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Microsoft, the anti-Google?

By | December 22, 2011, 9:17am PST

Summary: Microsoft gradually sheds its reputation as a proprietary local software provider, reaches out to cloud and open source.

Microsoft, the anti-Google?

That’s one of the subtitles attached to Cade Metz’s latest analysis of Microsoft’s cloud strategy in Wired.  I like that description, because it represents an Interesting take on the software giant’s future positioning in this wild and crazy market.

The Redmond giant has made a lot of progress in building and offering Windows Azure over the past year, but for some reason can’t get its full message heard above the cacophony of noise about cloud.

Microsoft’s challenge is this: its bread-and-butter — and home turf — is the PC, with localized software. It may be trying to turn its messaging away from that, but perhaps, ultimately, it will turn out to be a long-term strength.

It reminds me of IBM’s classic struggle a couple of decades back — its bread and butter was the mainframe, but its marketing message was that it was anything but. IBM was a software company, middleware company, PC company, UNIX company, etc.  But the money came from the mainframe. As time went on, however, the company recognized that Big Iron was its greatest asset. (And lately has been achieving record sales with its System z box.) Perhaps a lesson for Microsoft as well.

But Microsoft is clearly moving to the cloud, and, according to executives interviewed in the article, isn’t afraid to cannibalize its resident PC and server businesses to move customers to the cloud as well.

As Kurt DelBene, head of Microsoft’s Office division, put it: “We’re as serious about the cloud as we are about evolving our businesses…. As engineers, we say: ‘[The cloud is] the way the world is moving….’ If there’s one thing I want to make sure that’s clear, it’s that we feel very deeply in our hearts that [the cloud] is where we’re going.”

Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity offering with hosted versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, was announced last year. Windows Azure, a service for building and deploying applications hosted at Microsoft data centers, was first announced in October 2008.  Microsoft’s cloud offerings are designed to interoperate with local PC and server software.

Satya Nadella, head of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division, is also quoted in the article, pointing out that currently, most developers are using Azure for projects based on the .NET framework. However, Azure also supports  Java and PHP-based applications, as well as the open-source Node.js platform.

This is where Microsoft’s anti-Google proposition comes into play. Metz writes:

“In this respect, Azure has evolved beyond Google App Engine, a service known for tightly restricting what developers can and can’t do. It not only embraces a wide-range of languages, it handles outside databases and other services. Last week, at a conference in Silicon Valley, 10gen — the startup behind the open source NoSQL database MongoDB — demonstrated the database running on Azure. That’s not something you can do with App Engine.”

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Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant and speaker specializing in trends and developments shaping the technology industry.

Disclosure

Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick is an independent consultant, editor and speaker.

Joe has performed project work (white papers, articles, blogs, research and presentations) for the following companies in the IT marketspace:

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Joe has also performed research work for the following sponsoring organizations in partnership with Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc.

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Biography

Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets. Joe is co-author, along with 16 leading industry leaders and thinkers, of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation. He also speaks frequently on Enterprise 2.0 and SOA topics at industry events and Webcasts, and serves on the program committee for this year's SOA & Cloud Symposium in London. As an independent analyst, he has also authored numerous research reports in partnership with Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. for user groups such as SHARE, Oracle Applications Users Group, and International DB2 Users Group. In a previous life, Joe served as director of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. He is a graduate of Temple University.

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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
e182 25th Dec
@Return_of_the_jedi
Love your name but I have to call BS on your comment. Vaporware is software that doesn't exist. You can't sell vaporware. Microsoft did not become the massive company it has by not selling vaporware.

As far as the media is concerned... MS did not buy them any more than AOL or Google or Apple did. The media cover what they think is hot without regard to merit.
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
Sreenidotnet 22nd Dec
Then ask google to stop other project and concentrate on only Search....

I am MS .NET Architect ...
for me MS - is everything as a developer...

GOOGLE - Gave Over Once Google Loose Eyes ...( you might have guessed it its only Search engine.)

thanks
Sreeni
0 Votes
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MS .NET is a great programming language.

Though, .NET is JAVA in an MS package.
And most of the ideas in it, use to belong to Borland.

As long as MS exists, and any company that develops software make agreements with MS, they are doomed out of existence.

Examples are:

a) Netscape
b) Wordperfect
c) Bordland
d) SCO
e) Novell

The only one that survived and is back in business, though owned by MS is Apple. (look it up in wikipedia).
0 Votes
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@Uralbas
I agree. And lately that have stopped 2 mobile OS's by conveniently having an ex-Microsoft exec in Nokia, Symbian and MeeGo. They are working hard at limiting Android with much more cunning than Apple is (this goes under the radar of all bloggers). Microsoft has the clout to force Samsung, HTC, LG etc to pay them just because of the threat. Microsoft had in collusion with Intel, OEM's and retailers had stifled PC innovation for over 10 years. Microsoft wants everyone to be locked-in to their products. There who are entirely brought up on Microsoft and don't know and don't want to know anything else. Once surrendered to Microsoft it takes effort to get out of it, but the rewards are great.
0 Votes
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Get your facts straight.
leod1961 22nd Dec
@Uralbas MS lent money out to Apple, a mere 5% of their shares in return to keep MS Office alive on the Mac. In other words, they gave Apple a leash, but Apple bought back the shares and your ownership theory is only partially true. And Apple bought back their shares years ago. And Apple is owned strictly by Apple, NOT BULLY MS, WHICH THEY STILL ARE.
@Uralbas
You appear to labor long and hard crafting your obviouslly fanciful posts that one must wonder as to who you work for, as why would someone spread the FUD that you do, unless there was something in it for you.
plain
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
Michael Alan Goff 22nd Dec
@Uralbas

And let's not forget:

A) Did you enjoy paying for your browser?
B) You have me there, but I still like Office
C and D) No clue, so I won't comment.
E) Novell? They were killed by the anti-MS sentiment you push.
0 Votes
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Reaches out to open source?
ScorpioBlue 23rd Dec
Reaches out to open source = Embrace...extend...extinguish
0 Votes
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MS feels "born again"
x I'm tc 22nd Dec
Thank goodness for the antitrust actions that were taken against them. Competition is turning out to be a wonderful thing...maybe even for MS.
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
stepanhakobyan 22nd Dec
@jdakula
+1
0 Votes
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Microsoft the irrelevant
GoPower 22nd Dec
A better title.
0 Votes
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You already have that title
William Farrel 22nd Dec
@GoPower
so I guess nobody else can use it.

LOL! happy
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
Socratesfoot 22nd Dec
@GoPower MS isn't irrelevant, it's more like it's in the way. If it vanished and the world had to get by without them eventually it wouldn't need them at all. But it would certainly notice they were gone. In the meantime however, to spite the 20% of things MS does well, the remainder just inhibit other companies from innovating or competing.
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
spaulagain 22nd Dec
MS has been in the cloud for a while, they just suck at marketing it.
0 Votes
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Contributr
RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
Joe McKendrick 22nd Dec
@spaulagain Good point. Yet, they once had the marketing machine in the past that pushed out every competitor (including Apple) that dared stand in its way. What is it about their marketing this time?
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft, the anti-Google?
Return_of_the_jedi 22nd Dec
@Joe McKendrick

They use to could buy the media and show vaporware.
0 Votes
+ -
@Return_of_the_jedi
Love your name but I have to call BS on your comment. Vaporware is software that doesn't exist. You can't sell vaporware. Microsoft did not become the massive company it has by not selling vaporware.

As far as the media is concerned... MS did not buy them any more than AOL or Google or Apple did. The media cover what they think is hot without regard to merit.
0 Votes
+ -
While all the services are nice, the most important thing that MS can offer is software and services without integrated spyware. Microsoft makes plenty of money with their software, so don't need to spy on users. That gives me a greater sense of security than using any apps or services from Google. Google has to spy on their users. It is the basis of their business model. We need companies like Apple and Microsoft who don't depend on the advertising model to make money.
0 Votes
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@jorjitop
"don't depend on the advertising model to make money"

Ever heard of Bing. Do you suppose MS can afford to tell it's shareholders it's going to keep losing $3B a year on it due to their incompetent algorithm. If not, what will they do? Most likely, they'll use their partnership with Facebook to buy user data. Oh wait ... they've already done that. If you were worried about some company (whose websites you are on) collecting what terms you search for then you better be worried about some company collecting info about your friends, messages, pics etc . from Facebook.

Google actually has a competent algorithm so they aren't under pressure from shareholders to find other ways to profit from their search engine.
0 Votes
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@anono

Last I heard the profit from the other "Don't depend on advertising revenue" is actually propping up Bing. Whereas if Google stops asking phone numbers every time I had to log into my Gmail account, they would be starved of the data on me that they could use to sell me things.

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