Open Letter to Microsoft’s New CEO

I don’t believe I’ve met Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO. But I do know Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and John Thompson (the chairman of the board). I like the new management team.

I’ve been disinterested in anything Microsoft does for almost a decade. Why? My clients—customer-centric, tech-savvy executives in both large and small companies—stopped caring about Microsoft. They used to care a lot. Now, what Microsoft does is largely irrelevant to their business and personal lives. Many of my clients still use PCs. But most have non-Windows phones, and they typically have non-MS tablets. They still use MS Office apps. But they don’t care what Microsoft does.

The “post-PC” strategy that Nadella has telegraphed finally piqued my interest. Of course Microsoft is going to focus on mobile phones and on the Cloud. What else would they do? The big danger I see ahead is for Microsoft to chart a predictable course. If they focus on evangelizing Windows Phones and Microsoft Azure, they’re toast! Nobody will care about Microsoft’s phone OS or about Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing alternative to Amazon AWS, IBM’s cloud, HP’s cloud, or Google Compute cloud.

I don’t believe that enough consumers will adopt Windows Phones to save Microsoft’s bacon. And I don’t believe that enough enterprises will migrate their data centers to Microsoft’s cloud to replenish their profits.

But I do have an idea about what the right strategy is for Microsoft. And it’s too good to keep to myself. So I decided to write an open letter to Satya Nadella.

What’s my plan?

I believe that Microsoft should leverage one of its largest assets: the millions of application developers who use Microsoft’s development tools and frameworks to do their jobs. Nadella should empower these developers to write interoperable mobile apps—not just for Windows Phones, but also for Android phones and Apple phones and even for feature phones (Nokia’s largest installed base). These apps can be optimized to integrate with and synchronize with applications and services hosted in Microsoft’s cloud.

But, to really sing, this strategy needs to go one step further. It’s not enough to support cross-platform mobile development. Microsoft also needs to help its enterprise customers develop secure, distributed “customer clouds.” Today’s consumer and business end-customers want to access and manage all their stuff from multiple devices and from anywhere, and at all times of day and night. To do that efficiently, you need what I call customer clouds. These are secure cloud computing environments that are essentially customer portals—they provide your customers with secure and easy access to everything they need to do in and around your brand.

Where should these customer clouds be hosted? And by whom? That’s the proverbial $64,000 question. Consumers and business customers are becoming paranoid about government spying on their information. For example, Australians may trust their own government. But they don’t trust the U.S. government. If you want to provide Australians with access to their information, you had better host that information in Australia.

But, if every company needs to provide customer clouds in every jurisdiction in which they have customers, that’s a LOT of data centers. Why not let a large, trusted(?) entity like IBM or HP or Microsoft (or Amazon or Google) invest in that distributed cloud infrastructure? Then you can set up your own federated customer clouds in their secure cloud infrastructure. That’s my vision for what Microsoft could do to win back the hearts and minds of its enterprise customers.

So here’s my open letter to Satya Nadella along with an explanation of my proposed strategy:

Priorities for Microsoft’s New CEO
Focus on Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development & Customer Cloud
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO & Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, February 14, 2014

 

Comments

[pseybold]

Curt,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I can't fault your logic.

Patty

[Curtd]

There is one flaw with your proposal:

Microsoft's architecture, inherited from the era of minicomputers, is 'antiquated'. And without a new OS that offers some significant improvement for use on 'appliances' as well as servers (clusters of cooperating appliances) the entire stack is useless.

The conflict between the value of the network effect (entrenchment and all the apps built on windows), and the future of software (many small 'operating systems' on many small appliances, consistently loading and unloading processes, means that MSFT is in an unrecoverable position.

Had they used the past ten years to invest in new technology they could have possibly made the transition. At this point, the future of programming is already understood, and it has no place for Microsoft:

Javasript front ends, and similar (Javascript, Python, php etc) backends. Neither of which rely upon the compile process. And both of which require disposable-process operating systems and NOT running-process-dependent operating systems that were built for slower hardware and higher costs.

If what I'm saying isn't clear: MSFT is DEAD because the windows architecture and development tools are dead weight on an archaic platform and Ballmer blew the accumulated market advantage.

The big problem today, are that the best people do not want to work for Microsoft. So it's very hard to change the company's direction. And we haven't seen ENOUGH of a marginal improvement in what operating systems can do for MSFT to use it's cash horde and market position to gradually move people to something new.

The smart answer would have been to develop a lighter phone based OS and move office and other tools to it. And people did advocate that in the past.

But the world has already decided that on current hardware the linux platform is just 'better' for the current direction of software development - and its free.

It's possible to improve on the linux model fairly easily. But MSFT does not have a good record of making monumental investments like that nor is it clear that they have the intellectual density any longer.

It's just how it is.

And anyone living is welcome to argue with me about this but I'm pretty sure that anyone capable of discussing the architecture of operating systems will pretty much agree.