Microsoft Spends $9 Billion On Research, Focuses On Cloud 133
superapecommando writes to share that Microsoft appears to be going all-out on research in the coming year, with a great focus on the cloud. They're supposedly planning to spend $9.5 billion in R&D; that's $3 billion more than the next-closest tech company. "'Especially in light of the tough difficult macroeconomic times that we're coming out of, we chose to really lean in and double down on our innovation,' [Microsoft COO Kevin] Turner said. Turner contended that Microsoft has more cloud services than any other company, ranging from its consumer email service to hosted enterprise products such as its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) system to its Azure cloud operating system. 'We're going to change and reinvent our company around leading in the cloud.'"
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...We're not sure our OS and Office monopoly will last forever, so we'd really like to see if we could actually turn a profit on something else."
Trendy and Incompetent (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft has gotten very pathetic. They're investing billions researching a near-meaningless buzzword? Talk about grasping at straws.
Re:Trendy and Incompetent (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of R&D $$$ yield ... nothing (Score:1, Insightful)
In the past ten years MS has probably spent $50B on R&D ... what does it have to show ?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have always said that they knew Windows and Office won't last forever. in the last 10 years they expanded into video games, business software, database servers, general IT servers for IT management, etc.The "cloud" is just a buzzword. few months ago i was reading some article about how someone was deploying servers for some internal project. and the article said they were building out a private cloud.
most of the cloud nonsense is for small businesses. i've helped a few build infrastructure and it's a waste of money buying servers, Windows Server licenses, etc. easier and cheaper to outsource it to Azure, Google or someone else.
for larger businesses hardware is so cheap that it doesn't make sense. We're about to buy a few $15,000 servers when the new Intel CPU's come out. 2 6 core CPU's, 72GB of RAM, 500GB to 1TB of hard drive space, all kinds of monitoring capability, etc for $15,000 each.
i was talking to an IT sales person the other day and he didn't even try to sell an hardware to us. he kept on pushing services. servers are a commodity made in China by little kids. just like ipods. I guess services is the next frontier to try to squeeze some profits
Interesting turnaround (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open--that is to say, nonproprietary--standards, none of which were set by Microsoft.
Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.
I remember reading Gates' book "The Road Ahead" something like seven years ago and being surprised at how wrong he was in his estimation of the impact that mainstream Internet connectivity would have. I wish I could get the exact quotes, but there were a few telling sentences where he comes off pretty clearly as dismissive that net connectivity would become anything more than a cute PC accessory. I'm still not sure if that was his genuine line of reasoning, or of it was just wishful thinking, but I think the point was clear that Microsoft was stacking their chips against net-based services, insisting that locally-run software was going to be the way of the future.
Now they are investing in what Google has already been doing and doing well for years, following their trend of copying other business' models instead of innovating on their own. I'm sure this will work out well for them.
Over 9 billion dollars (Score:2, Insightful)
They spend over 9 billion dollars on research, and we still need to buy add-on products to protect us from virus attacks.
What are they getting for their money (Score:3, Insightful)
AT&T used to have an enormous R&D program. It invented transistors, UNIX, C, information theory, ... And they even won a couple of Nobel prizes. IBM wasn't AT&T, but they still made enormous contributions like RISC and relational databases. Micro$oft has done nothing.
How many legs does a dog have, if... (Score:1, Insightful)
True, but MBAs and the [microcephalics] in general are famous for believing their own BS.
Calling marketing as 'research' doesn't make it research, no matter how true believers the MBAs get.
$9 Billion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft gave $9 Billion to its R&D department?
Geez; how'd Steve Jobs convince them to donate that much?
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trendy and Incompetent (Score:2, Insightful)
You are a retard.
Which is more credible:
a) Microsoft pays very intelligent, very educated people ridiculous sums of money to make sound business plans and they realize cloud computing is going to be a major factor in the coming years.
b) Some dipshit on SlashDot is smarter than all these people and "knows" that cloud computing is just a "near-meaningless buzzword".
Jesus Christ. I can just see that ridiculous sneer on your fact over that unkempt, patchy bear that covers half your fat neck.
Re:In other words... (Score:1, Insightful)
People that believe that probably also believe in perpetual, unbounded growth (population, profit, etc.) within a closed system (the Earth). It is not possible.
Businesses that will succeed in the future will do so without requiring unsustainable, endless growth. I don't know how to do that, but the first guy to figure it out is going to be really, really rich.