Correct Moves Made By Microsoft in 2008

CIO has listed four things that Microsoft has correctly done in 2008 and they are:

Windows 7 Buzz – I agree with this. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertisement to boost Windows Vista image was not paying off and announcing a next operating system running on netbooks is the next best thing. Forget Windows ME flop, just proceed to Windows XP instead. But of course for Windows Vista, the flop meant billions of dollars of revenue — what a flop.

Hiring Yahoo Talent – Well, I would not put this atop the list of Microsoft’s best moves for the company. Obviously they failed in acquiring Yahoo and they went after Qu Li who is he Yahoo search chief. This move wouldn’t do much to their ranking and only score points on morale. Given that Microsoft has failed in the acquisition, they should have just improved their top management acquisition architects. I would be more happy if they shopped for executives from General Electric, those mentored by legendary Jack Welch.

Windows Azure – Cloud computing. It looks good until they have actually launched it full scale.

Windows Server 2008 – no argument here. All praise. I actually know of a lot of colleagues who have installed and use this software instead of Windows Vista.

Article of reference here.