum profits for it's shareholders from exiting markets. MS may not "need" to cut spending but every billion they spend on projects like Kim, Bing, Surface is a billion that could've been dividend or share's buy in.
Or Microsoft could do a reset like Apple did in the late 90s. That would still involve closing the lab, firing many workers, and focusing purely on a narrow set of products that it can make lots of money on.
IBM SUCKS!!!