Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?
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@Carnival-Boy said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
Like I said above, a smaller piece of a massively growing pie can still be a pretty huge piece of pie and be seen as a strength (not a weakness) for Microsoft.
Yes, but the piece is smaller. Not just smaller compared to the pie, just smaller. Windows has almost totally lost its mobile component (and they've given up there.) And it's laptop market is shrinking very rapidly. And even the desktop is shrinking a little. Between competitors getting better and years of continuous desktop missteps, MS just isn't the desktop power it was in 2008.
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One of the biggest desktop missteps that I think Microsoft could've made were Vista and Windows 8.
The entire 8 platform was built around mobile devices (tablets and such). Destroying their go to layout like that was a very damaging event.
Vista was just bad all around, and was of the "every other OS" cycle that Microsoft has had for decades.
Where you literally have to skip every other OS because they use that OS as a dev playground.
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In the next 5 years I see Microsoft converting their big makers, like Exchange and SQL to work on all enterprise platforms.
Maybe even working to get Office (outlook specifically) installable onto the same platforms. CentOS etc.
At 10 years, they won't develop OS platforms at all, at least for the server world. They'll keep things around because of the consumer level, and contracts with hardware developers for the time being.
15 years, they'll be a complete SaaS company.
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@DustinB3403 said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
In the next 5 years I see Microsoft converting their big makers, like Exchange and SQL to work on all enterprise platforms.
Maybe even working to get Office (outlook specifically) installable onto the same platforms. CentOS etc.
At 10 years, they won't develop OS platforms at all, at least for the server world. They'll keep things around because of the consumer level, and contracts with hardware developers for the time being.
15 years, they'll be a complete SaaS company.
SQL is already available for some Linux derivatives. So we're well on our way there.
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OK, I'll return to this thread in 15 years time and remind you all I was right.
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@coliver said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@DustinB3403 said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
In the next 5 years I see Microsoft converting their big makers, like Exchange and SQL to work on all enterprise platforms.
Maybe even working to get Office (outlook specifically) installable onto the same platforms. CentOS etc.
At 10 years, they won't develop OS platforms at all, at least for the server world. They'll keep things around because of the consumer level, and contracts with hardware developers for the time being.
15 years, they'll be a complete SaaS company.
SQL is already available for some Linux derivatives. So we're well on our way there.
As is a lot of MS Office.
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@coliver said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@Carnival-Boy said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
I don't disagree with what you say about profits, although there's a risk that increased competition will squeeze them.
But I don't see how operating systems are a weakness - over 400m devices running Windows 10 so far?
Compared to the billion-ish devices running the Linux kernel?
This is a completely unfair comparison. Windows was not really (until Win10 IOT) meant to be on integrated devices.. Sure they had that failed experiment Windows CE (though for a failed setup, they still sold millions of devices with it on them.)
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@Dashrender said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@coliver said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@Carnival-Boy said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
I don't disagree with what you say about profits, although there's a risk that increased competition will squeeze them.
But I don't see how operating systems are a weakness - over 400m devices running Windows 10 so far?
Compared to the billion-ish devices running the Linux kernel?
This is a completely unfair comparison. Windows was not really (until Win10 IOT) meant to be on integrated devices.. Sure they had that failed experiment Windows CE (though for a failed setup, they still sold millions of devices with it on them.)
"Failed Experiment" of decades of production releases? Um, you just proved the point. They failed so badly you refuse to even recognize a huge market push. They started doing this in the 1990s and if you think they haven't tried until Windows 10, you have made their failure so much bigger than we were thinking it was.
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@Dashrender said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@coliver said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@Carnival-Boy said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
I don't disagree with what you say about profits, although there's a risk that increased competition will squeeze them.
But I don't see how operating systems are a weakness - over 400m devices running Windows 10 so far?
Compared to the billion-ish devices running the Linux kernel?
This is a completely unfair comparison. Windows was not really (until Win10 IOT) meant to be on integrated devices.. Sure they had that failed experiment Windows CE (though for a failed setup, they still sold millions of devices with it on them.)
Windows CE was a huge push by MS. They were trying to get it into schools for at least a decade maybe more. They even talked some big name PLC vendors to use it on their management controllers, which are often still being deployed today (for better or worse). It was a massive initiative that failed after dumping a lot more money than was necessary in to it.
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Windows CE powered the Sega Dreamcast.
NTG used to manage CE devices for hospitals. We built custom software on them for years.
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Windows CE was a much bigger deal for Microsoft in the late 1990s than Windows 10 IoT is today. If you think CE was an "experiment" then what is Windows 10... not even trying anymore?
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@scottalanmiller said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@Carnival-Boy said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
But I don't see how operating systems are a weakness - over 400m devices running Windows 10 so far?
Yeah, for Windows that isn't a good number. Their size is shrinking as the market grows. That's not good. And the desktop is their best spot. Their server market is being destroyed. And as that goes. the desktops become that much more precarious. It's their foundation that is eroding.
Of course it's shrinking. Fewer and fewer people need a full blown PC, top that off with the fact that PCs are lasting much longer these days than before, so sales are slumping as most would expect.
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@Dashrender said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@scottalanmiller said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
@Carnival-Boy said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
But I don't see how operating systems are a weakness - over 400m devices running Windows 10 so far?
Yeah, for Windows that isn't a good number. Their size is shrinking as the market grows. That's not good. And the desktop is their best spot. Their server market is being destroyed. And as that goes. the desktops become that much more precarious. It's their foundation that is eroding.
Of course it's shrinking. Fewer and fewer people need a full blown PC, top that off with the fact that PCs are lasting much longer these days than before, so sales are slumping as most would expect.
But the sales of their competitors are not slumping. They are growing.
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Also, in 5 or 10 years MS will have at least 3 different versions of Skype, OneDrive, Teams, Sharepoint. Nobody will know the difference between the different versions, and basic features in each wont work at all.
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If Windows stops becoming the number one choice of business users, Microsoft will be damaged very badly. They cannot lose that market. They would lose consumers, servers, and pretty much all their OSes. Windows is in top of the operating system space is because it is seen as the standard for the majority of users. If they don't use Windows at work, they will stop using it at home. Applications will stop relying on windows since it is no longer than standard and in turn it would not be used in new servers as often.
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@IRJ said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
Windows is in top of the operating system space is because it is seen as the standard for the majority of users. If they don't use Windows at work, they will stop using it at home.
That's the thing, though, it's not and hasn't been for years and MS isn't very concerned. Windows 10 already gave up mobile, laptops, embedded devices and really... even trying. Let's face it, it's not even a good effort at a competitive desktop. Microsoft is happily giving up market share and that's just desktop. They gave up the server race years ago. They still have a good product, but their OSes are not their bread and butter and have not been for years. Their OSes don't drive the market (outside of the rapidly evaporating desktop and video game space) and MS has worked extremely hard to refocus everything that they do currently to be OS agnostic.
I don't think MS really cares, at all, that they have an OS and for good reason. It costs too much to make, takes focus away from their money making products and holds them back.
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@IRJ said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:
Applications will stop relying on windows since it is no longer than standard and in turn it would not be used in new servers as often.
Which is what MS wants and why they are rapidly porting everything that they can to other platforms, mostly Ubuntu and Suse.
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I found this:
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XBOX is bigger than Windows desktops!
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Important note on their revenues, Azure and O365 are showing up in things like Server OS revenues even when MS is the customer. That's important to note that while their server business appears to be growing, it doesn't mean that the sales of it are. They could have that be a pretty big number someday while being hte only customer of it - in theory.
