Eye on Microsoft
About this Blog:
This is Shane O'Neill's blog about Microsoft's corporate strategy and its various software and services — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Is It Cool to Root for Microsoft?
It may sound crazy but a more modest Microsoft is out there taking risks. Does Microsoft the underdog deserve our sympathy?
Microsoft: the company you love to hate. Or is it?
A recent column by Fortune writer Jon Fortt casts Microsoft in quite a sympathetic light. It argues that the last decade has humbled the mighty Redmond, which had become fat and complacent after squashing the competition in the '90s.
What followed for most of the 2000s was an era of mediocrity, where Microsoft relied too much on cash cows Windows and Office (it still does by the way) and mostly watched as Google, Apple and others redefined mobile, search and Web-based apps and grew more profitable and powerful.
But over the past year or so, Fortt writes, a more self-effacing Microsoft has emerged. He cites the launch of the Bing search engine as a jumping off point. Here, for the first time in awhile, Microsoft is a true underdog, standing up to the lord of all search, Google.
[ For complete coverage on Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system -- including hands-on reviews, video tutorials and advice on enterprise rollouts -- see CIO.com's Windows 7 Bible. ]
Bing has not been the disaster some predicted. It has made incremental market share gains each month since its launch with innovative mapping and social media features. Bing will soon become one with Yahoo and form an alliance against Google now that the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership has been approved by the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission.
Another black mark against Microsoft has been the technical problems and negative perceptions that plagued Windows Vista. For all intents and purposes, Vista has been chucked in the recycling bin with the rave reviews and gangbuster sales of Windows 7, which shipped in October.
Regarding mobile, the reaction to Windows Phone 7 Series (the convoluted new name for the Windows 7 Mobile OS) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was surprisingly positive. After months and months of speculation over what the heck Microsoft was doing with its mobile strategy, it was almost surreal to hear reviewers gush over the development and design of the new mobile OS.
Slideshow: Seven Features in Windows 7 You Probably Don't Know About
Slideshow: Windows 7 in Pictures: The Coolest New Hardware
Microsoft is way late to the mobile game. Nevertheless, it is boldly getting in the ring with the iPhone, BlackBerry and Google's Android mobile OS, and boy is it an underdog here. You could even call it a suicide mission. Kind of makes you respect Microsoft. A little. C'mon, admit it.
Does Fortt go too far with his sympathy vote? Maybe. Microsoft is merely doing what a company of its size and talent should have been doing all along: taking risks and being innovative. As for winning back Microsoft haters, don't count it. The angry mobs are not going to drop their pitchforks just because ole Redmond has its tail between its legs.
However, Microsoft's new role as a determined underdog is an interesting plot twist and should earn the company some of the respect that's been long lacking.
Is it cool to root for Microsoft? No. But lately there's less to hate.
What do you think? Are attitudes toward Microsoft more positive recently? Should they be?
Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.
Previous Post: Windows Phone 7 Wins Praise but Trouble LurksNext Post: Microsoft Buy Twitter? Don't Be a Twit
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
