Since I’ve been working with Microsoft as a Partner, every year seems to be a big year. A Year in which it has to prove itself, a year in which people line up to say that it will fail. Every year I’ve seen it deliver in terms of market share, market growth, revenues and profits.
But the technology is crap? There is no innovation? It’s just one big monoplistic behemoth! It’s management is devoid of ideas!
… and everytime I think wow! if that’s failure then I’ll take that!
Do you remember GEC? A stalwart of British Engineering Industry and a big investor of young Engineering Graduates (including me). It was hated by the City because Lord Weinstock ran a very sensible unexciting business, steady revenues/profits and lots of cash in the Bank … boring, boring, boring! Where is GEC now? Wiped off the face of the industrial landscape of Britain because after Lord Weinstock, Lord Simpson gambled the company on a whim on a high risk Telecommunications strategy and spent all the money in the bank and mounted massive debts. The City loved it, Shares went sky high - this was exciting - until it all came crashing down around everyone and it was all lost.
So, you have to ask yourself what you want? A company who can last over 30 years and still be growing is doing more things right than it is doing wrong. Microsoft will succeed again this year because it invests so heavily in its Partner Community but also because the technology is good. Those who say it isn’t often haven’t even looked at the solutions.
You’ve got a real choice here. You could go and sell Linux and Apple, sell software solutions around IBM, Oracle and develop using Java, PHP, Ruby, etc. But I’m betting you’re not going to do that ???
UPDATE
The BBC Dot Life Blog seems to agree with me.
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February 5th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Excellent post Vijay
I wasn’t sure what else i could add to this until you updated to link to the dot life blog.
It was a very sensible article by them but this part got my attention
“Much of the geek community sees it as the Establishment, and would prefer to avoid its products if at all possible”
I’m not ashamed to identify as a geek and avoiding Microsoft is far from my thinking, my business is banks on Microsoft producing solutions i’m happy to promote to other people
As you said Vijay you could go so sell solutions from other vendors but in reality is that going to happen
It’s become far to easy to be a “Microsoft-basher” over the last decade but everyone still uses and sells their products
2008 is going to be huge.
Windows Server, in my opinion, has gotten better with every release and 2008 looks very promising.
While Vista has had a bumpy start i think by the end of the year we’ll have forgotten all about that as SP1 beds in newer hardware starts to replace older kit.
Don’t even get me started on Office 2007!
Bring on 2008
February 5th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hi Andy, that bit caught my eye as well. Lots of Geeks, especially developers are wanting to develop using .NET and it’s one of the hottest skills out there at the moment. Where is Java now? To me .NET is what Java should’ve been and never was. If you’re writing WPF/Silverlight appications using Visual Studio 2008 then you’re doing some cool stuff. I saw the Seadragon (http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx) stuff recently and again I was impressed by what could be done albeit this was an acquisition by Microsoft.
As far as I can see, it’s all good.