It’s no secret that such changes are coming – in January, Ballmer as part of the spin around the ouster of former server division president Bob Muglia, said the firm needed new leadership that could focus on areas such as Cloud. What is new, if these stories in places like Bloomberg are accurate, is the specifics of the new blood the feisty CEO feels he needs.
And the answer is (drumroll): more product managers with proven engineering skills and experience in executing product plans, not so many jobsworths, basically. One analyst quoted in the reports says that the ascension of the engineers is because "Steve is realising that there is a need to execute on a vision and in order to do that you have to actually understand how software is built… It’s a whole other thing to be able to say, ‘I’ve been at Microsoft, I understand software, and what you are saying will or will not work.’"
You might think that was a bit of a given in a software monster like MSFT. But the reality is that Ballmer, since Gates’ departure, really, has hemmed and hawed on whether or not he needs geeks or marketers to help him close the gap Wall St thinks is appearing between Google and Apple and his outfit.
These things matter when you run a big public company: Microsoft’s stock price is only up 2% over the past year versus 16% at Google and a startling 83% with once crushed and irrelevant rival Apple, while at least four heavy hitters have left the firm in under eight months, after all.
Financial data released last September by the firm also noted that the board has "voice concerns" about all this – so Ballmer has to react.
It’s also a tacit admission that his decision when former chief software architect Ray Ozzie left in October Ballmer not to replace a central tech role as he had enough strength in depth in his divisions was wrong, as he’s found he hasn’t.
What will the new guys (presumably internal promotions?) be tasked with? For all its frenetic activity in the respective areas, no one really wants to buys the firm’s mobile phones, like the failed Kin, MP3 players or tablets.
It’s also put effort into cloud and Azure, hence the whole ‘software plus services’ stuff we’ve seen in the last two years, but patently Ballmer doesn’t feel he’s got enough bang out of all the bucks he spent building things like his Dublin data centre and what have you yet. This is particularly true, we suspect, on the enterprise, as opposed to consumer, data front.
Nothing’s disastrously wrong yet in Redmond but Ballmer has to sort this out and be seen to be doing so decisively. His firm’s perhaps become a little complacent and just hasn’t responded, really since Xbox, to Apple’s innovation in the consumer market, increasingly driving the agenda of the corporate market.
Time to try – again – to fix that.
