Thursday, February 6, 2014

The Gist of Transformation

Microsoft has finally chosen Satya Nadella as its CEO, succeeding Steve Ballmer, who announced his retirement plan four months ago. Microsoft is indeed a fortunate one. Although it remains cocooned in its own glorious past; it still has the time and loads of cash to move forward. Unlike the not-so-smart-or-lucky Nokia and Blackberry, when the ‘smart’ storm swiped, they’ve been blown out. Yes, just like that!

New Microsoft Chief: Satya Nadella

Microsoft was born and boomed in the so-called personal computer era that never meant for personal use, instead fully loaded with office software. The only widespread of personal functionality was its computer games. Maybe that’s the perception Microsoft had that sparked the xBox. Microsoft is a household brand name but its products never actually enter deep into any household level.

The era that allowed the should-be-stealthy operating system to charge every computer extravagantly has dwindled when personal computing power was liberated by smartphones. Microsoft seemed stuck in its Office Suite.

When Amazon stirred a retail industry revolution by deploying the Internet technology, it sells consumer products that are meant for everybody. The strategy is crystal clear. But later on when Amazon ventured into cloud computing, it sells cloud platform that meant clearly for enterprises, only the meticulous service concept was being brought in.

Cloud or Cloudy?

In response to the call for change, Microsoft brought in Nadella, prior to his appointment, was the head of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise division. Which means, Microsoft will continue to stick to its office solutions.

I’ve never underestimated the potential of office and cloud solutions, but unlike enterprise software solution giant, SAP, I think Microsoft will never draw a line to step away from producing consumer products. However, the lack of user-experience DNA in Microsoft would deter them from producing any great consumer products.

The challenge for Microsoft is clear. The IT industry is now spoiled with the astronomical choices of fast, cheap, easy to use personal stuffs that reduce consumer tolerance rate to almost zero. The intolerance attitude soon will be extended to office and enterprise solutions.

The adoption of cloud computing in enterprise solution is just good for structural change, but to be successful, the providers have to rethink and provide solutions that absorb all the superfluous micro-troubles that they conveniently left for the ‘grumpy-yet-tolerance’ users in the past. That should be the gist of its transformation.

So, the challenge for Microsoft is clear. And for FingerTec and TimeTec as enterprise solution provider as well, we’ll bear that in mind, and will keep on strengthening our gist of transformation at all times.  

1 comment:

Myhong23 said...

It always take longer time for enterprises to accept Cloud Enterprise Solution. Worse in Bolehland, as our telco can't provide stable infrastucture to cater the high bandwidth usage of enterprise system.
Microsoft wanting show bth corporate and individual consumers they have everything to offer. Over years, they have proven they did poorly outisde the core business.