Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Gates says services are the future for computers -- and Microsoft - 03/14/06 - The Detroit News:
"Company makes plans to move away from prepackaged software and into web-based applications
Charles Piller / Los Angeles Times
As the Internet transforms the way people use computers, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates has a message for the world's biggest software maker: adapt or die.
'We must act quickly and decisively,' Gates wrote in an Oct. 30 memo to Microsoft executives. 'The next sea change is upon us.'
In the four months since Gates put his company on notice, the maker of the Windows operating system and Office productivity suite has embarked on a restructuring no less significant than its adoption of the graphical, mouse-based user interface 20 years ago or its embrace of the Internet a decade later.
This time, Microsoft wants to diversify away from pre-packaged software and toward Web-based services that provide steadier, faster-growing income streams. In this vision, users would lease access to online software or use services in exchange for putting up with on-screen ads...
..."Microsoft has moved from a highly focused firm to a software conglomerate," said David Yoffie, a business professor at Harvard University. "They are betting on basically everything that has potential to be large and important on the software side of computing, communications and entertainment."
If so, the services push may be Gates using his famously effective paranoia to keep the company hungry, and partly a ploy to keep competitors off balance.
"Microsoft is going to remain a software company for as long as they possibly can," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "There's a bit of misdirection going on here.""
"Company makes plans to move away from prepackaged software and into web-based applications
Charles Piller / Los Angeles Times
As the Internet transforms the way people use computers, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates has a message for the world's biggest software maker: adapt or die.
'We must act quickly and decisively,' Gates wrote in an Oct. 30 memo to Microsoft executives. 'The next sea change is upon us.'
In the four months since Gates put his company on notice, the maker of the Windows operating system and Office productivity suite has embarked on a restructuring no less significant than its adoption of the graphical, mouse-based user interface 20 years ago or its embrace of the Internet a decade later.
This time, Microsoft wants to diversify away from pre-packaged software and toward Web-based services that provide steadier, faster-growing income streams. In this vision, users would lease access to online software or use services in exchange for putting up with on-screen ads...
..."Microsoft has moved from a highly focused firm to a software conglomerate," said David Yoffie, a business professor at Harvard University. "They are betting on basically everything that has potential to be large and important on the software side of computing, communications and entertainment."
If so, the services push may be Gates using his famously effective paranoia to keep the company hungry, and partly a ploy to keep competitors off balance.
"Microsoft is going to remain a software company for as long as they possibly can," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "There's a bit of misdirection going on here.""
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