controlopk.blogg.se - Slack technologies saas

This wasn’t a complete panacea - updating software was still a significant undertaking - but at least the incentive to avoid upgrades was removed. What Microsoft figured out is that it made far more sense for both Microsoft and their customers to pay on a subscription basis: companies would pay a set price on a monthly or annual basis, and receive access to the latest-and-greatest software.

Or not wasn’t great for anyone: companies would be running on out-of-date software, and vendors would not make new revenue.

Previously, enterprise software was sold on a license basis: companies bought software on a per-seat basis (or per-server or per-core basis in the case of back-end software), and when new versions of the software came out, they would potentially update - or not. Microsoft, to Ballmer’s credit, was actually very early to the new business model aspect of SaaS. There are three parts of any new paradigm in technology: doing current use cases better, coming up with a new business model, and creating entirely new use cases. The most important factor that made all of this possible, though, is that for all of the disruption that the enterprise market has faced thanks to the rise of Software-as-a-Service (Saas), Microsoft was remarkably well-placed to take advantage of this new paradigm, if only they could get out of their own way.Īt least in part.

Third, and most importantly, Satya Nadella brilliantly navigated The End of Windows internally, freeing Microsoft employees to build products that customers actually wanted, not that Microsoft needed.

Second, Microsoft embraced a world where Windows was one client amongst many, and targeted its services to iPhone, Android, Linux, and Mac.

First, Microsoft’s leadership accepted that its nature was that of a horizontal company, not a highly differentiated vertical one built around Windows.

The critical breakthrough was three-fold, and, as is so often the case, the three breakthroughs were really about the same existential question - whither Windows: It is a remarkable turnaround, and, thanks to the fact that I started Stratechery just months before the exit of former CEO Steve Ballmer, it is one that I have been able to document stage-by-stage.

company, after Apple and Amazon, to achieve a market capitalization of over $1 trillion, and is currently the most valuable publicly-listed company in the world. It is difficult to discuss enterprise software without at least mentioning Microsoft, and there is no better time than now: last week the company (briefly) became the third U.S.