Hey, Bill Gates! We've found 14 IT HOTSHOTS to be the next Steve Ballmer Now for that question everybody's asking: who will be the new Microsoft chief exec once Steve Ballmer slips into retirement by next year? The software giant's co-founder and chairman Bill Gates, fellow company board member John Thompson and executive recruitment agency Heidrick & Struggles are tasked with cracking that puzzler …
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Don't know about that - with Ballmer going so many people are crying out for a technologist to replace him, rather than a businessman. Some say that MS's problems of the last decade have been down to being driven by short-term financial performance rather than longer-term technological promise. KT can certainly run the business, but has he got this vision to put MS back where it was under Gates?
Thats a fair point @Nightfox but the buying masses, esp the corporates don't buy from technologists (in fact often they are put off from the hardcore tech chaps/chapettes), they buy into the N year roadmap and from what I've seen, KT can sell whatever he's pushing. He seems very credible to me.
Maybe the job is just too big for a single person to span the needs of such a large organisation. Can't please all the people all the time and all that.
>the consumer-orientated side to be led by a Gates/Jobs type visionary, and the business customer-focused side of MS put in the hands of a traditional CEO.
Which would imply that the actual CEO needs to be someone who can handle the obvious conflicts between these two heads to keep everyone going in the same direction and reassure the market/investors. So perhaps they need to look outside of IT...
Kevin Turner is not a good choice. I say that as an ex-Microsoft employee. He signs all his emails off with "Thank you for all that you do." *Almost* as patronising as Dick Brown's email sign-off "And remember.... Action, urgency, excellence!"
Anyway, Kevin Turner is not liked internally at Microsoft. He's a poor fit, not least because he's not a techie, and understands Microsoft's market even less than Ballmer does.
Microsoft needs someone that understands that *all* OS's (WinRT, Windows, Windows Server and Windows Phone) need to be on the same release cycle. The next thing Microsoft needs is ONE coherent strategy for dev. That means merging VBA, .NET, Silverlight for Windows Phone and Windows Runtime. It also means coalescing Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight into a common UI framework.
That said, I've no idea how they're going to do that last one. GDI/DGI+ uses direct rendering, and Silverlight/WPF uses delayed rendering via DirectX (hardware acceleration). In a perfect world, whatever Microsoft come up with will mix hardware acceleration with WinForms' event-driven model.
The battling business units are MSFTs big problem - and the reason Win8 failed.
When your main app, MS-Office doesn't use any of the features of your new OS because they had their own release schedule and your main dev tool doesn't make it easy (or even possible) to write apps using your new interface because their manager doesn't like the other manager - you are screwed.
You can't picture this happening under Jobs - imagine iPhone not working with iTunes because of a sulking minion !
They don't need a new CEO, they need design group or reopen the one they shut down and focus on the aesthetics of their UI and hardware. Basically they need a Jonathan Ive and a boat load of talented designers. What if Ballmer had convinced Gates not to kill the the Courier Tablet? I still think it is not too late and they should bring back the original team to work on it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20128013-75/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/
Ex Microsoft employee who hates Windows 8, and founded and runs a company worth billions. Perfect.
He was first on my list - ex MSFT, "gets" the IT space, delivered a liked DRM-esque delivery system (Steam), grasps the presentation to the consumer, "the cloud", obviously he gets games, and how to deliver software as a service. Mobile is the weak spot, which is a BIG problem as MSFT needs to nail that, which is something it has consistently failed to do.
Also, not actively hostile to Linux and open source. Chair throwing ability unknown.
The only problem is I'd like to see a new to MSFT person, free of the constraints of the past take this up.
Picking internal is too stagnating. Look down the coast at Cupertino, Tim Cook is Apple through and through, and is doing a really average job there (not yet Ballmeresque, but it's still early days). He seems to just "expand via lawyers" rather than doing something new. All he's done is keep the Jobs status quo (insert your own "whatever you want" joke in here), not made it a Cookian Cult; Apple has stagnated under him. As I said, not as actively damaging as Ballmer, but stagnation.
I don't really care who takes over the helm at Microsoft as long as the new person realises that Microsoft is primarily an OS and Server company.
The new person needs to get the company to focus on these two areas and needs to be able to see the company's products from the perspective of the user.
This, I believe, was Steve Jobs' great gift. He saw himself as the User and all products had to impress him. Since he set his standards quite high, what impressed him, impressed many others too. The new Microsoft CEO needs to be able to place him or herself in the position of the typical developer, home-user, DBA, office worker and build products that people would choose of their own accord, rather than be told to use them.
It doesn't matter what MS is at the moment. What matters is a CEO that understands that MS has to become something else.
Computing for the masses has moved from the PC to the tablet and the smartphone. Does MS want to be on those markets ?
Gaming is mostly done on consoles. Building games is expensive and risky, successes are few and far between. Does MS want to stay on that market ?
Business and servers are the top-of-the-line margin makers, but the Cloud is capable of eating MS's lunch. Ironically, it's MS's fault already, since Office is doing everything it can to move people away from PCs (where it sells Windows) to the Cloud (where it doesn't). I see a disconnect there, one that MS will pay for dearly in the years to come. Either that or MS has already understood that the PC is a dead dodo (for the mass market that is) and tablets are the future.
Come to think of it, that explains a lot about the Start button issue.
Servers are where its at, margin-wise, but MS already has plenty of healthy competition there.
No, I'm sorry, but any way I look at it, MS as it was is finished. It is time to boldly go . . . somewhere. The choice of CEO is going to be a very interesting one for a lot of people.
I don't really care who takes over the helm at Microsoft as long as the new person realises that Microsoft is primarily an OS and Server company.
OSs and servers is what Microsoft have traditionally done -- and Office, I suppose -- but the world is changing and those things may not be enough. MS have seen the success that others, notably Apple, have had selling media as well as apps through an online 'store', and they want some of that pie. They may need to have some of that pie to survive.
The question is whether they can change their business to cash in on that new market without losing their place in their traditional markets and so losing the loyalty of their customers.
They've been moving in that direction for some time -- adding baked-in DRM to Windows in Vista, adding a store in Windows 8, and making that store common to Windows on x86 and on ARM (hence TIFKAM) -- but doing so SO badly and managing to piss off just about everyone.
They couldn't find their way forward under Ballmer, but maybe someone else can manage to do so (I can't say that it looks all that hard).
Rudder also passed on purchase of Rational tools, leaving the way clear for IBM to gobble the software maker.
Bloody good thing, too. TFS is so much better than ClearCase, it's not even funny. I don't want to start any internet nerdwars here and this may be the absolute worst kind of heresy but....
even SourceSafe is better than ClearCase.
There. I said it.
And it's true. Okay so SourceSafe doesn't know about things like branching, labelling or not being a steaming pile of shit but at least when it eats your code never to return it, it doesn't claim that you never had any code to begin with.
o rly?
Clearcase is an awful, awful product. (I actually typoed "prodfuct" there for a moment, which is accurate). It is so fucking awful that nobody serious uses it anymore outside IBM itself. It is clunky. It integrates badly with IDEs. It refuses to play ball with pretty much anything except Rose, even including Robot and XDE from the same alleged product suite.
Anyone who cared about source control switched to SVN and then further to TFS or git, depending on their platform. These days, you can even use TFS for all the project management gubbins and git for source control, seamlessly in VS.
Anyone who uses clearcase and claims to be serious about source control is a liar.
Oh, Belluzo already served MS for while.. I think just shortly after leaving HP? Well, at least MSFT recovered from Rick quickly. I don't think he'd be a real candidate, but you never know.. Speaking of HP, well, did anybody mention Leo Apotheker already? A software guy, and most likely available directly now.
Last, but not least, the folks whose heads more or less got chopped at HP recently, Todd Bradley or Dave Donatelli?
But are there 14 “hotshots” who want the job?
The Board [bored] has been dozing at the wheel for a decade or more… but it seems to have suddenly woken up [too late] when the company has come off the rails.
So the questions are:
Do the Bored know what they want?
Do the Bored know what they need?
Do the Bored know what they can do?
Do the Bored know what will make investors feel secure?
The last decade tells us that the answer is NO on all counts.
Given the Bored and the total lack of company coherence, cooperation and cohesion one has to assume that only a “snake oil salesmen” would want the job [whatever it might be].
Therefore, choosing the “new leader” will rely entirely upon serendipity.
Personally, I wouldn’t look for a “new leader”.
Just break up the company into separate business units… sink or swim.
However, I guess the Bored will look for someone who “loves the company” and can tell the Bored [with a straight face] that he will “restore their former glory”.
So please welcome: Stephen Elop [and please hand that man a chair and his three envelopes].
The Board [bored] has been dozing at the wheel for a decade or more… but it seems to have suddenly woken up [too late] when the company has come off the rails
Tripled revenues, doubled profits and at least four new profit-making divisions. Off the rails indeed! MS is ruined! Thank Kibo you can see it, Malagabay because those millions of investors earning big dividends (I realize that to internet commentards, dividends are a new concept and only market cap matters but to investors things are different) sure can't.
Nokia are only slowly heading off in the same direction as RIM / Blackberry. But at this point I don't see a way back for Nokia. They had a decision to make. They took made a bad One. and this is where they now find themselves. I just hope that there foray into Surface / RT isn't the Straw that breaks their Back.
All the people saying Nokia are failing are just not looking at the current facts. They are selling the Lumia phones as fast as they can make them, the uptake of Windows Phone is increasing rapidly in almost all markets and the low-price models are showing up in the best-sellers lists. Even the new Nokia RT tablet may save that OS, once the networks start offering them on subsidized contracts.
I'm guessing you are totally unaware of the cancelled Nokia expansion into Vietnam for manufacuring, or the massive downscaling and mothballing of lines in Chenai and Dongguan then..
Lumia has flopped, Windows Phone has flopped, the app stores are as barren as they have always been, Surfact RT is worthless junk.
Yet somehow you seem to the headline growth figures (but with undisclosed actual numbers) and have fallen hook line and sinker into the hype.
Don't you get it? Microsoft are cash rich, they can pay anyone in the media to say whatever they want. At the same time, Windows RT and Windows phone are criticial to their future success, they have no plan B.
I can only assume you ended up with a Windows Phone, and the only person you are convincing in you. Don't worry, Nokia will be long gone by time your contract renewal is up, and you can put it down to experience that you should never believe online reviews, or what the bloke in the phone store told you.
Nokia's RT adventure is just Flop trying to get on message and back into MS after failing to get MS to buy Nokia last year. If Nokia's board don't kick him out now then Nokia will be dead and buried next year. Unfortunately if MS' board are asleep then Nokia's board are in a coma.
Tell me then, oh MS-Hater, what do Microsoft have that's working fine which Elop would replace?
Waiting....
Nope, didn't think so. Cheesy shot at Elop which made no sense whatsoever then?
Thought so.
Now personally, I think Elop would both be a terrible choice and would refuse it anyway. I think he's genuinely committed to Nokia and does indeed stand a chance of turning their smartphone business around. The 520 is eating landfill Android's lunch and it's a gateway drug.
I think he'd be a terrible choice because he's a guy who examines a problem and comes up with a solution - just one solution - which he will pursue no matter what internet fucktards say about it. In many ways that's an admirable trait but Microsoft's portfolio is far too large for it work there.
Now I don't want to sound pedantic, but you waited as long as it took you to press the Enter key and type 'Nope', which didn't really give me the chance to respond. But since you asked, take your pick from any of:
XP -> Vista
Win7 -> Win8
Office with no Ribbon -> Office with Ribbon
etc etc
Yup. It's GOT to be Elop! He's certainly proven there can't be anyone in the world more fiercely loyal to Microsoft, he's acquired first hand experience in presiding over the annihilation of giant multinational tech corporations and he'll be looking for new employment before Ballmer's year is up. There can't be anyone more perfect.
...... so why not have 2 people filling the role, technical and sales. Sure there will be friction but at least there will be someone at the same level who can say 'that's the dumbest idea ever' without fear of being sacked.
MS did better with Gates and Ballmer together, why not return to that mix?
I suppose the decision over who gets the job will be more decided by what role does the CEO actually have in such a large organisation.
Now I don't mean what is the CEO's job description but is the CEO to be the person that runs the company or the person who appears to run the company?
Look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, they are synonymous with their respective companies rise to fame and give the impression that they were involved with every aspect of the product that shot them to fame whereas any body who's worked for a large company (government included) knows that the higher up the food chain you go the less hands on and more broad picture you get.
Ballmer may have signed off on Windows 8 but it was Mark Sinofskwys baby and Gabe Newell didn't personally code the Steam Workshop himself.
Any major changes to a company like Microsoft is going to need the board and the shareholders approval and will need to bring the divisions over to their vision and the CEO post is mainly window dressing. They need to hire a CEO that can convince everybody they can run the company more thna they can run the company.
If they get one of those financial-manipulators, MS will have ceased to be within a decade.
They have a pretty big cash pile, but without compelling product they'll burn it very quickly.
That's been Ballmers problem - he's burnt a few billion in the last few years, and you simply can't keep doing that.
It's worth pointing out that Fred Goodwin did change RBS from a financial backwater into (briefly) the largest bank in the world. There was the disastrous ABN Amro purchase which nearly killed RBS, but it is still far, far larger than it was when he took it over.
Perhaps someone who gives the customer what he/she wants.
Such as different versions of Windows for differing classes of users. Microsoft's been in the Henry Ford business of offering 'any colour you like so long as its black' for too long. Now's the opportunity to escape.
"Obligatory Henry Ford quote: If I gave my customers what they wanted, I'd be making faster horses."
I'd have argues that Microsoft have been trying to sell faster horses to a customer base that wants rocket packs.
It's just that, to make the horses faster, they've cut off the head and stuck an extra pair of legs on that get tangled in the other four. And then telling the public that obviously a rocket pack needs a horse in order to do the job properly anyway...
Maybe this analogy doesn't work after all.
What MS needs in a CEO is someone who will come in, tear down the development silos, make the Office team play nice with the rest of the organisation, kill the practice of trying to compete with everyone who makes software or hardware for their OS, and focus on making their software suitable for purpose. That will include stop trying to force everything to run exactly the same OS, and acknowledge that phones and tablets are different from desktops and laptops, which are different from servers.
I think it needs to be someone fairly young, and who will stick around a long time to force the required philosophical changes through the organisation. That or they need to look at an interim CEO to tear down the silos, and then replace them with someone to build the company back up again.
Unlike many of the Win8 haters here I AM a long term MS customer and
I do NOT want different Windows for different user classes/systems
So we remain with Win8 and the "one to rule them".
Now excuse me, the Admins are playing "drown the Penguin" with the intern and will start turning up the load generator any minute now
The obvious choice is Michael Dell, together with a restructuring of both Dell and Microsoft to form two different companies (one a server-and-services company (DellSoft) and one a consumer company (MicroDell) doing phones and xboxes and...)
Dell runs DellSoft, Elop runs MicroDell and merges it with Nokia to form the industry colossus MicroNok.
There. Sorted.
-- Pete
After all, returning Founder as Temporary CEO worked out very well for Apple.
This is really the only solution . A leader is required. One with vision, that employees, investors and customers would get behind. Nobody of that callibre could stand to have BG driving from the back-seat. So they might as well bring him back to the front. Only one man needs to be convinced and the rest just falls into place. Perhaps Melinda could keep the whole Malaria / AIDS thing going on her own?
One of the perceived problems with Microsoft is its unpleasant HR system which puts bullshit and self promotion at an advantage. I have a two pronged strategy: make Hugh Laurie CEO and get a first class HR person to fix the internal relations.
No one person can really run a big company; why pretend. Put someone as the face of Microsoft who will make it seem rogueish but lovable, and has a track record of supporting privacy - image problem solved.
Microsoft should consider having separate companies that focus on their own strategies. Trying to make everything have one interface (Surface, Windows, Phone and Xbox) has looked forced and unwieldy. The best thing they could do is separate certain arms of the company (Phone, Windows, Xbox) and get the appropriate leader for each.
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