Microsoft-Yahoo: Enterprise confusion

196349 Resource 102302 102466 102466 1202140133112 1202442767848 Controlled What Does the Microsoft Acquisition of Yahoo Mean to You?

Technology for the Small and Medium Enterprise has just turned a corner

Last week Microsoft announced its intention of acquiring Yahoo!. Does not seem like a bad idea from Microsoft's point of view, at least. They have a lot of cash, and you have to buy something or hand out dividends again; you can't just watch the bank balance grow. I am not going to try to sort out all of the reasons that MS wants Yahoo, but I have to believe that these two were in the mix:<ol><li>Take on Google before it's too late. Google is going to move into the PC in a big way and Microsoft needs to protect the homeland. Google is also moving into the server with their cloud computing platform. Microsoft needs to compete in the adwords market to thwart some of this growth. Google is not the annoying little brother anymore - they are starting to fill out and become a rival, on many fronts and in ways that Microsoft has not been relevant (Internet computing).</li><li>There must have been a discussion about the eventuality of a large corporate Microsoft client putting in a Purchase Order for 10,000 low priced ($350 - $500) laptops running virtual Linux and Ubuntu. This eventuality is going to become a reality sooner rather than later. Microsoft butters its bread with corporate clients and its profits in this enterprise sector are going to come under increasing pressure. Where to grow? Consumer services, advertising, that's the ticket.</li></ol>So what does all this mean to us, to you, out here in the small and medium enterprise market. I believe it means that we have to start thinking seriously about what we use to run our businesses and what we will use in the future.Look in the large enterprise market, Oracle made the same determination several years ago that Microsoft made last week in the enterprise market: It's not going to grow at nearly the same rates that it has in the past. And when your main line of business does not grow, you must take action. Oracle chose to consolidate. Microsoft chose to move into another market very aggressively. By doing so they are going to try to protect their base by merging a lot of new internet technologies with their PC technologies. This allows them to continue to charge excessive prices for software that has not been innovative in years. And while they protect their base they will put their energies into newer markets, like media and advertising and consumer internet technologies.The downside to all of this is that corporate clients continue to pay the big sticker prices for Microsoft software, and thereby helping to capitalize Microsoft's turn toward the consumer market. It's one thing to pay for software and maintenance year after year and get little innovation in return. It's another to sit by and watch your hard earned cash invested in a bunch of interesting stuff like Facebook, which neither you nor your business will ever find useful. That's some serious ouch.I have asked several times over the past few years what happened to Microsoft's enterprise application division? They are still dead silent. Outside of a few commercials on the radio. But what is new? Wasn't Microsoft supposed to roll out new SaaS (software as a service) versions of the their 5 DIFFERENT ERP systems? Weren't they going to merge some or all of them into a new application? And how about Microsoft CRM? The only people who run it are the people - many resellers and partners - who receive it for free. It has not been thoroughly integrated with a single one of the ERP systems.I know that a lot of small and medium business owners love Microsoft because no one at the club will ever laugh at you for running Dynamics, and with the Microsoft's bank account it does look like a horse with some strong legs. But what is reputation and riches buying you these days when you invest in Microsoft? A chance to help them get into consumer technologies? If you want consumer technologies, go get a Facebook account - it's free, and innovative in its own small way. You are wasting some big coin on Microsoft, and the payback is not what you think. 9 application/xml consumer technologies crm dynmaics ERP microsoft microsoft offer for yahoo saas small and medium enterprise software as a service yahoo Microsoft-Yahoo: Enterprise confusion Krigsman thinks the merger move the enterprise focus to the back of the bus http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=580 false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; YPC 3.2.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 tfoydel 76.226.237.92 false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102302 blog blogsite/SightLines/web