Cringely writes something about Microsoft that I learned the hard way last year, emphasis mine:
This is not to say that Microsoft isn't still ambitious, but its ambitions are bounded by the company's own success. Starting any business that is perceived as having less than $1 billion in sales ought to make no sense at all for Microsoft unless NOT starting such a business might lead to the company's failure. That's certainly the case with MSN, for example, which is too small for Microsoft to bother with yet too important for Microsoft NOT to bother with. The only logical move for Microsoft, then, was to make the MSN business big enough to matter and the only way they could see to do that was by acquiring Yahoo, which explains this year's failed acquisition. Microsoft's failure to buy Yahoo doesn't change this scenario, either, so look for Microsoft to do something -- anything -- to grow that business, because they can't strategically afford to do the logical thing, which is to kill it.
I think it's really sad when a company like Microsoft makes promises about the kind of presence it intends to have on the industry and doesn't follow through with an ambitious and focused program supporting its partners. That was the distinct and unfortunate feeling that I got working in the PPS market for the relatively short time I was involved. I can recall that Microsoft people speculated that it was their investment in PPS that hastened the consolidation of the BI industry, but I think that was ego speaking, not strong senior management with irons in the fire.
At my current distance from happenings within Microsoft and their partners, I don't have a first hand view of whether or not such things still apply. But out here in Oracle/Hyperion land, we don't think about PPS much. Different universes? Perhaps. But Cringely still resonates.
Microsoft is a culture. It feels today very much like IBM used to in the 80s. As the big pig of the industry thinking that everybody is going to work their way. As Bill leaves, maybe it's long overdue for a huge culture change from the top by an executive team that's ready to really shake them down, split them up and force the pieces to communicate all over again, in the software world. It could be the revolution we all need.
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Let me add the following explicit corollary. Although I came back a little late this year to get in on the goodness of Kaleidescope and ODTUG, I am so very convinced that the level of information sharing that is bound to come out of the masters our field, like Tow, Roske and Schwartzberg, is going to propel the state of the application art beyond the capabilities of the competition.
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