Tag: Satya Nadella

Microsoft wants $20 billion from cloud

clouds3Software giant Microsoft has said that it aims to make more than $20 billion in annual revenue from its cloud computing businesses by the end of fiscal 2018.

Chief Executive Satya Nadella said this would mean tripling its cloud based revenue in three years.

Microsoft is one of the leaders in the cloud, and been making a killing providing computing power and storage to customers through its network of data centres.

Microsoft said  that its total commercial cloud revenue, which includes online versions of its Office and Dynamics applications, is running at $6.3 billion per year.

Its closest rival in the cloud, Amazon.com said its competing Amazon Web Services operation took in $1.57 billion in revenue in the quarter, which would also equal an annual rate of $6.3 billion.

Goodbye, Microsoft Internet Exploder (sic)

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseIt’s fair to say that Microsoft’s browser – Internet Explorer – has not been the favourite browser in the world.

But Microsoft has now confirmed that it will put IE in the background when it releases Windows 10 – that’s not until autumn this year.

Instead of pushing Internet Explorer – which has landed it in a lot of bother with government regulatory authorities, Microsoft is to produce a leaner meaner browser which is codenamed Spartan.

Microsoft got into trouble with different governments because IE was bundled with its operating system.

According to web site the Verge, Microsoft won’t kill off Internet Explorer completely but will supplement it with Spartan.

People got so fed up with Internet Explorer in the past that many opted for alternative browsers such as Opera or Firefox.

Microsoft is eager to show that under the stewardship of newly fledged CEO Satya Nadella, things ain’t what they used to be.

Although there’s no official launch date for Windows 10, the perception in the supply chain is that if it comes out before autumn, it will be something of a miracle.

Microsoft pushes Office for iPad

ipad3In either a sign of desperation or a sign of largesse, Microsoft said today it will let people using the Apple Pad make and edit documents for free instead of paying through the nose.

Microsoft wants its software to be pervasive across every gadget and gizmo as the world has opened up to applications that don’t need an expensive PC or a pricey Windows operating system to work.

Microsoft already started to offer Office for the iPad and is understood to have attracted some 10s of millions to the proposition.

And in a further move it wants Apple users on its side, it said it will release Powerpoint, Excel and Word apps not only for the iPhone but for the Android operating system later this year too.

Apps for mobile devices cost only pounds rather than hundreds of pounds but it’s not entirely clear what CEO Satya Nadella’s motives are in spreading the Word around.

Microsoft, Dropbox team up

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEODropbox and Microsoft have signed a deal to integrate their services including Microsoft Office on phones, on tablets and on the internet.

Dropbox currently hosts over 35 billion Office files and 1.2 billion people use Office.

The deal means that you will be able to access Dropbox from Office applications, edit Office files directly from Dropbox and synchronise them across different kinds of devices.  You will also be able to share new or edited files from Office apps using the Dropbox sharing features.

Microsoft said it will include the features in its next updates to Apple iOS and Google Android operating systems.  These are due in a couple of weeks.

Web integration won’t be available until the first half of next year and Dropbox will make its applications available for Windows Phone and Windows tablet devices.

Dropbox for Business customers need an Office 365 subscription to use the features.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, said both companies will provide their shared customers with tools to create, share and collaborate across most nearly all devices.

Microsoft waves goodbye to Nokia

nokia-lumiaThe Nokia brand name can’t be worth very much because Microsoft is going to ditch it from its line of phones.

It originally planned to use the Nokia name for as long as 10 years but freshly fledged CEO Satya Nadella is obviously revisiting just about everything ex-CEO Steve Ballmer had committed to.

Microsoft bought Nokia for a rather expensive $4.6 billion but the former Finnish mobile phone unit had already seen its fortunes wane.

Microsoft already had a mobile phone division so plenty of people scratched their heads and wondered why it even bothered to pay that much money for a firm that had seen its day.

Microsoft is currently going through a gigantic culling exercise which will see over 12,000 people lose its jobs.

Microsoft, like its long time partner Intel, has never really hit it big in the mobile phone market.

Future phones will be sold under the name of Microsoft Lumia, it appears.

Microsoft shuffles its board

Visa's ScharfTwo senior executives from non technology sectors have been appointed to the board of Microsoft, while two existing board members have stepped down.

Microsoft said that Teri List-Stoll, chief financial officer of Kraft Foods and Charles W. Scharf, CEO of Visa, will take up their new positions on the 1st of October.

At the same time, Dave Marquardt and Dina Dublon are to retire from the board following Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting in December. The board constitues 12 individuals.

Scharf, 49, pictured has been CEO of Visa since November 2012 and before that was a senior executive at JP Morgan Chase.  List-Stoll, 51, from Kraft previously worked at Procter and Gamble.

Microsoft’s chairman, John Thompson said the appointments were to help the company transform itself into something completely different.

CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella said that List-Stoll brings “exceptional” financial and operational expertise and had wide knowledge from working for decades in consumer and retail industries.  Scharf brings a “deep understanding of how commerce is changing globally”.

Microsoft. Explain yourself!

bad-dogThe Chinese government has told Microsoft to explain to its finest antitrust watchdogs why it is an imperialist software outfit hell bent on playing monopoly behind the bamboo curtain.

It is giving Microsoft 20 days to come up with an answer which does not involve a dog eating its homework, the monopoly was being played when Microsoft got there, or the Chinese antitrust laws were chewed by Steve Ballmer who thought they were food.

A Chinese antitrust regulator is apparently concerned that Windows operating system and Office software suite is not compatible with other forms of software, which is a surprising new thing that no one appeared to have noticed given that the nation has run on pirated Windows XP for decades.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) repeated that it suspected the company has not fully disclosed matters relating to the compatibility of the software and the operating system.

In a statement, Microsoft said it was “serious about complying with China’s laws and committed to addressing SAIC’s questions and concerns”.

Microsoft is one of at least 30 foreign companies which have been put under the Chinese water torture as the government seeks to enforce its six-year old antitrust law. Critics say the law is being use to kick foreign businesses out of the country, while it builds its own homegrown IT industry.

Last month, a delegation from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O), led by company President Derek Aberle, met officials at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

NDRC claimed the US chipmaker is suspected of overcharging and abusing its market position in wireless communication standards.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is expected to make his first visit to China as chief executive later this month and will probably tell the Chinese what is going on.

Microsoft is at the crossroads

A knight at the crossroads, Victor VasnetsovIn many cultures, both in Asia and the West, crossroads are considered to be baleful places, associated with darkness, with death.

Why so?  A crossroads is a place where you have to make decisions, to head off in a different direction, not really knowing what lies at the end of the route you choose.

Microsoft is at the crossroads.

The appointment of Satya Nadella as Microsoft’s CEO, replacing the somewhat understated Steve Ballmer, is a considerable challenge for the software behemoth.

And Bill Gates is back – spending a third of his hours – to help with Microsoft’s product strategy.

There are a few problems with the Gates move.  Despite Microsoft’s undoubted success in the past, much of it was a product of accident coupled with very cunning marketing.  It was, for example, IBM’s decision to adopt DOS as the operating system for the first PC which pulled Microsoft from obscurity into the limelight.  Although Microsoft released its first version of Windows it was many years before Windows took off. Microsoft was never very good at inventing anything.

The stimulus for businesses to adopt the IBM PC was a clever piece of software from Lotus, 1-2-3.  Even that spreadsheet was not a first because that honour belongs to Visicalc, for Apples. But Apples were and are expensive and in the 1980s large businesses adopted PCs because they would never be fired for buying IBM.  The fact that PCs had Intel microprocessors inside meant that businesses were tying themself into a cartel which included. at that time, Microsoft and AMD too.

When companies and individuals first started adopting Windows, Microsoft had the field to itself for the introduction of application software was offered as a bundle.  Its software was, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. judged inferior to offerings from the like of Lotus, Ashton-Tate and Borland – just as examples.

But now Microsoft, like its joined at the hip partner Intel, is lagging behind in the technology stakes, with both joining the smartphone and tablet revolution way too late.  And we’ve seen a steady decline in sales of the PC for many quarters now. The gravy train has hit the buffers, or perhaps the cash cow is dead.

What’s interesting in the management reshuffle yesterday is that Symantec and former IBM senior executive John Thompson is now chairman of the Microsoft board, essentially meaning that Microsoft’s three main movers and shakers is a troika.  Thompson should not be underestimated.  He is a highly intelligent, astute businessman who has been trained in the school of hard knocks.

The big question is whether in the next 10 years will we see all those giants of the PC age – HP, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and the others – relegated to the second division or maybe even the fourth.

That’s why Microsoft is at a crossroads. And there’s no compass nor GPS nor Google Maps to show it the right route to take..