Steve Ballmer is going to retire within 12 months.

Ballmer wasn't bad in every department. I read an article about his tenure and the company doubled its profits under his reign. No matter who they elect, there will be hits and misses. Ballmer was very good on the business-targeted side of the company, but he's always been lacking on the consumer side. The way I see it, the company should consider splitting because both sides have very different needs and no one's a genius at both. A company the size of Microsoft needs a genius to run it successfully. It simply is too diversified to be runned by a single person. They are everywhere.
 
Balmer has a record of presiding over massive disasters. Blind Freddie could have doubled Microsoft's profit given the start Balmer had, and left the company in a strong position instead of facing oblivion within the decade, which is what we see now. Balmer learned nothing from the Vista debacle, and was in the hot seat while Microsoft lost the plot on Office, completely borked a major Windows release, bet the company on transitioning the whole thing to phones and tablets, and lost. Right now, Microsoft has a half-credible product in phone space but no sales, no credible product in tablet space and no sales either, and and relies on the obsolete Windows 7 to retain desktop mindshare and corporate sales.

Out he goes. Massive fail.
 
The following thoughts have occurred to me:

1. Why do we CARE about who is running the show? Microsoft has never been a company that's near and dear to anyone's heart. If it takes a tumble because of shitty management, it was well-deserved.
2. The things that Microsoft does right are largely not going to change in the near future because of management. Microsoft does support very well and it does documentation very well. It's still more or less the only game in town for some kinds of business software. Those things are not going to change. Microsoft wastes a lot of money trying to play in consumer technology, but frankly that's only because there are no more worlds to conquer for its business software and it has to at least TRY to grow.
3. A less-powerful Microsoft is a Microsoft that's more willing to cooperate in standards-making processes.
4. The general direction of IT market trends suggests to me that increasing centralization of IT resources combined with Microsoft's tone-deafness in mobile tech were going to make it increasingly irrelevant no matter who is in charge.
5. And what would an agile, consumer-driven, mobile-focused Microsoft look like, anyway? What would Microsoft have to do to gain mindshare among developers, consumers and technology purchasing authorities?

Basically, Microsoft has completed its transition in to IBM. It's not going to go away and everyone is going to keep using it, but at this point it's more like a utility than the driver of worldwide technology that it once was.
 
It seems that during the last 5-7 years CEOs just go from one job to the next, about every 2 years. Like musical chairs. I wonder what reject MS will hire, and from whom.
 
Tannin said:
Balmer has a record of presiding over massive disasters. Blind Freddie could have doubled Microsoft's profit given the start Balmer had, and left the company in a strong position instead of facing oblivion within the decade, which is what we see now. Balmer learned nothing from the Vista debacle, and was in the hot seat while Microsoft lost the plot on Office, completely borked a major Windows release, bet the company on transitioning the whole thing to phones and tablets, and lost. Right now, Microsoft has a half-credible product in phone space but no sales, no credible product in tablet space and no sales either, and and relies on the obsolete Windows 7 to retain desktop mindshare and corporate sales.

Out he goes. Massive fail.
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Add on to the list the upcoming xbox one product release. I know that kind of device or software may not be in your normal travels but their gaming enterprise is fairly recognized in the gaming community. I imagine almost all console gamers at least know of the xbox platform even if they don't own one. Their debacle with DRM had a large disapproval from the gaming community and their design decision likely hurt them. Sure, they listened a little bit and backpedaled on their decisions but those changes were likely in fear of losing huge market share to their largest competitor Sony. They don't really care about their customer. This is another example of them trying to make another bold decision and it was not accepted well. They were about to bork another viable and recognized product revenue stream.
 
Mercutio said:
Basically, Microsoft has completed its transition into IBM. It's not going to go away and everyone is going to keep using it, but at this point it's more like a utility than the driver of worldwide technology that it once was.
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I think this sums it up perfectly. Amen.
 
I certainly agree with Merc had to say on this.. they have transitioned to a utility and not a driver of technology.

However where MS will struggle is the transition of the wider paradigm of the switch back to centralised services, eg the current trend back to the mainframe/terminal setup that was common in the 60s/70s, but it's in the form of SaaS in the cloud and thin clients (aka web browsers) today.

The marketing people will make us believe OpenStack or similar infrastructure will prevail, and iOS and Android devices are the new mass media consumption devices. Certainly in house servers and desktops won't go away, but I can certainly see a scale back on the number of Windows based solutions compared to others. Heck, even MS pushing their cloud servers with Windows 8 (SkyDrive, Outlook.com) could be a doubled edged sword, as all these services are available via other non-MS devices. How much does one really need Windows, if pretty much all you do is online? (GoogleApps, GMail/Yahoo/Outlook, FB/MySpace/Twitter/what-ever-flavour-of-month-social-media).

Their next CEO certainly has a very large boat to steer in what looks like an upcoming storm. (Or put in military terms, a Colonel is given a large militia battalion in the Wild West, but the Indians are already on the door-step). Will the next CEO after Ballmer be a scapegoat for Wall Street to rag on, even though in many peoples eyes, it was Ballmer's doing for the current trend of large anti-MS sentiment in relation to Win8?
 
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