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Should Microsoft Sell Windows and Office? This Former Exec Believes So

posted by janrinok on Thursday January 13, @07:12AM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

Should Microsoft sell Windows and Office? This former exec believes so:

A former Microsoft executive has offered up some advice for current CEO Satya Nadella: spin off Windows and Office and focus on Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing crown jewel.

Ben Slivka, a 14-year veteran at Microsoft who left in 1999, gave the unsolicited advice to Nadella in an interview with CNBC, saying: "The right thing probably is to bet the future on the cloud."

[...] On top of this, Nadella invested heavily in building out Azure and other enterprise-focused offerings to compete with Amazon's AWS and Google Cloud. By some estimates, Azure hold 20% of the cloud market, below AWS' 32% and above Google's 9%.

According to analysts that CNBC spoke to, spinning off Windows and Office would make very little sense. Nadella has built significant and much-needed synergies between Microsoft's various businesses, in such a way that the rise of one boosts the others.

So what do you think?

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  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday January 13, @01:52PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Thursday January 13, @01:52PM (#1212402)

    Anonymised seller: Psst! Wanna buy a market-leading operating system? Comes with matching office suite supporting industry standard ('cos we bought the standards body)? Past it's peak now, 'cos it missed the mobile bus, and the only way is down, but there's a huge locked-in customer base who you can keep milking for the next decade with minimal support, while you migrate them them your new, more profitable cloud platforms. Plus, if y...

    Microsoft: Shut up and take our money!!! Except... didn't we already buy Minecraft*?

    Oracle: Hold our beer...

    (* Windows-on-Redstone coming... very slowly... :-) )

    Starting Score:    1  point
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