Fair assessments of Microsoft and some of the things it should do moving forward are usually heavy handed with all kinds of buzzwords and negative connotations. It’s understandable I guess given that’s how you get readers to your blog and earn you Web 2.0 brownie points. So it was rather nice to see a post by Jason Hiner today over at the ZDNet blogs that wasn’t your typical big bad Microsoft type of hyperbole.
The part of Jason’s post I found interesting though was he three suggestions for Microsoft and the future of the company. I found them interesting enough I thought I would add some of my own thoughts to them as well. So let’s start with his first suggestion which is
Use its expertise and experience in software applications (including OS) to create a new breed of applications that have seamless online/offline capabilities from the Web browser
When it comes this area I think Microsoft has kind of boxed itself in to a corner because of two things. The first being Internet Explorer in that I think that, at least as of IE 7 and IE 8 Beta, their browser has become a bloated piece of software. As well because of their proprietary mindset their implementation of Add-Ons was a mistake.
I have been a user of the Windows operating system since it was nothing more than a stub for programs like Corel Draw and PageMaker. During all those years one of the biggest complaints, sometimes justifiable but most times not, was how insecure the OS was. In the early days of Windows e.g., Windows 3.1/3.11 and Windows 95, the Internet wasn’t something that was really on anyone’s, other than hard core geeks, radar. So when it did blast onto the scene in the heyday of Windows 95 and the dying days of Windows 3.1 security wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list.
Right now we are probably in the deepest parts of the valley of a world-wide recession but as with all cycles it is inevitable that we’ll climb up out of it and start back up the mountain change that technology is bringing to our world. The thing that will be interesting to see is who is going to be the survivors of what will probably be a massive round of buying and consolidation; which is also inevitable during times of economic hardship.
