UPDATED 10:10 EDT / JULY 12 2013

What Steve Ballmer’s “Last Stand” Means for a Fragmented + Troubled Microsoft

Microsoft has unveiled a new strategy, “One Microsoft,” which aims to streamline its Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 as well as other products and services.

“We will strive for a single experience for everything in a person’s life that matters. One experience, one company, one set of learnings, one set of apps, and one personal library of entertainment, photos and information everywhere. One store for everything,” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO said.

Aside from delivering a unified experience for consumers, Ballmer also announced the reorganization happening for “One Microsoft” to actually happen.

  • Executive Shake-Up

Veteran executive Julie Larson-Green was named head of its devices and studios engineering group, overseeing hardware development, games, music and entertainment, Terry Myerson will lead Microsoft’s operating systems and engineering group, Qi Lu will head applications and services.  Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft Office, will retire.

DelBene may be the first casualty in this reorganization, but it seems other executives saw this coming.  Steven Sinofsky, Head  of Microsoft’s Windows division, left the company just after the launch of Windows 8.  Some say that it was a hint that Microsoft is facing a rough road thus the departure.  Then just before the reorganization was announced, Xbox’s chief Don Mattrick left the company to be Zynga’s CEO.

Ballmer’s Last Stand

 

After the announcement, SiliconANGLE Founder John Furrier was interviewed by NPR where he stated that he sees Ballmer as being aggressive in his leadership, making it appear that this reorganization is his “last stand, his last effort to turn the company around.”

Furrier wrote that this reorganization is an additional failure for Microsoft, which he explained by stating that “Microsoft essentially is admitting in this reorganization that the fragmentation of their products and their strategies has failed.  They failed in search over the years, they have some success in cloud now but fundamentally, this monolithic PC focus is over.  The monolithic PC is now the cloud and the edge of the network is mobility and Internet of Things.  So that is clearly a fundamental change for their product strategy and how they do their engineering.”

  • Why the shift to hardware from software?

Furrier also mentioned how he finds Microsoft’s focus on devices, which essentially means hardware more than software, very interesting, given the fact that the company is first and foremost a software company.  He cited Marc Andreessen’s post about software eating the world, then goes on to state, “here, a software company is saying they’re device centric.  That is clearly telegraphing that it’s a cloud mobile direction for Microsoft,” pertaining to the software giant’s sudden focus on hardware.

Furrier remains optimistic for the future of Microsoft, comparing it to an aircraft carrier, “they move really, really slowly, they have a lot of assets, they have an ecosystem, they have a business market that’s hot and it’s becoming more consumerized.  I think like HP, it’s gonna be a long road, but they have the tools and ultimately it’s gonna be on Ballmer if he can turn this around and move the company in this direction and be successful.  We’ll see with the performance of their products.  Ultimately, that will be the telling sign.”

The SiliconANGLE CEO concluded the interview stating that, “One Microsoft is a great story, let’s see if they can pull it off.  And the consumerization of business is really relevant and I think if they can  move in that direction, it will be a real win for Microsoft.  They have a lot of assets.  The question is, ‘Can Ballmer pull it off?  Does he have the leadership?  Can they bring the products to market?’ Those will be the questions that we’ll be watching.”


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