Former Microsoft VP on "Microsoft's Creative Destruction"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 4th Feb 2010 20:48 UTC
Microsoft Now this is something you don't read every day. Dick Brass, vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004, has written an article for The New York Times' Op-Ed section, detailing the flaws in Microsoft's corporate culture, and how they've severely affected the company in a negative way. Telling, and painful. And, in a way, very sad. Update: Microsoft responds. "For Microsoft, it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact."
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RE: 10 years of stagnation.
by isaba on Thu 4th Feb 2010 22:17 UTC in reply to "10 years of stagnation."
isaba
Member since:
2006-12-30

In his view, software goes from being a specialized product, to a commodity, to being free over it's lifetime. To me, he successfully argued that not only is that the case for individual products, but for that type of product as a whole, i.e. operating systems and office suit[e]s.


That's it. That's the big big problem ahead for MS.

Or they might wake up and shape up... either way.
My suspicion is they are shaping up. They already have built a lot of hardware. They're heavily investing in hosted solutions...


Surely they're trying, but here their problem with hosted solutions is something they did not have with OS and Office: competition.

In short, from a strategical point of view, as a business they face two formidable forces they -mostly- didn't have for decades: open source and competition. The future looks much more interesting than the past...

Edited 2010-02-04 22:18 UTC

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