Philip Gvinter

Is the Microsoft Empire Cracking?

The point about ERP and other enterprise systems linking into Office apps is a very good one. I did not say that the next shoe to drop would be the enterprise market, but rather that it would be the small to mid size market which tends to not use these kinds of large and oftentimes legacy apps for back office operations. While losing small business market share will in no way crush MS it will be the beginning of a secular downtrend. Also the counterpoint to this is as next generation enterprise software continues to evolve towards a web-based SaS model many of these links will disappear. That ofcourse is something which is much further down the line and is in no way a guarantee, but is still where I believe IT infrastructure is headed over the next 10 to 15 years. IT infrastructure tends to swing like a pendulum between localized desktop systems to distributed client-server systems. It appears to me that we are swinging more and more towards the distributed system where the role of the desktop computer is closer to that of a dumb terminal which simply allows the user to access their applications and data which are stored remotely. Cloud computing seems to me to just be the latest incarnation of this trend and due to its ongoing success and evolutions seems to be far from its peak.



On Dec 10 12:48 PM User 316869 wrote:

>
> Sorry, but there are sooo many links into excel and word from other
> programs, i.e. ERP systems, detailed macro's, etc. The lack of such
> plug ins and the cost / effort to rewrite the macro's will hold back
> enterprise adoption of a competing product.
>
> Also, why not upgrade Office verisons, you are foreced to pay a yearly
> tax (licensing fee), so you may as well use the latest product.<br/>
>

Is the Microsoft Empire Cracking?

I agree completely with the author. MS is finally beginning to lose some market share to other operating systems, but more importantly as Alex points out the value proposition for upgrading the OS is no longer there. I am still amazed that corporate clients upgrade the office suite. Can anyone here honestly tell me that they have seen any functional upgrades that regularly get used between office 2003 and any later edition of the software? Open office is not really getting adapted yet but I feel that once cloud computing becomes more reliable and acceptable it can steal away a good bit of microsoft's small business customers who do not have the resources for a dedicated IT department. The gaming division is essentially a very large low yielding investment as it has failed to produce any meaningful revenue after having tons of money thrown into starting it. The online is even less successful than that. Office sales will begin to slow down some time soon as the upgrade cycle lengthens just as it has already lengthened for the OS. MSFT had better think up some new revenue streams quick if it does not want to begin shrinking soon.