back to article Too many IT conferences to cover? MICROSOFT to the RESCUE!

Microsoft is kicking off a corporate overhaul with the introduction of new policies shrinking the number of corporate conventions and contracted workers. The company said in an email to partner firms that it would place an 18-month limit on the tenure of all contracted employees. Those who hit the limit will be asked to take …

  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    So, let me get this straight...

    Microsoft's strategy with the cutbacks seems to be "cut all departments, divisions, and marketing expenditures that our customers, partners and staff actually enjoy or which might make life easier for individuals who fall into one of those three groups." They are in turn going to reinvest in products, technologies and services that are of dubious value to the mass market, to non-Americans and to the channel that has built their empire for the past 30 years.

    That says to me that Microsoft is trying for an Oracle-like high-margin play, preferably with recurring revenue (SA, Cloud), and to hell with popularity, mass market, etc. I see a few problems.

    1) They historically suck at high margin plays.

    2) Everyone in the entire tech industry, from startups to megaliths is trying for the exact same areas. Most of them have a head start, better tech, more evangelists and marketing that knows how to convince fortune 2000 companies that low value for dollar is actually high value for dollar.

    3) Because everyone on the planet is trying to drain the high-margin money out of the fortune 2000 there is a massive opportunity in the midmarket that noone else is trying to exploit. This is where Microsoft made it's billions. It's also the very segment that Microsoft is busy alienating.

    4) The SMB market has been entirely abandoned, and they aren't buying this "cloud" bullshit, because the value for dollar is basically nonexistant. Microsoft used to at least play here in a token fashion, and it earned them happy joy-joy fuzzies from the proletariat. Those goodfeels are now going elsewhere.

    5) Unlike the SMB market, Microsoft hasn't abandoned the consumer market...they're just really, really bad at it. They aren't getting any of the required goodfeels from here.

    3, 4 and 5 basically mean that mass market public opinion is doing a PlaysForSure(TM) on Microsoft; if their high -margin-or-bust play fails, they are utterly fucked. They've nothing to fall back on, because they're actively working to drive away customers in all other segments. I don't get it. It looks to me like Microsoft is making a hell of a gamble that they can do "high margin" better than those with decades of experience playing that game...and systematically annihilating any possible backup plans in the meantime.

    I wrote a while ago that Microsoft will be hard to kill because it's got so many different segments on the go that it could afford to have several of them not work out. What I didn't count on would be that Microsoft would actively go out of it's way to start killing off as many of these segments as possible.

    Microsoft looks hellbent on going from "strongly diversified damned-near unkillable colossus" to "desperately gambling one-trick cloudpony". It's absolutely irrational.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: So, let me get this straight...

      To put it simply,

      Their 'be everything to everyone' plan is in tatters and to keep the shareholders at bay (oh, where are you Mr Icann?) they are saying that they will concentrate on things which have margin.

      Oh goody... Can we see you kill Surface next please?

      And there are your laughable retail stores.

      Love 'em or hate 'em, Apple has showed you how to do retail in that sector. Your shoddy imitations are just that. They are the Poundland versus Apple's Harrods.

      Surface is losing you money and we all know that the margins in hardware are wafer thin. Let those who know about hardware produce it and stop possing them off with your own brand.

      There are lots of highly skilled people at Microsoft. It is a shame all your political infighting at the top is getting in the way of some fairly decent products. Just look at the number of people who leave MS and startup their own company...

      This statement by the previous poster sums it up perfectly.

      Microsoft looks hellbent on going from "strongly diversified damned-near unkillable colossus" to "desperately gambling one-trick cloudpony". It's absolutely irrational.

      Time for a really major rethink MS not just this tinkering around the edges.

      1. Warm Braw

        Poundland versus Harrods

        Harrods gross revenue, £691M, Poundland £880M.

        If you know your market segment, you can make money out of it. If and only if.

      2. Phil_Evans

        Re: So, let me get this straight...

        Stee...

        "There are lots of highly skilled people at Microsoft. It is a shame all your political infighting at the top is getting in the way of some fairly decent products. Just look at the number of people who leave MS and startup their own company"

        There are easily an equal number of opportune hires who came along in the 90's, creamed in the shares and are now wasting the company's future trying to retrofit the market to 'The Microsoft way' As an FTE I met them one after another and they are a toxic mix of incompetence and longevity.

        You are right about infighting at the top, but I sense that Nadella is facing a considerable resistance to change in the way that Ray Ozzie did...the right agenda with the wrong audience. Must cost them meeelions to hire and fire these pop-stars, but hey the investors love pop-stars.

        All that will happen with the contractor edict is a re-arrangement of resources to fit the middle-management report 'top-boxes'. No Win.

    2. John P

      Re: So, let me get this straight...

      On 4, we are an SMB and using Azure allows us to do things that we could not otherwise do. I did the sums before we started using Azure and once you factor in power consumption, time to market, and the wages of someone to look after it all, Azure won easily from a cost perspective. If you're just comparing the cost of renting servers against the cost of buying them, on-premise will look more attractive but you're not getting the full picture.

      5. Couldn't agree more, I cringe every time I see the Windows 8/WinPho adverts, they're just so bad and don't convey any information whatsoever.Suggesting that people need to be brave to use your products is Ratner-esque.

      @Steve Davies 3

      "There are lots of highly skilled people at Microsoft. It is a shame all your political infighting at the top is getting in the way of some fairly decent products. Just look at the number of people who leave MS and startup their own company..."

      Agreed, if you look at what the .net and Azure guys are doing currently, they're coming up with some really nice products and embracing open source as something that will help them build better products and make more people WANT to use their platform, the future looks bright for .net developers. Microsoft needs more of that kind of thinking in the rest of the company.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: So, let me get this straight...

        If I say that I will buy one high-end, enterprise-class server to run a single workload then I can make Azure seem cost efficient. But the thing is, unless I'm a really small SMB, I'm never doing this. I run multiple workloads on a single server. (Thanks, virtualization that is over a decade old.)

        The costs of a single workload get very small, very, very quickly. But Azure does not. Azure still costs $virgins for each and every workload. And it doesn't matter if you're using "the cloud" or not, you still need a sysadmin. Someone still has to manage and maintain that workload.

        Sorry, but Azure is only most cost effective in niche cases, and it absolutely isn't cheaper for the majority of small businesses.

        1. John P

          Re: So, let me get this straight...

          We are very small (<25 staff) and we don't have a dedicated sysadmin nor do we have the space or time to support running in-house infrastructure. The developers do the maintenance and I can tell you that running our web applications on Azure requires a fraction of the management time required when we were running on a rented server in a data center and on an in-house server before that.

          We are not alone in not having a dedicated sysadmin, it seems be a pretty common thing among small businesses, hence why the maths works out in Azure's favour for us.

          If you've already got the infrastructure and the admins, that will undoubtedly be cheaper than any cloud offering.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: So, let me get this straight...

            Most SMBs without a dedicated sysadmin use an MSP. MSPs are a nice way to use a small number of sysadmins to support a large number of SMBs while still getting all the benefits of running your own infrastructure. Still way - way - cheaper than the public cloud. But hey, if you enjoy paying more for less, be my guest. It's not my money you're wasting.

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    I can see how that would work...

    "...it would place an 18-month limit on the tenure of all contracted employees. Those who hit the limit will be asked to take six months away from the company before being allowed back."

    So, we have a 2 year development project with a good proportion of the devs on contract. With 1/4 of the project to go we get rid of them & replace them with a new lot who have to be brought up to speed.

    Yes, I can see how that would work.

    Badly.

    1. Tim 11

      Re: I can see how that would work...

      Agreed - the point of contract staff is that you use them for as long as you need them - not a day more and not a day less. An arbitrary limit makes no sense whatsoever and will just encourage departments to game the system, generating waste.

    2. Anonymoist Cowyard

      Re: I can see how that would work...

      Isn't it a good way to get your employees to steal your competitors IP? When you have nothing left yourself, send your contractors out into the wild to work for Google or Apple, and then invite them back a short while later...

    3. Hollerith 1

      Re: I can see how that would work...

      Over here in the UK, some companies are taking the lazy way out of getting around the law by asking contractors to 'take a break' for two weeks over Christmas, i.e. leave their contract and of course of course we'll hire you back in January. I know one manager (mine) whose flabber was gasted when I used the 'break' in employment to get another gig.

      Likewise, contractors at Microsoft, in 18 months, will have a decision point: they can wait around for six months in the hope of being signed on again, or go elsewhere. Let's get some popcorn and sit back...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    US only

    Point to add - the contractor restrictions apply to contractors based out of a US office. So far the rest of the world hasn't been impacted, also there are some exclusions to this policy - my wife is an MS FTE & some of her team based in the US who are a- / v- have already been told they're not impacted by this.

    So clear as mud, UK services have a significant % of v- staff making up the numbers so if these restrictions did come over the pond it may have a pretty negative impact on their revenue numbers.

    AC obviously...

    1. Arctic fox
      Happy

      Re: US only: What I wish to say is somewhat off topic but here goes:

      Hi AC. I realise that I have often mouthed off about the "ring on your door-bell and run away ACs" but on this occasion I wish to make it clear that I fully understand the need for the capacity to post here as an AC for the reasons you allude to in your post. I hope that you will forgive my frustration with those who abuse the system. It is entirely clear that you could only comment in this context under conditions of anonymity. This facility I regard as crucial to free debate here at El Reg - I just get fairly hacked off with those who take the piss out of it.

      1. Hollerith 1

        Re: US only: What I wish to say is somewhat off topic but here goes:

        I have gone AC on occasion when I have made what could be seen as a semi-revealing or rude comment on my sector, which is not so big that I would be lost in the crowd. But normally, yes, it bugs me too, if only to have to identify with AC one is replying to in one's reply.

        1. Arctic fox
          Thumb Up

          @Hollerith 1 Re: "I have gone AC on occasion..........."

          Of course and I understand why circumstances sometimes require "donning the mask". However, I have over the last few years become convinced that some AC-postings are driven by a desire to avoid being exposed for having argued "both ends against the middle" from one posting to the next simply to be able to get away with posting something completely illogical (in the context of previous postings) against whoever their favourite hate-figure is. That type of dishonest debating tactic really pisses me off. On the other hand, as I made clear in the post to which you were kind enough reply, that does not mean that I wish the capacity to post as an AC to be withdrawn.

      2. Heinrich Sauerkraut

        Re: US only: What I wish to say is somewhat off topic but here goes:

        You mean MSFT being subjected to bad messages is kind of unfair ? Only MSFT smears other players ? God-given right etc ?

        1. Arctic fox
          WTF?

          Re: "You mean MSFT being subjected to bad messages is kind of unfair ? "

          Sorry Herr Sauerkraut, I did not understand a word of that other than that you appear to believe that my post to which you "replied" had something to do with The Demon Lords of Redmond. Given that I did not say word about Redmond I am somewhat puzzled. I only meant that I could clearly see why the poster concerned needed to post as an AC, something which I remain convinced was clear from what I wrote. Furthermore if someone is in a position where they genuinely feel that posting something negative about MS (they might be employed in the channel with a firm that is an MS "partner" for example and are concerned that their employer might turn nasty) would cause them problems then they should certainly post as an AC if that is really the only way they can safely participate in the debate.

  4. The Godfather
    Meh

    Waiting.....waiting...

    For news the quality of bog-paper is being downgraded from soft two-ply to single military style sandpaper, shiny and useless on one side and rough as hell on the other.

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