As
Now, while excursions into new markets by necessity always involve the adoption of some new approaches, it’s fascinating to see how Microsoft is attempting to to finesse its leap into the tablet market by leaning on Oracle while sniping at Apple.
One could argue that that’s just Microsoft being Microsoft: not exactly a dazzling innovator but often a solid co-opter of existing ideas and generally pretty solid at execution.
But in this case, I think Microsoft’s made fundamentally bad choices in deciding to joust at Apple—specifically the iPad—with a semi-cooked noodle and mimic Oracle with little more than hope and a press release.
First, let’s look at the Apple connection.
The late NFL quarterback and philosopher Dandy Don Meredith once observed that “if if’s and but’s were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.”
Microsoft apparently never heard that bromide from Meredith because their professed rationale for the incursion into the business market for tablets rests on little more than a pile of if’s and but’s. Consider this comment from the Wall Street Journal:
“Microsoft officials argue that the Surface and other tablets powered by its software are more suited for business tasks, while iPads and other competing products are best at passive activities such as watching movies or surfing the Web.”
Okay, lemme see if I get this: the iPad has more than 95% penetration in the Fortune 500, but Microsoft figures all those businesspeople are using their company-paid iPads for “passive activities such as watching activities or surfing the Web.” Also, news alert for Microsoft: the phrase “surfing the Web” was officially designated as Olde-English-archaic three years ago.
Is the iPad a fantastic device for watching movies? Tens of millions of iPad users would no doubt say it is. But by what contortion of logic—even in the service of trying to undercut a competitor—would anybody believe that the iPad’s ability to deliver a great video experience means that it’s unsuitable for such “active” tasks as presentations, social media, collaboration, real-time decision support, POS transactions, and about 4,000 other things?
Yes, Microsoft has to admit that its new tablet will go head-to-head with the iPad, and yes, Microsoft has to try to come up with some sort of argument about why the Surface will be better. But if the Surface’s competitive standing is only as good as the rationale offered by Microsoft, then the Surface is destined to be a bust of staggering proportions.
And now to the Surface’s connection with Microsoft’s other anti-BFF, Oracle. With the new tablet, Microsoft has decided to make not only the software but also the hardware because CEO Steve Ballmer recognizes that an optimized blend of hardware and software—engineered together from the ground up—can theoretically deliver performance far superior to that generated by hardware/software couplings that are not optimized.
For the past three years, that’s been Oracle’s strategy: creating highly optimized engineered systems that offer superior performance in bandwidth, networking, storage, speed, power usage, space-utilization, and cost-performance. Oracle delivers those optimized packages with its three Exa systems: Exadata, Exalytics, and Exalogic.
In the case of the Microsoft Surface, I emphasize “theoretically” because Microsoft has never sold tablet-level hardware before—this is its maiden voyage. And it’s making that initial journey in direct competition against one of the most spectacularly successful tech products of the last decade, the Apple iPad, whose unit sales will soon top 100 million.
Microsoft has no room for error with its tablet-sized engineered system, even as it attempts to do something unlike anything Microsoft has done in its history. But Ballmer also knows that if he’s going to make even a dent in the tablet business, he’s going to have to do so with a device that’s not essentially the same as everybody else’s: a big software package matched up with many different hardware platforms.
No, Ballmer knew he needed to try something very different from what Microsoft has traditionally done, so he decided to mimic not only Oracle but also Apple in pursuing the engineered-systems approach of hardware and software designed together from the ground up.
I don’t blame Microsoft for jumping into the optimized-systems business—it is, I believe, where huge chunks of the IT industry are headed—but I don’t think that joining a game where you’re immediately down by a score of 100,000,000 to 0 is the right place to do it.
And I think that’s borne out by Microsoft’s lame throwaway line about how the iPad is for passive stuff while the Surface will be, like, totally active.
If the Microsoft Surface is going to have any shot—even with its engineered-system architecture—Microsoft’s going to have to come up with a new value proposition that’s a whole lot better than that.
Because we all know that if's and but's are certainly not candy and nuts.
