Microsoft’s 4 Real Problems that Gates, Nadella, and Ballmer Can’t Fix
I just finished the Vanity Fair piece on Gates, Ballmer, Nadella, and whether Microsoft can be rebooted to its former glory. It’s a good article, but it’s all about the past mistakes and there’s little about the future there. Mostly, it is the account of how two best friends (Gates and Ballmer) broke up over […]
Larry Ellison
I was going to write a post about Larry Ellison leaving Oracle after he announced his retirement on Thursday but it is probably pre-mature. Ellison will become the executive chairman while Safra Katz and Mark Hurd run the shop as co-CEO’s and I have a lot of doubts. It’s not that Safra and Mark are […]
Satya Nadella: Microsoft, Coffee and the Relevance Question
Satya Nadella is a highly accomplished, extremely smart Microsoft executive who is correctly receiving a warm reception from media and pundits. The question that remains open however is – is he the change agent that can help Microsoft avoid the fate that other Wintel players are facing? He clearly seems to have taken to Marc […]
Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft
Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft Note: In a bit of operator error an earlier version of this post clipped off the first para. Here it is restored. Microsoft announced its selection of Satya Nadella to be the third Microsoft CEO today and I wish him well. In a flurry of announcements, Bill Gates also stepped down […]
The Problem With Replacing CEO’s, Boards, and Governance at Big Co’s
At some point, Silicon Valley VC’s, whom I am not always entirely complimentary of, decided it was easier to teach a Founder to be a decent CEO than it was to teach a Big Co Exec to fill in what they’d lose if a Founder left. That doesn’t mean they don’t replace CEO/Founders, but it […]
Ballmer Will Retire in the Next 12 Months
From the get-go Steve Ballmer had an impossible job to do. Long the number two man at Microsoft behind iconic founder and chief geek, Bill Gates, Ballmer got to take over when the Gates bubble was beginning to wear out. Gates built the company he founded with Paul Allen from zero into the powerhouse of […]
Microsoft’s New Coke Moment
Windows 8.1 is beginning to make the pre-release rounds with the influencers as this post by Ed Bott in ZDNet documents. Version 8.1 brings me back to the 1990s and 1980s for various related reasons because it is not unlike what happened with Windows 3.0 when it was followed by version 3.1. In the Windows […]
Event Report: Washington Ideas Forum (#IdeasForum) Highlights America’s Current Challenges
The Disruptive Technology Perspective At The Washington Ideas Forum Influencers in politics, academia, and business converge once a year at the Washington Ideas Forum to discuss the challenges and potential solutions America faces. This event held November 14th to November 15th pulled together over 1200 attendees and was sponsored by The Atlantic in partnership with […]
Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 15-31 March 2011
Oracle has a phenomenal quarter. Paul Allen disses Bill Gates. Patent, trademark, and IP issues galore. Salesforce.com continues cash-based acquisition spree. HP continues rolling out its new strategy. HP and Oracle continue their war. Gosling joins Google. CIOs want to reduce the number of applications they maintain. IBM turns 100. World political turmoil and aftermath […]
3 Challenges Larry Page Faces for Google
There are 3 challenges Larry Page must overcome to fundamentally make Google a bigger, better, and more successful company that customers love and that does no evil: Lack of Customer Focus Google is all about the algorithms, but algorithms are not customer-focused. They’re off doing whatever they were made to do, and if that’s not the right […]
