Microsoft's Hit Or Miss Strategic Partnership History

Larry Dignan over at ZDNet posted an article today that breaks down Microsoft's "hit or miss strategic partnerships."

Are Microsoft's lame investments and partnership strategy a reflection that its business is a mess? Not necessarily. Microsoft appears to merely be a hit or miss strategic investor. Microsoft's partnerships with the likes of Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Yahoo, Nokia and Dell are all lacking in some way. The implication is that Microsoft is limping and it prefers to partners with companies who have similar issues.

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Partnering with Microsoft has been a dodgy proposition historically.

I'm surprised the Citrix relationship has lasted as long as it has.

I wish Microsoft would take a bit more of an apple role in hardware and ecosystem development. I think this is the issue with their partnerships. They develop a platform and put it on the table and hope that a partner is interested and knows how to turn it into a thriving ecosystem.

Look at Windows Home Server. In all honesty this platform should have had great success but instead withered on the vine as 3rd parties didnt really do anything with it.

I know they are afraid of pissing off partners or anti trust violations (look at Microsoft Security Essentials, how many people still dont run AV when there is a perfectly good free solution from Microsoft). It just leads to a very dysfunctional eco system where everyone is expecting someone else to make the product successful