Tag Archives: Windows

Microsoft

How Microsoft can save itself in the mobile world

Once upon a time, Microsoft encountered a foe in the PC market. What it did then is what it should do now in the mobile market.

Microsoft continues to pursue its fatal attraction to proprietary mobile devices, much like Michael Douglas pursued Glen Close in the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction.

Its earnings announcement last night exceeded analysts’ expectations, and seem to suggest that Microsoft doesn’t need to own the endpoint to thrive. But Microsoft’s odds of outflanking Apple and Google are slim.

With so many positive developments in Microsoft’s core businesses, what can possibly be gained from a small, tenuous share of the smartphone market at the risk of Nokia entering a BlackBerry-like downward spiral?

Though Nokia’s $7 billion acquisition cost is small relative to Microsoft’s wealth, competition with Apple and Google in the smartphone market confuses consumers, and likely confuses Microsoft. Microsoft should take a lesson from itself and accommodate Android and iOS in the same way it once accommodated Apple’s Mac in the PC market. It extended Office and Outlook to the Mac platform and made a great margin on every Mac that shipped to customers who needed document interoperability and email with Microsoft’s enormous base.

Nokia’s performance last quarter was dismal. Radio Free Mobile predicted smartphone revenues to grow by 12% in this last quarter. In comparison Nokia revenue declined by 2%.

Radio Free Mobile’s Richard Windsor noted four main problems described in Microsoft’s earning’s announcement.

“Android is getting better at the cheaper price points, making the Lumia 520 not such great value at $135. Low-end Lumia needs to be refreshed to re-extend the gap to Android.

“Microsoft continues to make a total mess of telling users why they should buy a Lumia device, meaning that there is very little pull for the ecosystem from the handset end.

“The app store is still woefully inadequate when compared to iOS and Android and this is a major turn off for prospective buyers of the devices.

“The change in ownership may have distracted the business from pushing the devices to the best of its ability. I am hopeful that this quarter will see this fix.”

Windsor also noted the truly bright side of Microsoft’s performance:

“Microsoft reported excellent results and guidance, confounding the PC skeptics.”

Revenues and earnings exceeded analysts’ expectations thanks to Microsoft’s strong performance in enterprise, cloud and even consumer segments. Xbox and Microsoft Office shipments were both strong, for example.

Windsor expects a rebound in the PC market due to the end of life and support for Windows XP. Corporations have limited alternatives to remaining on XP. Though locked down, proprietary configurations of XP images may prevail for some time within a well-defended enterprise perimeter, without security available after April of this year, this strategy is a ticking time bomb beyond the short-term transition to Windows 7.

The Nokia business will never produce great margins. If small initial margins were the price for dominating the world’s pockets with Nokia smartphones the way Microsoft once dominated the desktop, the endeavor would be worth it for Microsoft. It is hard to imagine a scenario where that will happen, though.

However, Microsoft could create its own bright mobile future if it would just follow what it learned with the Mac and extended all of its core businesses to integrate seamlessly with iOS.

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Tech

Ballmer’s last decisions at Microsoft prove to be his best

Ballmer’s last decisions at Microsoft prove to be his best
Departing CEO Steve Ballmer knew needed to change Microsoft, but couldn’t change himself. So he fell on his own sword.

An amazing article in Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal gives insight into what happened to precipitate Steve Ballmer’s departure from Microsoft. As many have speculated, Ballmer is not leaving because he’s ready. But what is interesting is the process that led to his departure.

The Journal’s article is built on interviews with Ballmer and Microsoft board members, not a bunch of anonymous sources. The story begins in January 2013, with Ballmer on a conference call with the board, who were pushing him hard to make changes far faster than he had been prepared to make.

“Hey, dude, let’s get on with it,” lead director John Thompson says he told him. “We’re in suspended animation.”

(Seriously? These are adults talking to each other like that?)

RELATED: Microsoft employee on stack ranking and the company’s ‘most universally hated exec’

They were getting impatient with Microsoft’s repeated missing the boat on things like smartphones and tablets, not to mention Windows 8 stinking up the market. Ballmer had a vision but it was taking too long. The directors didn’t push Steve to step down “but we were pushing him damn hard to go faster,” Thompson told the WSJ.

Thompson isn’t a lightweight. He was a former IBM senior executive and was the long-running CEO of Symantec before retiring several years ago. He is now heading up the CEO search committee. So he’s someone who could speak honestly and bluntly to Ballmer.

Ballmer said “I’ll remake my whole playbook. I’ll remake my whole brand.”

But he couldn’t. Ballmer eventually told the Thompson and the board “At the end of the day, we need to break a pattern. Face it: I’m a pattern.” And that was what led his decision to retire earlier than he wanted to.

“Maybe I’m an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on,” Ballmer told the Journal. “As much as I love everything about what I’m doing, the best way for Microsoft to enter a new era is a new leader who will accelerate change.”

That is remarkable, especially when you contrast it to the buck passing going on in Washington over the epic fail of HealthCare.gov. There you have a case of no one taking responsibility and no one resigning or being fired. Yet Ballmer, the number two shareholder at Microsoft who would not be easy to remove, looks around at a profitable company, says I am the problem, and steps down. You have to respect that and wonder if there isn’t another CEO or two who needs to make the same admission.

And in the process, he’s taking the loathed stack ranking employee rating system with him. Microsoft announced its demise last week, and that memo was promptly leaked to the entire world.

I checked with my contact that provided so much valuable insight the last time we discussed stack ranking. This person said most people were taking a wait and see attitude, because they had been made so many promises before. HR head Lisa Brummel, whom my contact called “the most hated exec” in Microsoft, was described as looking “happy, very happy…if not relieved to change the subject.”

Microsoft’s board is meeting this week to whittle the list of candidates down to three to five, with outsiders leading the charge. The feeling is that an outsider is needed to shake things up. I couldn’t agree more.

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Microsoft, Tech

Microsoft dings Ballmer’s bonus over Windows 8, Surface RT struggles

The penalty is equivalent to half the cost of a cup of coffee at McDonalds to the average American

Microsoft’s board of directors reduced outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer’s bonus for the 2013 fiscal year, citing poor performance of Windows 8 and the $900 million Surface RT write-off, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Photo: Microsoft)

The Redmond, Wash., company’s proxy statement spelled out the salaries and bonuses of several of its top executives, including Ballmer, new Chief Financial Office Amy Hood and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, as well as now-departed managers such as former CFO Peter Klein and Office chief Kurt DelBene.

Microsoft paid Ballmer $697,500 in salary and awarded him a $550,000 performance bonus, for a total of $1.26 million for fiscal year 2013.

The bonus was less than Ballmer could have earned.

“Our Board of Directors approved an Incentive Plan award of $550,000 which was 79% of Mr. Ballmer’s target award,” stated the proxy. One hundred percent of the target would have been $696,000.

The 79% was considerably lower than Ballmer’s comparable number for the 2012 fiscal year, when he was granted a bonus representing 91% of his target.

Microsoft’s board cited both company wins and losses under Ballmer’s stewardship, but the latter included some failures that were the root of its bonus decision.

“While the launch of Windows 8 in October 2012 resulted in over 100 million licenses sold, the challenging PC market coupled with the significant product launch costs for Windows 8 and Surface resulted in an 18% decline in Windows Division operating income,” the proxy noted. “Slower than anticipated sales of Surface RT devices and the decision to reduce prices to accelerate sales resulted in a $900 million inventory charge.”

Some analysts have speculated that the $900 million write-off was the proverbial straw that broke the board’s back, and triggered Ballmer’s ouster. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, however, John Thompson, the lead independent director and the head of the committee in charge of the search for a new chief executive, backed Ballmer’s explanation for his sudden retirement: He did not want to remain in the job through the long course correction to a “devices-and-services” strategy.

The proxy statement’s commentary on the strategy change, as well as the corporate reorganization announced in July, was Ballmer-neutral. “The company continued to make progress in its devices and services strategy,” the filing read.

Last year, Ballmer’s bonus was pegged at 91% of his target as the board ticked off several issues during that fiscal year, including a 3% decline in revenue for the Windows and Windows Live Division, and a fiasco where Microsoft failed to offer a browser choice screen to Windows 7 customers in the European Union.

Ballmer’s 2013 bonus of 79% was an even lower percentage than that of Steven Sinofsky last year. Then, the former Windows chief — who was ousted in November 2012 — received 90% of his target award, even though he, like Ballmer, was cited as responsible for the EU browser choice screw-up.

Other top-tier executives received 100% or more of their target bonuses for 2013.

Kevin Turner, the COO, received a cash award of $2.1 million, or 100% of his target, and Satya Nadella, who now leads the Cloud and Enterprise group, received $1.6 million, or 105% of his target. Amy Hood, the new CFO, was handed $457,443, 100% of her target incentive, and as part of her promotion, received a stock award in May of 103,413 shares that will vest over the next three years. At Thursday’s closing price, those shares had a paper value of $3.5 million.

In total compensation for the 2013 fiscal year, Turner remained Microsoft’s highest-paid executive at $10.4 million, down slightly from 2012’s $10.7 million.

Eight of the company’s top executives, including Turner and Hood, were handed additional stock grants Sept. 19, the same day Microsoft announced a retention bonus designed to keep upper management from jumping ship during the CEO search. Turner, for example, received grants currently worth $20.3 million. Hood’s award was valued at Thursday’s closing bell at nearly $3.9 million.

No one should cry for Ballmer’s lowered bonus: According to the proxy, he controls 4% of the company, with stock holdings worth $11.3 billion at Thursday’s price. Only co-founder and chairman Bill Gates holds more: 4.5%, or $12.8 billion.

The $146,000 that Ballmer did not get in his 2013 bonus is literally pocket change to the billionaire. The amount represented 0.0013% of Ballmer’s Microsoft holdings, and an even smaller percentage of his total wealth. To put that into perspective, 0.0013% of $42,693, the U.S. per capita personal income in 2012, is 55 cents, or just over half the price of a coffee from McDonalds “Dollar Menu.”

Ballmer and Gates are both on the directors slate for re-election next month when Microsoft hosts its shareholders meeting.

According to a report by the Reuters new service earlier this week, some of Microsoft’s biggest investors have urged the board to push Gates out of the chairman’s role because they are concerned he will block the board from making drastic changes and handcuff the new CEO to the devices-and-services strategy, which they question. Gates is also on the special search committee tasked by the board to recommend Ballmer’s replacement.

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Tech

Few use tablets to replace laptops

Workers still see value in laptops for running most critical apps, IDC survey says

Many new tablets, including the new Kindle Fire HDX, are marketed as ways to create documents and other content for work-related tasks, instead of purely for home consumption of video and games.

Even with the focus on workplace productivity, a new survey shows that only 8.7% of tablet buyers want to use the tablet as a replacement for their laptops. The same survey by IDC found that 58.5% of respondents bought a tablet to use in addition to a laptop, and not as a replacement.

The online survey was conducted in April and included 299 U.S. consumers. All of them were 18 or older.

The results might have been different if the survey included younger tablet users, ages 17 and under, since that group has grown up with tablets since the first iPad went on sale in 2010, said Tom Mainelli, an IDC analyst and author of a report on the survey.

“The younger generation has different sentiments about phones and tablets and how useful they are,” Mainelli said in an interview.

Still, he said the finding that only 8.7% found a tablet as a replacement for a laptop was a surprise. “When we ask that question again in a year, I’d expect you will see a growing percentage view a tablet at least as possibly replacing a laptop,” Mainelli said.

“A huge percentage of people still see a lot of value in a laptop for one kind of app or service they use on it,” he added. “Would they want to do their taxes on a tablet? They haven’t quite made the leap to being comfortable with a mobile device like a tablet.”

“But that [expanded tablet] usage is coming, and we see more people doing more things on tablets,” Mainelli added. “Professionals still rely on laptops and a lot of them are just not really even thinking about the possibilities that the tablet offers and instead are concerned that a tablet doesn’t run Flash or can only open one app at a time.”

Mainelli said it’s notable that Amazon announced two new Kindle Fire HDX tablets last week with an emphasis on business-class features such as a native VPN client and hardware and software encryption.

“Amazon is getting much more serious about making its tablets enterprise-ready,” he said. The same can be said for iPads and many Android devices.

IDC has predicted 190 million tablets will be shipped to retailers in 2013, of which about half run on the Android mobile operating systen and half on iOS, with fractional amounts running Windows. Amazon runs on a custom version of Android and has dubbed its latest OS the Fire OS 3.0 Mojito.

In the IDC survey, 35% said they own an iOS tablet; 26.4% said they owned a tablet running standard Android; 10% said they owned a custom Android tablet like a Kindle Fire; 9.4% said they owned a Windows tablet and 0.7% owned a Windows RT tablet. More than 14% said they didn’t know the OS on their tablet.

The survey also asked tablet owners if they had a chance to buy a tablet again, would they buy one with the same OS. The iOS owners were most likely to say yes (80.2%), followed closely by Windows owners (78.9%); standard Android owners were third (70%), and custom Android owners were 68%.

Mainelli said the lower values for owners who would buy both kinds of Android again are likely a reflection of the many varieties of Android tablets on the market, some priced as low as $79 for a white box version and others from various vendors priced close to the iPad with Retina display at $499. Google’s Nexus 10 16 GB tablet running pure Android sells for $399.

“People who own the higher-end Androids probably have a similar affinity for them as do iOS owners,” he said. But Mainelli said he was somewhat surprised by the high affinity for Windows. “Those owning Windows have a strong inclination to buy one again, right below Apple,” he noted.

 

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Tech

Buggy Microsoft update hamstrings Outlook 2013

Folder pane goes blank after stability and performance update Tuesday; Microsoft pulls update from Windows Update and WSUS

An Office 2013 non-security update, part of yesterday’s massive Patch Tuesday, blanks the folder pane in Outlook 2013, the suite’s email client, drawing complaints from customers on Microsoft’s support forum.

The update, identified as KB2817630, was meant to quash a several stability and performance bugs in a number of the suite’s components, including Excel, SharePoint Server and Lync; fix a problem that caused Office to freeze when a document was opened in the “Protected Mode” sandbox; and more.

Instead, it emptied Outlook 2013’s folder pane.

“I can’t view my list of e-mail accounts, folders, favorites, etc.,” said Trevor Sullivan in a message Tuesday that kicked off a long support thread.

Scores of others quickly chimed in to say the same had happened to them after applying the update on PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8.

“Same problem on multiple fully-updated Windows 7 Enterprise Edition, Windows 8 Enterprise Edition and Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition workstations … all with Office 2013 32-bit,” said “MiToZ” on the same thread.

Within minutes of Sullivan’s post, users reported that they’d gotten the folder pane view back after uninstalling KB2817630.

Microsoft was not available for comment late Tuesday, and it has not posted any information about the glitch on its various Office-related blogs. Nor have company representatives weighed in on the support discussion thread, as they sometimes do.

However, users said that the original update had been pulled from both Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). The former is the patch service aimed at consumers and very small businesses, while the latter is the Microsoft-provided patch delivery and management service used by most businesses. Others reported that they’d contacted their Premier Support representatives — a support plan available only to Microsoft’s largest customers — but had not been told when a fix would be available.

The gaffe is the latest in a series of embarrassments for Microsoft stemming from flawed updates. In August, the Redmond, Wash. company yanked an Exchange security update, saying it had not properly tested the patches. In April, Microsoft urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the notorious “Blue Screen of Death”; it re-released the update two weeks later.

A few users dealing with the empty folder pane bemoaned the trend.

“Yeah, another Microsoft Update Tuesday Blunder,” said “Triple Helix” on the long thread.

“Someone on [Microsoft’s] update testing team needs to get fired,” added “The Computer Butler.”

The flawed Office 2013 stability and performance update was issued yesterday alongside a 13-bulletin, 47-patch collection of security fixes that closed vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, SharePoint, Word, Excel and Outlook.

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Microsoft, Tech

Don’t look now, but Microsoft is surprising in the cloud

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No doubt Microsoft will cling to on-premises until the bitter end, but it’s become a very successful cloud provider.

Conventional wisdom says that a revolutionary company in one segment usually can’t make the leap to the next, especially if the next revolution comes at the expense of the technology built by that initial company. Ergo, companies built on selling on-premises software should be abject failures at moving to the cloud, right?

Well, Microsoft isn’t failing at the cloud. It’s getting it better than anyone could possibly have expected, and while everyone beats up Windows 8 and defines the company by that hairball, what’s going on in other parts of the company are nothing short of remarkable.

First, there’s Azure. A whole lot of commotion was made over Microsoft’s claim that it had reached $1 billion in revenue from Azure because it happened so quickly in comparison to others. It’s still running a distant second to Amazon Web Services and there’s a hot competitor not many are watching called Softlayer, but to be sure, Azure is doing great business for Microsoft. It has 20% market share and could reach 35% by next year, according to Forester Research.

Then there’s Skype. A whole lot of people scoffed at the crazy sum Microsoft paid in 2011 – $8.5 billion. But it’s starting to pay off in market share. A third of the world’s voice calls are done through Skype, according to telecom market analysis firm TeleGeography.

Microsoft has integrated Skype with the new Outlook.com platform, along with Google Chat and Facebook chat, and Microsoft is claiming 400 million users of that platform. It’s even running TV ads touting the service. In February, Microsoft announced Skype and Lync sales had reached $2 billion in annual revenue and continues to grow.

Then there’s Office 365, which has already passed the $1 billion annual revenue mark just months after its launch. A rather burdensome end-user license agreement for Office 2013 probably helped, but you can’t deny the service has racked up good reviews.

These growing businesses join the Dynamics ERP & CRM systems and Sharepoint product line to reflect a company that really does seem to get the cloud and is doing a really good job of integrating its many assets and providing a one-stop shop for productivity applications on-demand.

All of these groups in total account for about $7 to $8 billion in revenues for Microsoft, about 10 percent of total sales. That’s going to continue to tilt as more people go on-demand and fewer go on-premises. It won’t be without challenges, especially in the IaaS market for Azure. Google is just now wading into the pool with its Compute Engine offering. And if Dynamics wants a piece of the ERP and CRM business, it will have to rumble with Salesforce, and we all know how much Marc Benioff loves a good fight.

Still, with double-digit growth projections for these markets, Microsoft can ride them to considerable revenue and market share and be the cloud success story no one thought it would be, and without Ray Ozzie, either.

Maybe the Azure team should run Windows.

 

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Microsoft

For Microsoft, going private may not be such a bad idea

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What does Microsoft have left to gain by being public when the stock is at a standstill?

Should Microsoft go private? Don’t dismiss the question, it’s a valid one, even if it would be extraordinarily difficult.

The stocks of most of the old guard of the tech industry have been stagnant for years, even though the companies have done reasonably well or even very well in some cases. Yet they get no appreciation from Wall Street and are taken for granted. A recent Seeking Alpha blog asked if Microsoft was good for anything other than its dividend. At this point, they have to ask what they gain by being public.

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Microsoft’s relationship with Samsung gets ugly

I’ll say it up front so you don’t have to: going private would not be easy for any of these companies. Their stocks are heavily diluted and they would need a ton of outside money to buy up enough stock to go private. It would be very, very difficult and I acknowledge that. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering.

You take a company public for a variety of reasons. My very first gig out of college was as a financial reporter. One of the conventional wisdoms I learned back then was you didn’t go public because you needed money to survive. Companies that did that were likely a bad investment to begin with. You went public for the big cash infusion and also as a lure for top talent.

Well, that day is over. We all know about the three Microsoft billionaires (Gates, Ballmer, Allen) and thousands of millionaires the company made, but those were early employees. Trust me, no one hired in the last decade became a millionaire on their options.

You go public to have shares to trade for acquisitions. Most of the acquisitions made by Microsoft are actually very small, strategic purchases. Its only big ones have been Skype and aQuantive, and boy was the latter one an utter failure.

You go public to get the attention of institutional investors and build brand equity. Does anyone NOT know what Microsoft is?

On the flipside, though, are the headaches. A public company spends millions of dollars per year on compliance rules, such as the inane Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). SOX has been directly cited as the reason for the drop in initial public offering (IPO) activity in the 2000s while IPOs rose in foreign countries, including hundreds of American firms going public on the London Stock Exchange.

Also, back in 2005, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation reported going-private transactions made up 25 percent of all public takeovers. In other words, public companies were taken over by private ones, and were subsequently taken off the market. That was double the pre-SOX level and the trend was largely blamed on SOX.

More important than compliance headaches is the complete monomania of Wall Street. It cares about a single thing: growth. If you don’t have a growth story, they don’t want to hear it. No company ever earned a Buy rating because it increased employee healthcare coverage or improved customer service.

Microsoft has a complicated, multi-year strategy to execute. It needs time and patience, something people clearly do not have with Windows RT. What better way to execute than to do it outside of the impatient eyes of Wall Street analysts who only care about next quarter’s projections. It’s not easy to implement a multi-year strategy when four times a year you have to hear ‘what are you going to do for me next quarter?’

Don’t tell me HP couldn’t benefit from this. Meg Whitman is doing her best and seems to be slowly righting the ship, but because people take the quarter-to-quarter view, and not the long view like a CEO with an ounce of vision has to take, she can’t get a break.

Intel’s stock is exactly where it was when Paul Otellini took over the firm in 2005. Back then, it was a $38 billion company, its products had lost major ground to AMD, it was under SEC and EU investigation and was being sued by AMD. Intel is now a $54 billion company, its revamped chips have laid waste to AMD so badly it’s no longer a competitive company, and all of the legal headaches are gone. And this is the thanks he gets for it.

Microsoft would similarly be well-served to operate in quiet for a while. The company has its own transition and transformation to address and it would be nice to do it without the quarterly dog-and-pony show. It won’t shield Ballmer from the criticism he has coming in response to Windows 8, but it would give him a chance to take a long view and actually execute on it without constant interruption.

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Microsoft, Tech

How Microsoft lost the future of gesture control

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How Microsoft lost the future of gesture control
Microsoft’s Kinect was miles ahead. Here’s how they’re snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Ten years ago, Windows, Office and Internet Explorer were the only “platforms” that really mattered.

Microsoft historically attained its glory by making end user products for the masses, and only later and secondarily going after enterprise and vertical markets.

But the rise of Apple as a consumer electronics company, Google’s emergence as an everything company, and the advent of Web 2.0, the cloud and the social Internet have left Microsoft struggling to find a way to succeed in the markets of the future.

There was one shining exception to this trend in the consumer market: Xbox in general and Kinect for Xbox 360 in particular.

Kinect is a top-notch, low-cost in-the-air gesture control interface for Microsoft’s console gaming platform that was way ahead of its time and broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest selling-consumer electronics gadget ever.

So when Microsoft later announced a version of Kinect for Windows, everybody (including me) assumed that it would go on to dominate the future of gesture control, and use its dominance as an advantage to regain its lead in the desktop PC market of the future.

But now it looks like Microsoft blew it.
What’s wrong with Kinect for Windows?

Microsoft Kinect for Windows sounds like you should be able to use it with a desktop PC, and you can. Unfortunately, the closest you can get to the cameras is 16 inches away, and that’s when you put it into a special “Near Mode.”

That technical limitation puts the user’s head and body farther away from a screen than usual. So right out of the box, it can’t be used naturally, as we once expected, as an alternative to a mouse on a PC.

Microsoft doesn’t mind, because it isn’t really targeting end users like you and me.

Most of the example photos shown on the Microsoft website show Xbox-like distances where the user is across the room or at least five feet away from the Kinect.

These pictures show commercial and retail applications — a business presentation, a physical therapist, a retail eyeglasses store. Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows blog also emphasizes retail applications of the product.

It’s possible that Microsoft may eventually market Kinect for Windows to consumers. But so far, it looks like it’s not cultivating developers in that market.

Microsoft still hasn’t announced commercial availability of Kinect for Windows, though it did release an updated software development kit (SDK) this month.

Right now, Kinect for Windows ships to developers only and doesn’t come with software for controlling any interface. If you want to control something, you have to build your own software using the SDK.

This strikes me as weird on two counts. First, Microsoft is a software company. Why didn’t it make software for Kinect for Windows, at least to demonstrate basic control of the Windows 8 user interface?

Second, why ignore the consumer market for Kinect — especially since the Surface Tablet and Windows 8 are struggling to stand out as superior to alternatives from Apple and Google?
How Microsoft blew it

Microsoft had a five-year head start. The technology behind Kinect was originally invented in 2005. It took the company five years to move from invention to a fully ready-for-prime-time consumer product.

Kinect for Xbox 360 launched to consumers in 2010 with a whopping $500 million advertising budget.

Since then, Microsoft has sold more than 24 million units and has inspired a huge and active community of hobbyists and researchers who do amazing things with the Kinect.

One of my favorite blogs is called Kinect Hacks, which documents some of these projects.

How Leap Motion is making all the right moves
Microsoft shipped a surprisingly mature, polished mass-market consumer product for Xbox in the same year a small company called Leap Motion was quietly founded and funded.

Microsoft started shipping units in the millions at the same time Leap Motion began the long process of taking an idea and developing it into a product.

So what’s the difference between Kinect and Leap?
The Kinect for Windows gadget is a plastic thing about the size of a large car rearview mirror that has microphones and cameras that double as sensors, which point away from the screen and at the user.

The Leap, on the other hand, is tiny — about the size of a standard USB flash drive. It lies flat on the table pointing up, capturing the motion that happens above it.

In general, Leap is optimized for fine detection of fingers and hands, while the Xbox for Windows can detect fingers, hands, arms, body, face and voice.

While there’s much that Leap can’t do compared to the Kinect, its ability to detect finger and hand movements appears superior in terms of both “resolution” and performance — judging from the demos I’ve seen, anyway.

Leap can track up to 10 fingers. And it’s very fast — hand movements almost instantly affect what’s on screen.

Leap can recognize when you’re holding something, then track the thing you’re holding instead of the hand that’s controlling it — essentially turning any object into a kind of Wii controller. You can even tell Leap to track a pencil you’re holding in your hand, then write very finely in the air to instantly write on screen.

Some 12,000 developers are working with the Leap platform. The company recently announced an app store called Airspace.

While both products superficially do the same thing, the two companies have taken completely different strategic approaches.

Microsoft is ignoring the consumer market; Leap Motion is embracing it.

Leap’s other advantage is cross-platform support. It works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

The Leap device is due to ship May 13 at a price of $79.99. Microsoft sells Kinect for Windows devices to developers for $249 but has not announced user pricing or a ship date.

While Microsoft had a long head start in the cultivation of a developer community, Leap has been attracting developers fast.

Leap Motion did three things that Microsoft should have done.

First, it limited the initial feature set to focus on high performance, small size and low price, rather than trying to build a system that could do everything at any distance.

Second, it focused on consumers, rather than retail and vertical applications.

Third, Leap zeroed in on up-close-and-personal use at a regular desktop rather than on activities that involve people standing up across a room.

Combining these advantages, Leap targets the broadest consumer and gamer marketplace: the one made up of people standing or sitting immediately in front of a screen — any screen, regardless of whether their system runs Windows, Linux or OS X.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is focusing on users in retail, enterprise or industrial settings who will be standing some distance from their screens and who (presumably) would be willing to pay much more for a device. Oh, and it’s only aiming for people running Windows.

Leap’s target audience is at least an order of magnitude larger than Microsoft’s.

If you’re a developer, which is the more attractive market?
In short, Microsoft had one of the most successful consumer electronics products in history. In converting it to the desktop, it could have reversed its fortunes in that realm and knocked another one out of the park.

Instead, Microsoft screwed up, focusing on a very small and narrow market with a relatively expensive, complex product that is taking far too long to get into the hands of users.

Microsoft squandered a five-year head start and is now falling behind. By the time the company gets Kinect for Windows into the consumer market, I suspect Leap Motion will already own that market.

Microsoft should hope that Apple doesn’t acquire Leap Motion and build the technology into OS X exclusively — because then it’s curtains for Windows, too.

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MCITP, MCTS, Microsoft, Tech

Microsoft Technical Training Courses

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Microsoft Technical Training Courses

Vendor certifications play an important part in the IT world, and Microsoft sets the industry standard. Training to gain proficiency in Microsoft products and technology allows professionals to get up to speed on the essential tools that hiring managers value today. Whether students come to technical training programs after completing a degree program or on their own, Microsoft technical courses offer a valuable service–so valuable, in fact, that the software giant claims its certification reduces downtime by 20 percent and makes teams 28 percent more productive.

Microsoft BizTalk Server Training Courses
Microsoft BizTalk Server training can help the pros connect with the skills necessary for an enterprise career. With BizTalk Server courses, IT personnel can explore the uses of this integration server for business tasks like multi-channel interactions, supply chain visibility and decision-support/reporting.

Microsoft Visual Studio Training Courses
Microsoft Visual Studio training prepares students for IT careers as professionals who build, test and debug software solutions. Developers can use this platform to launch or build an advanced career in enterprise applications analysis and systems management.

Microsoft Exchange Server Training Courses
Enterprise communications are of vital importance to today’s business world, and professionals with Microsoft Exchange Server training can provide employers with peace of mind about messaging and mail server administration.

Visual Basic .NET Training Courses
A core component of Microsoft Visual Studio, VB.NET returns to prominence as companies prepare to move custom applications to the cloud.

ASP.NET Training Courses

Once reserved for the likes of Fortune 500 companies, Microsoft’s ASP.NET platform has reached a wider group of employers who demand skilled Web developers.

Microsoft SQL Server Training Courses

With such diverse applications, Microsoft SQL Server training and certification can help IT pros prove their value to a variety of different enterprises.

Microsoft Dynamics Training Courses

From simple CRM to advanced ERP, it pays to make the most of Microsoft Dynamics. Learn about some of the training and certification options available for this software.

.NET Training Courses

Developers with .NET training are among the most in-demand pros in today’s competitive job market. Explore how .NET courses can make a difference in your IT career.

Who is best suited for Microsoft technical training?
Students come to technical training programs from a range of backgrounds. Many are adding on to existing training and degree experience, while others pair training with work experience. Some students come back to training to bring their knowledge up to date or explore new career paths. Students are often self-motivated and interested in advancing their current careers or taking their job futures in a new direction.

Which professions require Microsoft training?
Microsoft reports that 75 percent of managers in an IDC survey believe certifications are important to team performance. Because of this, workers trained in Microsoft products and technologies are found across a range of businesses. Take a look at the mean annual wages from 2009 for a few popular careers in the field, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Network and computer systems administrators: $70,930
Computer systems analysts: $80,430
Computer support specialists: $47,360
Computer programmers: $74,690

While no training or certification can guarantee a particular career or salary, hiring managers are often looking for educational experience and proof of high-level skills, and Microsoft training works to provide just that.

Popular technical certification exams
While it’s not usually required to log training hours, a little formal training can mean the difference between passing and failing a costly certification exam. Consider the following certification exams offered through Microsoft:

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Basic certification for individuals looking for proof of in-depth mastery in a particular technology, such as .NET Framework, BizTalk Server, and Small Business Server 2008. ($125)
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA): Intermediate certification for those looking for proof of knowledge within network and systems environments. ($500)
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE): Advanced certification for individuals hoping to design and implement server infrastructure. Candidates must pass seven exams on networking systems, operating systems and core design. ($875)

Other certification exams include Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) and Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA). The Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) is the highest level of certification, and requires 10 years of experience, 5 years of architectural experience and a $5,125 fee.

Some topics covered by Microsoft technical training
.NET: This framework allows developers to apply their work across many devices, including phone, browser, server, client and cloud
Microsoft SQL Server: A powerful database management system. Editions include Enterprise, Web, Workgroup and Fast Track
Microsoft Dynamics: Offering enterprise resource management and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions
Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET): An evolution of the standard Visual Basic programming language, including object-oriented programming
Microsoft Exchange Server: Business email and contacts across devices, including phone, browser and PC
Microsoft Windows: Family of operating systems, including Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Server: Manage IT needs, security, applications platforms and more
Microsoft BizTalk Server: Integrate systems between businesses and communicate flawlessly with a range of devices
Microsoft Visual Studio: Integrated development environment that ensures quality code through the application’s lifecycle
ASP.NET: Web application framework designed to help programmers build dynamic websites

With a host of certifications available for a host of products, Microsoft technical training can boost an existing or be the first step in a new career in IT.

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

Dell, Microsoft

Microsoft has no reason to save Dell

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If I kicked in a few billion dollars for anything, I’d want something in return. But does Dell have anything Microsoft would want?

By now, you’re probably familiar with the reports that Michael Dell is looking to take his company off the public stock market and make it private again. The deal would be the largest leveraged buyout since the economy hit the skids in 2008, and one of the biggest ever. Because of this, the current problem won’t be easy to solve.

As it looks now, Michael is basically going to have to empty his piggy bank, which means his 16% stake in the company, financing by private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners, and arrange another $15 billion in debt financing with banks.

Microsoft is also involved, reportedly ready to contribute $2 billion or more of equity in the form of a preferred security. Other reports put Microsoft’s contribution at between $1 and $3 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft’s role is proving to be a sticking point, which should surprise no one. You don’t hand over $2 billion and let a company go on its way. Word to the WSJ is the key players in the deal still need to work out the ways Microsoft would and would not be involved in Dell’s business after a deal closes.

Looking things over, it would seem there is more downside for Microsoft and Dell than there is upside. The great upside potential for both companies, as I see it, is that they would be the closest thing to an Apple-like scenario of merging hardware and software under one roof. It won’t be as tightly knit as Apple, but it will be closer than it is now.

That said, I’m not sure how much tighter they can get. Dell and Microsoft MCTS Certification are already close and have great integration between hardware and software. There’s not much more the two need.

At the same time, Microsoft risks alienating or damaging its relationships with other OEMs, especially HP and the surging Lenovo. We’ve been through this argument before when talking about Microsoft MCITP Training making prototype smartphones and tablets. It’s risky business, but at the same time, where else would the OEMs go?

And, on that note, will a meddling Microsoft put an end to Dell’s Linux efforts? Dell offers Red Hat and SuSe enterprise servers and is working with Canonical to certify Ubuntu on the PowerEdge servers. What will become of that?

Dell has sworn off smartphones for now, having gotten burned on some earlier models like the Streak a few years back. But Microsoft is anxious for OEM partners. Will it lean on Dell to offer Windows Phone 8 devices? If so, how will Nokia, Samsung, HTC and LG take it, if they aren’t the supplier through Dell?

Taking all of these headaches into account, it’s hard for me to see an upside. In this case, Microsoft might want to just wash its hands of the whole thing. Or give a loan with no expectations of influence, although I kind of doubt that would happen.

Cisco CCNA Training, Cisco CCNA Certification