Business Spectator's article by Paul Wallbank titled "Microsoft's
legacy liabilities" misses the mark on three fronts. I don't mean to
single out Paul or Business Spectator on this - recent reporting on
Microsoft in many media outlets has taken a similarly narrow view: Business Spectator
First
of all, it focuses entirely on the consumer market and misses the point
of the back-office connection. This has been a key part of Microsoft's
strategy for many years. Witness the vertical integration it offers,
from OS (both on devices and infrastructure) right up through the stack.
On the device side, the Office suite is probably the best example.
Back-end, look at the BI suite and the end-to-end integration it has,
from the OS right through the SQL Server suite, via SharePoint, to Excel
on the device. Various players have bits of the puzzle in place, but
few have the whole stack.
Secondly, the article talks
about mobility. Microsoft has taken a different approach to Apple and
Google here, being one of a common platform across mobile devices and
well, those devices less mobile (laptops and desktops). Apple's and
Google's approach have both been to follow separate development streams
for these two. In the case of Google, with completely separate support
and deployment models. Microsoft on the other hand, has taken a
unified-platform approach, having already tried the alternative
(remember Windows CE?). Time will tell which approach works.
Finally
is the reference to avoiding "9" as the next Windows version and the
author's obvious misunderstanding of how software interacts with other
software. Any resemblance between the marketed version number and the
version reported by the operating system to any applications which care
to ask, is purely coincidental. Windows 7 reports as version 6.1,
Windows 8 is 6.3; XP is 5.1, 3.1 is, well, 3.1. You can pull up a more
comprehensive list of reported versions easily, if you're curious.
Naming the next Windows as Windows 10 is a marketing move. Nothing more,
nothing less.
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