Alec Saunders has written a really tasty post about how to work best with and against Microsoft. His post entitled "Akido, Retreat or War. What's Your Microsoft strategy" is a must read and dead on the mark.
It's causing quite a bit of commentary too. Skype Journal's Jim Courtney and Ken Camp at Digital Common Sense have both jumped in with very cogent and almost parallel thoughts.
Here's my take....Microsoft cares about the Voice in the Enterprise and less about Consumer Voice because that's where the money is. They have already figured out from other consumer spaces means make as much as you can, for as long as you can, but work harder to win the business market because that's who can always pay the bills. Consumers don't have to upgrade. Businesses have to in order to stay ahead. Microsoft business customers eventually have to feed on the need to have the current software to run on better hardware to stay competitive. Consumers don't have to upgrade as fast and as the Web 2.0 apps that are beginning to emerge means Microsoft will be content to give away that market to avoid any more anti-trust cases. So much of Microsoft's current strategy is based on having been down the road in court, just like IBM went through with their long running Anti-Trust case. It meant something had to change, and over time, like IBM, Microsoft will turn away from consumers, selling off or spinning off their hot properties like XBox to make more money for their shareholders after they have figured out that the returns won't be there forever while putting their efforts where the next wave of triple digit growth can come from.
Now with all this as premise my feelings are that if Microsoft wants to be the arms merchant for Voice they can be, but really it will be as part of, not the entire end all, for voice because they are not at the core of any of the major telco networks a point that Jim Courtney's post brings out very well.
Microsoft game will be to be at the edge, or as close to near to the edge as possible, with their software serving as the edge control elements that manages, directs and handles calls. With the price of minutes dropping to zero, they will make more money selling guns and butter around voice, than they will selling voice itself, something Yahoo and AOL are both concluding. But the Microsoft game will not be to control voice. Instead to control and command the edge to core communications management, just like they do with their OS being at the edge, to make it easier to get to the core. Sure there will be parts of Microsoft in the core, that make it easy to get data to the edge, but that type of interoperability with softswitches, application servers, and the apps that ride on them will be necessary for everyone who wants to play. It's just that Microsoft's play is already in motion, while everyone else is trying to get going or trying for a different way.
So that's where Alec's post comes in.
To play with Microsoft means you have to see the seams and the stitching. You have to figure out where Microsoft wants to be, then produce technology that gets them to where they want to be faster so they buy you. Microsoft is just like Cisco these days, there's no investing in companies when you're Microsoft. You just go out and buy them, integrate what there is to offer with what is already on built and roll out something that works for everyone better than what was there before by being content to come in as the number two player in the space, but then over time gain the users. They have done this before with other acquisitions and will keep doing it again and again.
Ken Camp rightfully points out that others play this way too, or could (Nokia and RIM) and says that Microsoft has brought their "A Game" to voice. They have, but it's still not the prime time event it will be. For that to happen Microsoft will have to bring more 2.0 ideas to market, but like IBM used to do, they will bide their time to do that. One thing that Microsoft does very well is understand market timing. So while others race to the finish line, sometimes out of gas, Microsoft is still hovering, ready to land when the market is ready.
So just as Alec's post is so very well timed, Microsoft will make their moves when the time is right.
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