Satya Nadella is not having a good tenure at Microsoft thus far. I will be fair in saying not everything is his fault and not everything is his doing. He became the CEO of a time period of uncertainty in the Microsoft ecosystem. As well, I am not here to talk about what I think Satya does well (the cloud.)
Before I get to the phone mobile disaster I want to start with the first thing that the newly knighted CEO had to deal with upon starting his tenure.
The first situation that entered into his tenure was the apocalyptic failure of the XBOX ONE release. To be fair, Satya is not directly responsible for it's creation but the handling of it I will certainly put on him.
Let's call the XBOX ONE fiasco RESOLUTION GATE. Who sitting in a room, with not just 1080p TV's in most American households but 4k TV's coming strong on the horizon thought it a good idea to release hardware that can't handle 1080p resolution games. Lets be clear the answer in the war room should have been this and only this. Mark down the damn price... Not by $50 but probably $150 - to - $200.
But here is the part where Satya has failed miserably - APPS APPS APPS APPS APPS. What in gods name does Microsoft not understand about applications? First off, before I get to why the price of the XBOX needed to come down dramatically I want to implore why Microsoft has just failed and failed at producing an environment to just blucking create apps. And this has been the consument issue of why Windows Mobile is failing.
The app situation has always been this way. Desktop programs ARE DEAD. They have no purpose or meaning in most situations. For business and Photoshop fine. But not mobile and not XBOX. For these 2 platforms things need to just work.
The 3 absolute key things for a thriving app development environment is this. 1st a large, growing and healthy user base. 2nd, and ultra easy path for developers to create and submit applications for use. And 3rd an OS for the platform that is rock solid and growing with features and updates. For the first point of a large user base Xbox is not in dire straights but in the 2nd issue of easy path to create apps... it's a failure. Where is HBO NOW? Where Facebook and Twitter for the XBOX? Why are companies not making applications for the XBOX platform? To the third issue of rock solid platform? Well, I don't know if XBOX has any OS issues per se... but the difficulty of the XBOX app situation has to be rooted somewhere? Reports came through when the two platforms of XBOX and PlayStation got release PlayStation had actually done the better job of creating a dev environment that was easy to use and thus create apps.
But Microsoft should be killing it in the console applications department. The have the Universal app story. But it doesn't work the same. The NBC application on XBOX is awesome but it isn't on Windows 10 or Windows 10 mobile. What in tarnation. How does that happen? Then you have a CBS application for Windows 10 and Windows 10 mobile but not for XBOX. It's just ridiculous. The story and or the execution of the universal apps thing just isn't real yet. And why isn't it? It is as if Microsoft is promoting a pipe dream rather than an actual viable development environment.
In terms of Windows phone the user base is dismal. Satya this is solely on you and I will get to it in a moment. Second, the development path is probably not bad here but the user base is so crappy nobody wants to develop applications for the platform.
Rock solid OS? HELL NO. And this is why Satya needs to go. The current and foreseeable state of the Windows Mobile platform is so egregiously bad heads need to role. Someone wrote somewhere that Microsoft has to have mobile or Microsoft won't exist. So how on earth could Satya let things get so bad? Well, even though Steve bought Nokia to the argument of the board - Satya went deep into firing damn near the entire Nokia mobile team. What was result?
A catastrophe of a mobile operating system in Windows 10 mobile. What planet of time frame does Microsoft need to develop software? It is called Microsoft for goodness sake. You could have invented an operating system from scratch in the time it is taking Microsoft to update one and stabilize it.
For this Satya Nadella needs to resign. He is not a visionary at all. And this is what Microsoft needs to do in order to right the ship. And it starts with Azure. Azure is the one weapon that Microsoft has to right this insane ship of destructive blindness to nowhere... The only thing about Azure is that it needs to do more for open source and the ability to create applications in an open source field of technology.
See the kids these days are using node and no-sql on linux boxes rather than sql on windows server boxes. Microsoft needs to double down on starter development for these types of applications and the things that could be helpful towards application development. But see here is the thing - Microsoft has to be able to show the backend technologies it employs can hook into the things that people are using for all types of applications on all platforms. What I am trying to say is... If i use a database I want to be to be able to use that database for all of my platforms... IOS swift/objective C -- Android JAVA -- Windows Mobile C#/VS/+ more. The problem is each one of those software languages works better with a certain DB. Java = oracle - IOS = something and Windows = SQL. Yes you can use SQL with JAVA and probably IOS too but it is one of those things that always involves hurdles. You should see what it takes to use mySQL with a node application.
If Azure could provide innovative ways to share DB's and use DB's across multiple platforms I believe this would greatly help in cross platform development. Don't get me wrong this happens already to a certain extent. Where Azure and Microsoft could do is further develop API hooks so that using DB's can go into various languages and thus platforms easier and easier. This is somewhere Microsoft can innovate and should innovate.
The battle Microsoft should fight is on the pricing situations for hardware. If you have a winner you charge for it... If you're fighting for market-share... suck it up and lower the price until Windows Mobile has a user base.
Next, Microsoft should take an all out war approach to the next version of XBOX and this should be underway like YESTERDAY. Not in a year or two from now but YESTERDAY.
The next version of XBOX should be modular in design. If I want to buy a $1000 graphics card the thing should take my money and allow me to do that. If i want to add more memory or a faster processor I should be able to do this. The next console from Microsoft should be it's last but it should be dynamic and modular.
RIP the microphone out of Kinect. It is TOO FAR AWAY surrounded by sound from the TV. This is why this thing is so bad at voice recognition. Why is this difficult to understand? Kinect should be the "ECHO / ALEXIS" killer but it can't be because its execution is so HORRIBLE.
Kinect could be controlling your whole house but I don't know if Microsoft has the vision to see this through.
I don't think Satya is the person for the job. I just don't get his vision and I surely haven't seen anything through his short tenure to tell me otherwise. Unfortunately he is not the man for the job.
What do you guys think?
Before I get to the phone mobile disaster I want to start with the first thing that the newly knighted CEO had to deal with upon starting his tenure.
The first situation that entered into his tenure was the apocalyptic failure of the XBOX ONE release. To be fair, Satya is not directly responsible for it's creation but the handling of it I will certainly put on him.
Let's call the XBOX ONE fiasco RESOLUTION GATE. Who sitting in a room, with not just 1080p TV's in most American households but 4k TV's coming strong on the horizon thought it a good idea to release hardware that can't handle 1080p resolution games. Lets be clear the answer in the war room should have been this and only this. Mark down the damn price... Not by $50 but probably $150 - to - $200.
But here is the part where Satya has failed miserably - APPS APPS APPS APPS APPS. What in gods name does Microsoft not understand about applications? First off, before I get to why the price of the XBOX needed to come down dramatically I want to implore why Microsoft has just failed and failed at producing an environment to just blucking create apps. And this has been the consument issue of why Windows Mobile is failing.
The app situation has always been this way. Desktop programs ARE DEAD. They have no purpose or meaning in most situations. For business and Photoshop fine. But not mobile and not XBOX. For these 2 platforms things need to just work.
The 3 absolute key things for a thriving app development environment is this. 1st a large, growing and healthy user base. 2nd, and ultra easy path for developers to create and submit applications for use. And 3rd an OS for the platform that is rock solid and growing with features and updates. For the first point of a large user base Xbox is not in dire straights but in the 2nd issue of easy path to create apps... it's a failure. Where is HBO NOW? Where Facebook and Twitter for the XBOX? Why are companies not making applications for the XBOX platform? To the third issue of rock solid platform? Well, I don't know if XBOX has any OS issues per se... but the difficulty of the XBOX app situation has to be rooted somewhere? Reports came through when the two platforms of XBOX and PlayStation got release PlayStation had actually done the better job of creating a dev environment that was easy to use and thus create apps.
But Microsoft should be killing it in the console applications department. The have the Universal app story. But it doesn't work the same. The NBC application on XBOX is awesome but it isn't on Windows 10 or Windows 10 mobile. What in tarnation. How does that happen? Then you have a CBS application for Windows 10 and Windows 10 mobile but not for XBOX. It's just ridiculous. The story and or the execution of the universal apps thing just isn't real yet. And why isn't it? It is as if Microsoft is promoting a pipe dream rather than an actual viable development environment.
In terms of Windows phone the user base is dismal. Satya this is solely on you and I will get to it in a moment. Second, the development path is probably not bad here but the user base is so crappy nobody wants to develop applications for the platform.
Rock solid OS? HELL NO. And this is why Satya needs to go. The current and foreseeable state of the Windows Mobile platform is so egregiously bad heads need to role. Someone wrote somewhere that Microsoft has to have mobile or Microsoft won't exist. So how on earth could Satya let things get so bad? Well, even though Steve bought Nokia to the argument of the board - Satya went deep into firing damn near the entire Nokia mobile team. What was result?
A catastrophe of a mobile operating system in Windows 10 mobile. What planet of time frame does Microsoft need to develop software? It is called Microsoft for goodness sake. You could have invented an operating system from scratch in the time it is taking Microsoft to update one and stabilize it.
For this Satya Nadella needs to resign. He is not a visionary at all. And this is what Microsoft needs to do in order to right the ship. And it starts with Azure. Azure is the one weapon that Microsoft has to right this insane ship of destructive blindness to nowhere... The only thing about Azure is that it needs to do more for open source and the ability to create applications in an open source field of technology.
See the kids these days are using node and no-sql on linux boxes rather than sql on windows server boxes. Microsoft needs to double down on starter development for these types of applications and the things that could be helpful towards application development. But see here is the thing - Microsoft has to be able to show the backend technologies it employs can hook into the things that people are using for all types of applications on all platforms. What I am trying to say is... If i use a database I want to be to be able to use that database for all of my platforms... IOS swift/objective C -- Android JAVA -- Windows Mobile C#/VS/+ more. The problem is each one of those software languages works better with a certain DB. Java = oracle - IOS = something and Windows = SQL. Yes you can use SQL with JAVA and probably IOS too but it is one of those things that always involves hurdles. You should see what it takes to use mySQL with a node application.
If Azure could provide innovative ways to share DB's and use DB's across multiple platforms I believe this would greatly help in cross platform development. Don't get me wrong this happens already to a certain extent. Where Azure and Microsoft could do is further develop API hooks so that using DB's can go into various languages and thus platforms easier and easier. This is somewhere Microsoft can innovate and should innovate.
The battle Microsoft should fight is on the pricing situations for hardware. If you have a winner you charge for it... If you're fighting for market-share... suck it up and lower the price until Windows Mobile has a user base.
Next, Microsoft should take an all out war approach to the next version of XBOX and this should be underway like YESTERDAY. Not in a year or two from now but YESTERDAY.
The next version of XBOX should be modular in design. If I want to buy a $1000 graphics card the thing should take my money and allow me to do that. If i want to add more memory or a faster processor I should be able to do this. The next console from Microsoft should be it's last but it should be dynamic and modular.
RIP the microphone out of Kinect. It is TOO FAR AWAY surrounded by sound from the TV. This is why this thing is so bad at voice recognition. Why is this difficult to understand? Kinect should be the "ECHO / ALEXIS" killer but it can't be because its execution is so HORRIBLE.
Kinect could be controlling your whole house but I don't know if Microsoft has the vision to see this through.
I don't think Satya is the person for the job. I just don't get his vision and I surely haven't seen anything through his short tenure to tell me otherwise. Unfortunately he is not the man for the job.
What do you guys think?
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