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I spent the entire evening going thru some of Microsoft’s latest presentations to its shareholders. I could see a theme focused on productivity and platform based on mobile first and Cloud first world. I would certainly agree that we are becoming more connected and the world is powered by Software more than ever before. At the same time I am a firm believer that just because you have the most powerful hammer, doesn’t mean that you bang every nail that you can see.
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Following is the excerpt from Satya Nadella’s letter to Microsoft’s shareholders. “Increasingly, all of these experiences will become more connected to each other, more contextual and more personal. For example, today the Cortana app on my Windows Phone merges data from highway sensors and my own calendar and simply reminds me to leave work to make it to my daughter's recital on time. In the future, it will be even more intelligent as a personal assistant who takes notes, books meetings and understands if my question about the weather is to determine my clothes for the day or is intended to start a complex task like booking a family vacation. Microsoft experiences will be unique as they will reason over information from work and life and keep a user in control of their privacy.” I truly admire his passion about technology , but would disagree on his priorities. In the above excerpt he talks about the Cortana app for using it to for a simple task of reminding him about his daughter’s recital. I feel the only practical use of this kind of app would be the Duggar Family who have 19 kids and managing their schedules can be challenging. The average family has 1 or 2 kids. I have one daughter and I can very easily remember her schedule of activities, once in a while if there is a change in the schedule I get a message on my phone which is good for me. I am not sure why I would need Cortana for this??? I hope Satya Nadella remembers Aquantive. Microsoft bought it in 2007 for $6 billion cash. Following is what the company had to say about the acquisition in its 2007 10-k report “This acquisition will enable us to strengthen relationships with advertisers, agencies and publishers by enhancing our advertising platforms and services. The acquisition also provides us with increased depth in building and supporting next generation advertising solutions and environments such as cross media planning and video-on-demand.” Five years down the line in July-2012 the company took a Goodwill impairment charge of $6.2 billion. The impairment charge reflected the fact that the acquisition of Aquantive was a complete waste of money. Ironically Aquantive was the largest acquisition till 2007 only to be surpassed by Skype that Microsoft bought for $8.5 billion in 2011. I hope that this acquisition does not have a bad ending. The reason I am mentioning this is to showcase what happens when you try to solve a problem that does not exist. Coming back to my original point on prioritization. I would first give credit to Nadella for his vision on Cloud computing and how his efforts have helped Azure establish as a leader in the Cloud space. But offering a cloud service is like running a Car dealership where the customers are not just looking at a great car , but also a good maint plan so that they can drop off their cars every 5,000 miles and expect the dealership to perform all the necessary maint activities. On Nov-18-2014 Azure had a major outage and many of its users experienced a service interruption. The blog post describes the details of the issue. It also showcases the complexity of running the Cloud infrastructure. Microsoft Azure has won 80% of Fortune 500 customers. But one should remember that instances like those of Nov-18 provide a chance to Amazon and IBM’s sales reps to pitch their Cloud solutions and steal some business from Microsoft. Satya Nadella’s #1 priority should be to ensure that its existing Cloud customers get the best service as promised. On paper it looks simple , but software production support is one of the most challenging tasks. I have experienced it first hand for 17 years (being part of a large Enterprise IT shop). If Nadella can liveup to this promise then he certainly would be coined as a Winner, even if Contana does not liveup to the expectation, but not the other way around. |
