Microsoft and Its Big Quarter in 2011
February 14, 2011
Beta News published an interesting story, “Three Important Takeaways from Microsoft’s $19.95B Record Quarter.” The point of the story is that 2Q 2011 results were about $20 billion in revenue and $6.64 billion in net income. Beta News noted that the big revenue flow from Windows 7 is over. Microsoft’s margins from its entertainment and devices unit were not so good. The word Beta News used was “awful.” Third, Microsoft’s business division revenues were up. The boost is good news for Microsoft and may suggest that Google will have to do a better job in the enterprise.
We wanted to point out that Microsoft’s quarterly reporting of earnings for its online operations, which incidentally equates to the fourth consecutive loss of $543 billion dollars, was the announcement of the newest Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online Services. Coincidence? According to ZDNet’s blog the retirement of the existing VP Dave Thompson has been known since last year.
The lucky successor to Thompson is Lee Nackman, current Corporate Vice President of Directory, Access, and Information Protection and no stranger to Microsoft’s Online Services division. That’s good news since Nackman will have his work cut out for him in implementing changes that can nudge the current figures out of the red. At least Microsoft seems to have a direction. ZDNet’s post said:
“Microsoft is creating a common platform across its individual and packaged Online services. The goal is to make Office 365 and its component parts — Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, CRM Online — as well as new Microsoft Online services like the Windows Intune PC management service which will be released in 2011, based on a common billing, provisioning and commerce platform. A common dashboard will allow users to manage any/all of the Microsoft Online services, according to the company’s Office 365 roadmap.”
Now there is more executive shuffling with the Bing top dog moving to the server unit. Will Microsoft stabilize its management team and make progress across its business units? If not, stakeholders may push to break up Microsoft. Is the company too big in its present form? We think it is.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2011
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