From DSC:
A trusted and wise colleague and I agreed many years ago (~2003 or so) that we had seen the peak of Microsoft. This morning, I was reminded of those reflections and conversations when I saw today’s article by Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO salesforce.com:
The end of Microsoft. A door opens to a new cloud.
As apps migrate to the Net, the software giant’s old model looks older every day.
Though I doubt we’ll see Microsoft going away entirely any time soon:
If you are in computer science:
You need to be paying attention to cloud-based computing and begin moving in that direction in terms of your investments in time/efforts.
If you are in business/economics:
Learn the lesson from what happens when you do business like Microsoft did (i.e. dealing ruthlessly and often times unfairly with competitors, while not listening to your customers and those within the standards-setting-bodies of the world). When you make your bed like that, you will lie in a bed like that. Microsoft will have a hard time adjusting to a world based upon creativity, innovation, collaboration, standards, respect for others, working in a platform that they can’t control, and will struggle to keep up with those organizations who are able to move at the speed of trust (Covey). Maybe this same writing was on the wall when Bill Gates made his decision to leave Microsoft years ago.
