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back to article Shaking up the Nad Men: Microsoft splits up into 'cloud' and 'edge'

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has announced a business reorganization at Redmond to go along with his executive shake-up. In a now-public e-mail to staff on Thursday, Nadella outlined how Microsoft will operate with two major divisions - one focusing on end-users with 'experiences and devices' and another that will handle the ' …

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  1. Dwarf

    How to further alienate your customers

    So with a choice of Client, Cloud and AI, where is all the traditional on-premise portfolio ?

    Are you moving out of this market or are you saying that its all got to private cloud, which could be massive over complication for many businesses.

    Many customers don't want or cant use your cloud or anyone else's. If you are closing that door, then watch the customers flee in droves to alternatives.

    If your road map doesn't include your customers requirements, then don't be surprised if your customers road maps doesn't include Microsoft.

    26 3 Reply
    1. rmullen0
      Reply Icon

      Re: How to further alienate your customers

      My thoughts exactly. Will this what finally pushes me to give up on Microsoft and switch to Linux? The bottom line is closed source software cannot be trusted in this age of massive privacy violation. These corporations think they can do whatever they want. Sorry Microsoft, you can only push us so far. You need to either open up and give customers more control over how they use your software, or, you will continue losing market share. I predict they do continue to lose market share. And it will be because they deserve it.

      7 3 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How to further alienate your customers

        >I predict they do continue to lose market share.

        Their ~ 1% market share in mobile you mean? Microsoft are gaining market share in most other things - such as servers, applications and cloud. And their desktop share is roughly stable.

        0 0 Reply
  2. handleoclast

    AI Ethics Unit?

    I'd never previously associated Microsoft with ethics. And still don't.

    I expect this AI to find better ways of achieving customer lock-in and then gouging money out of them.

    Think of it as an addendum to Conway's Law: if your company has no ethics then neither will your AI.

    13 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: AI Ethics Unit?

      IIRC, not too long ago Microsoft had set up some anti cybercrime unit supposedly to battle hackers and viruses. I suppose Microsoft now considers itself an exemplary paragon of virtue in the tech world, eh?

      3 1 Reply
    2. ThatOne Silver badge
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      Devil

      Re: AI Ethics Unit?

      > I'd never previously associated Microsoft with ethics. And still don't.

      It sounds like a standard legal unit with an euphemistic name, something which will help Microsoft not to fall foul of any laws (GDPR was explicitly mentioned) during its never ending quest for user data.

      You know, like "Customer Support" is the department supposed to fend off dissatisfied customers.

      4 0 Reply
  3. J. R. Hartley

    Bollocks

    Why even bother? Microsoft is utterly shite at everything they do. The only reason they are around is because of the stranglehold of Windows and Office on the great unwashed.

    14 8 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bollocks

      Microsoft is still around because of the large amount of money it had accumulated during the Billy G era. Ballmer was the status quo successor CEO coasting along with the traditional businesses.

      Without that mountain of cash accrued from its entrenched monopolies, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt long ago because of various costly failures (including discontinued projects) in recent years.

      7 3 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bollocks

        "Without that mountain of cash accrued from its entrenched monopolies, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt long ago"

        In what alternate reality is that? You must have missed for last decade of profitable results, have missed that their share price is at record highs and that they are likely to be the first $100 billion company.

        1 1 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bollocks

          "are likely to be the first $100 billion company."

          $1000 billion even.

          0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bollocks

      "The only reason they are around is because"

      Their cloud revenue overtook AWS 3 quarters ago. And is growing much faster. Cloud is keeping them afloat, and on current shape they are going to stay market leader for a while at least.

      3 2 Reply
  4. Jemma

    Hmm "the Nad men"

    Thank you so kindly for that - now I'm going to have a mental image of bright blue dancing testicles in my head doing musical numbers with animated paper clips..

    Quick Jeeves, the brain bleach..

    In other news do Microsoft actually have any mobile devices? (other than in the not-really-not-a-laptop field)?

    Cos the Windows phones are deader than the cat I'm sitting on.

    10 3 Reply
    1. rmullen0
      Reply Icon

      Re: Hmm "the Nad men"

      True. Does the word "devices" really belong at the top level? They already gave up on that. And the word "experiences" has just always been annoying. They come up with these stupid names and try to throw a bunch of marketing hype at you and then never really make meaningful changes. Like creating a product that doesn't have to be constantly patched for security holes. One of the things that sticks in my craw is the fact that the Store apps constantly open tons of firewall rules. You can delete them, and the next time the apps are patched, the rules get put right back in again. They need to fix the fundamentals instead of constantly larding things up with whatever the latest fad is. Like Cortana. A bunch of useless hype if you ask me. And no thanks to cloud too. All it is is a way for Microsoft to line their pockets.

      5 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmm "the Nad men"

      I travel all over the world and I honestly don't see anyone using Windows phones. It should be easy to tell because of those Metro tiles.

      I think SatNad has long given up on phones... but the fanboys can always dream:

      https://thewincentral.com/surface-phone-andromeda-hardware-snapdragon-845-ready-software-readiness-big-question/

      4 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: using Windows phones.

        If you want some nostalga, there are a number of US TV shows that give you that warm fuzzy feeling (because you don't use them any more) as you see Windows Mobile with Tiles and everything being used. NCIS[1] is one of them.

        They also use Windows 10 on some of their desktops now.

        There are other shows that even boast 'IT Equipment supplied by Microsoft' in the credits.

        [1] Only saw it because 'the original she who must be obeyed' (aka Mother) loves watching them and shouting out 'He did it' with the rest of her friends at the care home. Honest!

        4 0 Reply
      2. Petalium
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        Re: Hmm "the Nad men"

        I use one. Best phone I ever owned. Problem now is that no new apps are developed anymore. So next phone will be the choice of being taxed by Apple or spied on by Google...

        10 0 Reply
    3. Chairman of the Bored
      Reply Icon

      Re: Hmm "the Nad men"

      I actually like the 'nad men in the title. (Not for that reason! Brain out of gutter, sir!)

      It's just that now when people get laid off from Microsoft we can say they got kicked in the nads.

      1 0 Reply
  5. a_yank_lurker

    Deck chairs

    Why does this have the feeling of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic just before hitting the iceberg?

    10 5 Reply
    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
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      Facepalm

      Re: Deck chairs

      because "they" haven't artificially propped up their stock value for long enough before selling short just as the proverbial excrement hits the proverbial fan...

      so get those deck chars in the right places, and look like we're doing something, harumph harumph!

      icon, because, facepalm

      1 3 Reply
  6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    'experiences and devices'

    The E word. Always bad news for user interfaces. But I suppose it's applied to MS ever since Win 8.

    7 2 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      'Experience' is just a highfalutin term

      Samsung Experience too. Formerly known as Touchwiz.

      0 0 Reply
      1. remainer_01
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        Re: 'Experience' is just a highfalutin term

        lol touchwiz, always makes me crack up in a juvenile way

        0 0 Reply
  7. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "Conway's Law, a 1960's adage that holds a company's software will be structured in much the same way as the company itself."

    There must be a corollary about the stability of S/W from companies that keep restructuring themselves.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Adrian 4
      Reply Icon

      They still don't get why google is killing them.

      What you want, kiddies, is a streamlined experience form pocket to cloud. Not a corporate wall between them.

      0 1 Reply
  8. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    Silos...

    There's a point here, possibly finally appreciating that all the pathetic silos aren't helping Microsoft's business and products. And then they go create new and different silos.

    It would help if Microsoft's products were consistent and they concentrated, for once, on bug fixes, performance improvements, and filling in all the shoddy gaps in functionality and manageability that make (attempting to) manage Microsoft software deployments a right royal PITA. When they can't even get their own (new) PowerShell management modules to act appropriately (i.e. blat our warning messages despite warning messages being suppressed using the commands attributes) then what hope have they even got for actually being remotely consistent or even supporting everything with PowerShell. Currently it's a nice idea, considerably better than it was, but still woefully incomplete and annoying and often just randomly unreliable - especially in the hybrid/cloud stack.

    11 1 Reply
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'Experiences and Devices'

    This is the official death of Windows as we know it, innit?

    Windows is now officially a 'service' or 'experience'. It is deemed not important enough to be a division on its own. Not long ago, Office and Windows were the two major pillars of Microsoft's business.

    12 2 Reply
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    For shame

    Just had Nan on the phone in tears, demanding we migrate her to Linux Mint after Cortana made a smutty joke in front of the Vicar.

    3 6 Reply
  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In other news: MS SQL runs great on Ubuntu and Red Hat. It really does.

    0 2 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      It might. But why bother?

      2 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        "It might. But why bother?"

        Cheap throw away environments for devs? Obviously anyone who wants full production features and / or always on availability group clustering needs Windows for prod anyway.

        0 1 Reply
  12. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Oh doomsday, Microsoft splits up

    Well that's what Mr Bill said would happen if Office had to split from Windows.

    The joke is it's not really Windows any more, it's closer to Xenix, and Microsoft doesn't like you working around its crap anyway. Will force you to their store soon enough to acquire everything as a fanboi , anything else would be a work around.

    And you get to chose between Edge and Azure, NO sorry. You have to take both, just wait, you'll see.

    You will have a cloudy Edge, er a cloud based Edge on subscription along with everything else.

    2 3 Reply
  13. remainer_01

    I don't want "experiences and devices" - I can go to the local smuthouse for that. I want my Windows to respect my privacy, and not pretend to know better than me, especially when it comes to rebooting. I want my Office to work, and I want all this to be reasonably secure and stable.

    I don't need this invasive crap.

    5 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      "I want my Windows to respect my privacy, and not pretend to know better than me, especially when it comes to rebooting"

      There are plenty of inbuilt options for that.

      0 0 Reply

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