Elop Would Focus on Office, Ditch Bing and Xbox

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Microsoft is still in the search for a successor to outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop is on the short list of candidates. Bloomberg has reported Elop already has a unique game plan in place if he becomes CEO, one that would make Microsoft Office the centerpiece focus in the future.

Office would no longer be used as a tool to get people to use the Windows operating system, but would become the core focus.
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So... basically lets ditch that whole bothersome home consumer market and focus solely on corporate.

Sorry but outside of an office setting Office isn't of much use to the average person. Students may still need it (though there are plenty of viable alternatives) but home users just have no need for 99% of the advanced functionality built into Office.

Once upon a time Microsoft had Works as a stripped down cheaper alternative to Office for people who just needed some of the basics, but these days what isn't built right into Windows (email, calendar/appointment book/contact list, wordpad/notepad) can easily be done with web-based apps or with free alternatives.

This guy basically wants to ditch the biggest thing Microsoft has going for them now which is the XBox...

As people move more and more away from PCs to their phones and tablets, there may soon come a day (especially if Microsoft can't get their shit together with their own phones and tablets) where the Microsoft product most people have in their home is not a computer, but a game/home entertainment console.

They need to continue to nurture that eco-system and use it to bridge all their devices and software...

Basically they've had the right idea these past few years, they've just managed to botch the implementation again and again.
 
Bing is really not that bad, and seriously sell the Xbox division? dunno but I don't think him as a CEO would be good for MS :rolleyes:
 
WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot said:
So... basically lets ditch that whole bothersome home consumer market and focus solely on corporate.

Sorry but outside of an office setting Office isn't of much use to the average person. Students may still need it (though there are plenty of viable alternatives) but home users just have no need for 99% of the advanced functionality built into Office.

Once upon a time Microsoft had Works as a stripped down cheaper alternative to Office for people who just needed some of the basics, but these days what isn't built right into Windows (email, calendar/appointment book/contact list, wordpad/notepad) can easily be done with web-based apps or with free alternatives.

This guy basically wants to ditch the biggest thing Microsoft has going for them now which is the XBox...

As people move more and more away from PCs to their phones and tablets, there may soon come a day (especially if Microsoft can't get their shit together with their own phones and tablets) where the Microsoft product most people have in their home is not a computer, but a game/home entertainment console.

They need to continue to nurture that eco-system and use it to bridge all their devices and software...

Basically they've had the right idea these past few years, they've just managed to botch the implementation again and again.
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Except the "alternatives" aren't that viable. Either the file compatibility is wacked, or the spell/grammar check etc isn't as good. Office is currently the professional standard because even the alternatives never really got in the same league.
 
dyzophoria said:
Bing is really not that bad, and seriously sell the Xbox division? dunno but I don't think him as a CEO would be good for MS :rolleyes:
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Look what he did to Nokia. If he becomes the CEO of Microsoft, there's no one to sell to in 3 years when the company has been destroyed from the top.
 
dyzophoria said:
Bing is really not that bad, and seriously sell the Xbox division?
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There's been rumors of Microsoft wanting to sell off that division for quite some time now. With good reason: it's a money pit leading towards pseudo-monopoly standardization (in the classic console sense, not talking mobile, SteamBox, Ouya, etc). Investment makes the most sense for an entertainment/media company (like Sony) rather than a hardware/software company (like Microsoft). Actually, Microsoft has been headed deep into a maturity phase that is relying more heavily on R&D as well as services. Remember when IBM sold off its desktop division and hunkered down? Now, you might say that the Xbox is the brightest part of Microsoft, but if there's no long-term gain from services they are really better off selling it for a decent profit to a company with a lot of interest in consolidating the market.
 
dyzophoria said:
Bing is really not that bad, and seriously sell the Xbox division? dunno but I don't think him as a CEO would be good for MS :rolleyes:
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You are seeing it in the totally wrong way.

The resources that they spend on the Entertainment Division could be much better used on their strengths, the Corporate division.

Remember that there is the tidbit about the Senior Analyst Rick Sherlund, personal friend of Bill Gates, who has followed them since the original IPO agreeing to that idea since said division has eaten up ~2.5Bn $ the last couple years, of which 2Bn he attributed directly to the Xbox (R&D IS expensive as hell).


*It's not just that they lose money, either. He says, "The even bigger issue is that this business does not drive traction in smartphones or tablets and does not contribute to PC demand or enterprise products. They are not strategic and are a costly sideshow."*

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nomura-note-on-the-future-of-microsoft-2013-11#ixzz2kGCqEr28
 
Elop ranks as #1 idiot on their short list. Kills Nokia and now he aims to kill Microsoft. Brilliant man.
 
Dump the Xbox division and route that money to the Surface team.
 
That guys a business hacker idiot. If someone's big strategy coming into a company includes 'selling off' or 'killing off' parts of the company then that person is a moron with absolutely no idea on how to make a business. No company ever became better as a result of cutbacks.
 
He must be an accountant.

He has no clue what is going to happen in the 10 years.
 
I guess another take on it is: Sony, Nintendo, Apple and Google will all benefit if that moron becomes the MS CEO.
 
BBA said:
That guys a business hacker idiot. If someone's big strategy coming into a company includes 'selling off' or 'killing off' parts of the company then that person is a moron with absolutely no idea on how to make a business. No company ever became better as a result of cutbacks.
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Well, historically...by the time a company realizes it has over extended itself and needs to cut back....it is usually too late to do anything about it.
 
Skripka said:
Except the "alternatives" aren't that viable. Either the file compatibility is wacked, or the spell/grammar check etc isn't as good. Office is currently the professional standard because even the alternatives never really got in the same league.
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And, I'm sure if the alternatives got into the same league, they'd probably would have been sued for infringement by Microsoft. So, either the formats (.DOCX, XLSX, etc.) are open for others to use freely in the program or they're reversed engineered (leading to poor backwards compatibility).

For example, if LibreOffice or Corel Office were one-to-one feature parity with Office 2013, I'm probably sure Microsoft would have sued either group for infringing on features of Office. And, Microsoft would have won and have them either cease development completely or license to them those features in limited capacity. It's the sad tale of the game.

But, LibreOffice and Corel Office (and others) are decent alternatives to those that don't need the full-fledged features of Microsoft Office.
 
Maxx said:
There's been rumors of Microsoft wanting to sell off that division for quite some time now. With good reason: it's a money pit leading towards pseudo-monopoly standardization (in the classic console sense, not talking mobile, SteamBox, Ouya, etc). Investment makes the most sense for an entertainment/media company (like Sony) rather than a hardware/software company (like Microsoft). Actually, Microsoft has been headed deep into a maturity phase that is relying more heavily on R&D as well as services. Remember when IBM sold off its desktop division and hunkered down? Now, you might say that the Xbox is the brightest part of Microsoft, but if there's no long-term gain from services they are really better off selling it for a decent profit to a company with a lot of interest in consolidating the market.
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you should look at the history of that division before you shortsightedly call it nothing more than a money pit.... perhaps the last year hasnt been kind but that has not always been the case.
 
What dingbat doesn't realize is that the entertainment industry is huge.

Microsoft is in a unique position to merge home computing, home gaming, and home picture/video storage.

The product I would release as CEO of Microsoft:

MS Orca:

Hardware -
32gb 2133 RAM
4x 1TB HDD in RAID 10
CPU? The AMD 12 cores series.
Dual Band WiFi
R9-290x custom to drive 4 monitors, 3 remotely via 5ghz.

Minimum HW avail to each site is 3cores CPU and 8gb RAM,

A small module that receives 5ghz wireless would drive the 3 remote terminals.

Basically, a Home Computer System.
 
Lol. Let's give up our market share in home entertainment and income to focus on something no one wants to be tied to in the first place!
 
Qinsp said:
What dingbat doesn't realize is that the entertainment industry is huge.

Microsoft is in a unique position to merge home computing, home gaming, and home picture/video storage.

The product I would release as CEO of Microsoft:

MS Orca:

Hardware -
32gb 2133 RAM
4x 1TB HDD in RAID 10
CPU? The AMD 12 cores series.
Dual Band WiFi
R9-290x custom to drive 4 monitors, 3 remotely via 5ghz.

Minimum HW avail to each site is 3cores CPU and 8gb RAM,

A small module that receives 5ghz wireless would drive the 3 remote terminals.

Basically, a Home Computer System.
Click to expand...

I had this thought several years ago around when Vista or 7 was released:
Why hasn't Microsoft entered the PC hardware market to compete against Apple?

Microsoft could probably have sold quite a lot of Windows machines branded and built by Microsoft from entry level to corporate workstations. Heck, they could sell barebones servers with Windows Server installed since Apple stopped making OSX servers.

Fast-forward to now, even Google is doing something similar with their Nexus hardware and Android. They are also competing against other OEMs who make Android mobile devices so it shouldn't be a problem for Microsoft to do the same, right?
 
Yes the Xbox side of things did eat up money, but that was because of 1 screw up for the most part. The red ring of death and their handling of it. Free replacements for 3 years for anyone having this problem cost them a good chunk of money, but it was a good thing to do for their customers.

There is no way or need to focus more on office and be able to use that to make the company shitloads of money. Everyone already uses it, and those that want to upgrade do. But the cost makes people not do it all the times. While things didn't always go the best way, Microsoft was on the right track now in my opinion. They need to expand into different areas. Entertainment is huge so they need a gaming and multimedia division like that. They need electronic devices like phones, mp3 players and tablets to compete with others. If they focus on just one or two products they will no be able to make it. you can only sell so many copies of office, and there is only so much you can do with it. I seriously can't think of anything that can't be done in some office program now that I sit there think, you know if only office could do this then it would be a million times better. That said I haven't used it on a mobile device so maybe it needs work there. but still, I think every new version makes a good number of improvements so think they are doing just fine with it. if they could bring the price down to about half of what it is now they would sell more copies, but they wouldn't make more profit. so they wont' do that.
 
Revdarian said:
You are seeing it in the totally wrong way.

The resources that they spend on the Entertainment Division could be much better used on their strengths, the Corporate division.
Click to expand...
How many companies have done this, and how many have failed miserably? Also, we're on the brink of an open source explosion, and he wants to focus on the corporate division?

Also Office of all things? With LibreOffice making huge strives, do they really want to pump money into an overcomplicated word processor?

*It's not just that they lose money, either. He says, "The even bigger issue is that this business does not drive traction in smartphones or tablets and does not contribute to PC demand or enterprise products. They are not strategic and are a costly sideshow."*

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nomura-note-on-the-future-of-microsoft-2013-11#ixzz2kGCqEr28
Click to expand...
He would be the worst CEO EVER! Everyone knows Windows is what it is today because of Doom, and Android+iOS are what they are because of Angry Birds.

The only reason that it is not driving traction to smartphones or tablets is because Microsoft does not allow Xbox games to intermix between these platforms. It's not like they put any effort to allow Halo Reach to run on their tablets or Windows. Even with Xbox One being so similar to a PC, you just can't pop a game disc into your PC and play.


The best asset Microsoft has to drive people to tablets and smart phones is Xbox games, and they somehow didn't use it. It's the one thing Google doesn't have, and that's a huge game division. I mean Google has better everything then Microsoft. Better search, maps, GPS, Email, and they even have Google+ which nobody uses.

I would even stress that losing Bing would be a big mistake, but it's less important. I'm willing to bet that people are using Bing but think it's Google. So they even know it's missing.
 
Armchairs analyst are fine and dandy, but look up the multiple articles by the senior analyst i mentioned explaining it.

There is a reason why the investors want it gone, and it only survived because of Ballmer, plus the last couple of years the *proportional* money pit of the division hasn't been as obvious because the 2Bn $ that Android patent royalties generate yearly is part of said division.
 
Btw yeah, i will believe a Senior Analyst with over 25y experience who was senior technology analyst at Goldman Sachs and was now taken by Nomura, who, again, is a personal friend of Bill Gates and has followed the company since their IPO over the armchair analysts over here.

The Entertainment division is TINY vs the totality of Microsoft, specially if you take out the 2Bn $ from Android Patents that cover the holes of all the failed experiments.

And yes, Corporate is their bread and butter, Corporate Office is HUGE for them, and the Xbox? yeah, it doesn't really promotes it.
 
Xbox is the most popular game console selling to even think about spinning that division off he deserves to be cut from consideration. The royalties from android pays off that divisions r&d. What they need to do is fix the desktop os Windows 8 is an train wreck just as bad as Vista was. Office I can count on my hand the number of times I have used it in the past year.
 
Not sure how Microsoft can get rid of Bing as that would make them much more reliant on Google for search and right now Google and Microsoft aren't exactly bosom buddies.
 
Lunas said:
Xbox is the most popular game console selling to even think about spinning that division off he deserves to be cut from consideration. The royalties from android pays off that divisions r&d. What they need to do is fix the desktop os Windows 8 is an train wreck just as bad as Vista was. Office I can count on my hand the number of times I have used it in the past year.
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False. The Wii is(techincally), but the PS3 has also surpassed the Xbox360 in sales. So Xbox is actually 3rd most popular console. And wouldn't the royalties from Android be better put to making Windows desktop/mobile better? The titanic miss-step earlier this year with the announcment of those terrible company tells me that MS really isn't interested in making a game-console, and just wants to get ad-revenue.

http://www.vgchartz.com/embeds/worldwide_totals.png?a=53
 
The amount of business acumen in this thread is astounding. I'm surprised more of you aren't in the running to be CEO of Microsoft.
 
Climber said:
The amount of business acumen in this thread is astounding. I'm surprised more of you aren't in the running to be CEO of Microsoft.
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Considering that most CEO's giant corporations seem to live in a tight little bubble, surrounded by yes men and a closed nature that helped bring stupid policies like Xbone's originally game policy and Blackberry's reluctance to switch to an Open Platform like Android and adopt BBM to it earlier(think 2010 or even 2009), would lead me to say that ANYONE posting on this thread(or even this entire board) would run a giant company better than almost anyone "experienced" they could hire. They really tend to live in their own little worlds, and someone passionate about the hardware/software who is open and educated about the market would be a vastly superior choice.
 
Sounds like an awesome porrfolio you have there. You should give it a shot. You could be the twch version of eddie murphy in changing places!
 
dyzophoria said:
Bing is really not that bad, and seriously sell the Xbox division? dunno but I don't think him as a CEO would be good for MS :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Elop is looking at the finances, you're apparently not. Bing and XBOX are money sinks overall that aren't showing signs of growth *relative to* the amount of money they keep burning on keeping them going.
 
Who uses MSO anymore except the business world? What little word processing I do these days is created in Google Docs. I don't do spreadsheets or business presentations, nor desktop publishing or data bases. Nobody really needs any of the office apps anymore. So, focusing on MSO is about the same as running the company straight into the ground.

Sooooooooooo 1980's...
 
sidphillips said:
Who uses MSO anymore except the business world? What little word processing I do these days is created in Google Docs. I don't do spreadsheets or business presentations, nor desktop publishing or data bases. Nobody really needs any of the office apps anymore. So, focusing on MSO is about the same as running the company straight into the ground.

Sooooooooooo 1980's...
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But the business world is the one that matters... Thats where the money is
 
IMO this is just positioning by MS and Elop, how ironic he comes out and says exactly what the analyst and other purely selfish powers in the stock industry want to hear. Its not like he needed any insight to say this given every other MS article on forbes, WSJ and everywhere else keeps saying this useless crap about ditching xbox and bing over and over.
 
Also if MS has a monopoly now days it is in office, that is the only single product where they have essentially no competition. The way tech works is simple you establish a monopoly in an important sector and then you leverage that monopoly to break into more sectors and lock people into your ecosystem. Elops goal is the opposite, essentially he just wants to sit on the office monopoly. With the exception of apple almost every other tech giant has had to lose money of nearly give something away free in order to establish their monopoly. Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.... And then they have to figure it out later how to actually make money off of their business. MS is lucky enough to be exactly the opposite and already be well entrenched with windows and office as money making products. For them to lose money on a couple of side divisions to help solidify their brands placement is a much better deal than facebook, google or twitter and when are the investors going to realize they need to be happy with what they have.
 
Rauelius said:
And wouldn't the royalties from Android be better put to making Windows desktop/mobile better? The titanic miss-step earlier this year with the announcment of those terrible company tells me that MS really isn't interested in making a game-console, and just wants to get ad-revenue.
Click to expand...

The reason Windows is doing so terrible is because Microsoft made a very bad decision to remove the start button, and force Metro UI down peoples throats. The mobile market peaked. So there's literally no room for Microsoft. Not that it matters, cause unless Microsoft gives their OS away for free, they can't compete.
 
rudy said:
Also if MS has a monopoly now days it is in office, that is the only single product where they have essentially no competition. The way tech works is simple you establish a monopoly in an important sector and then you leverage that monopoly to break into more sectors and lock people into your ecosystem. Elops goal is the opposite, essentially he just wants to sit on the office monopoly. With the exception of apple almost every other tech giant has had to lose money of nearly give something away free in order to establish their monopoly. Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.... And then they have to figure it out later how to actually make money off of their business. MS is lucky enough to be exactly the opposite and already be well entrenched with windows and office as money making products. For them to lose money on a couple of side divisions to help solidify their brands placement is a much better deal than facebook, google or twitter and when are the investors going to realize they need to be happy with what they have.
Click to expand...

The companies that are giving their stuff away for free are not doing it as a tactic to break into the market. The sole purpose of those product is to attract eyeballs to their ads.
 
Climber said:
The amount of business acumen in this thread is astounding. I'm surprised more of you aren't in the running to be CEO of Microsoft.
Click to expand...
That is the problem where as most of us could do a better job as CEO in our sleep. The current list of CEO candidates is more interested in killing the company off and gliding down to the next company to kill in the massive golden parachute.

As next CEO i would split windows into 2 paths and fix the mobile/gaming path and the personal computer path i would have my dev groups in a conference i would discuss the fact users don't like huge changes like going from the start menu to metro so i would have pushed for a feature xp had CLASSIC MODE where you would get a windows 7 like theme and start you off in a wizard like android you would pick the interface configure updates ect.

The mobile/gaming would be focused on performance and stability not so much features those can be added with apps and such. Xbone and surface and phone would share ui for the most part i would make a version of the surface to compete with android rather than the ipad.

PC would be stability and features I would probably bundle office starter but word and excel would be closer to full versions than is currently in the starter to make the 200 price tag of the os more attractive i would retire built in versions of the works suite as of windows 7 it is still there.
 
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