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Category: Financial Analyst Meeting
August 3rd, 2009
What's Microsoft's next billion-dollar business? (Hint: it's not search)
While many company watchers continue to fret over what Microsoft will and won’t do to make money in the search/online advertising space, there are other less sexy Microsoft business units plodding successfully along with relatively little public notice.
Until fairly recently, SharePoint was one of those businesses. But now that Microsoft’s SharePoint sales have passed the $1 billion barrier (they were $1.3 billion for fiscal 2009, which ended for Microsoft on June 30), what’s Microsoft’s next big thing? What products is the company betting on to become the next big, near-term hits?
At Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) last week, company officials shared a few tidbits about one of those businesses: Microsoft System Center. System Center encompasses a variety of system-management tools that Microsoft sells to IT professionals who want to manage their Windows — and Linux/Unix — clients, servers, hypervisors and more.
CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street analysts that System Center already has passed the billion-dollar mark. It’s growing at a rate of 30 percent year-over-year, according to Microsoft officials.
System Center is one of a handful of server-side product families that Microsoft is planning to push more in its coming fiscal year. (The others: Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, the forthcoming Forefront Protection Suite, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server 2010 — about which Microsoft has said very little to date.)
Microsoft officials mentioned in passing last week that System Center Online Desktop Manager (SCODM) is likely to be a big revenue generator for the company in the near-term. The Online Desktop Manager is one of Microsoft’s own hosted “Online” services that it is touting as a way for cash-strapped customers to save money. Microsoft’s pitch: By having Microsoft manage your users’ desktops and provide the anti-malware, desktop configuration, remote assistance and IT asset-management for them, IT pros won’t have to shell out for on-premise products and people to provide these services.
Microsoft SCODM, which is built on top of Silverlight, is in private testing with select customers now and is expected to be released in final form in 2010.
Beyond 2010 — but before search and online advertising move in any noticeable and serious way from being in the red, to in the black — what else is Ballmer betting on?
August 3rd, 2009
Windows 7 ultrathins still not hitting the true netbook sweet spot
At last week’s Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer was touting “ultrathins” — a new smaller than a laptop/pricier than a netbook — category of PCs that will debut with Windows 7 as Microsoft’s answer to netbooks. Intel, the champion of the ultrathin concept, was talking them up, too, last week.
At last week’s Intel Technology Summit in San Francisco, according to News.com, Intel execs shared more on the one-inch-thick, “sub-$1,000″ ultrathin models coming out this fall. Intel officials said many of these machines will use its “Pine Trail” Atom design, which “will collapse the core chips onto one piece of silicon, improving the power efficiency and boosting performance,” News.com reported. They’ll also use Intel’s laminar air flow technology to cool the machines’outer skin.
Update: Pine Trail isn’t going to be in the ultrathins. My mistaken interpretation there. An Intel spokesperson sent the following correction: “Only netbooks are Atom-based, not ultra thin laptops. Our ultra thin laptops have processors including Core and Pentium.”
Both Ballmer and Intel execs seem to be missing one of the main selling points of netbooks — at least in my book. As much as lower price, I want portability. A thin 12- or 13-inch-screen PC is not what I want. It’s too big to grab and go.
My current laptop has a 12-inch screen and weighs about 3 pounds. It is a good machine for everyday computing. I can’t easily zip it into a protective cover and slip it into my purse or back pack — like I can with, say, a Kindle 2 (but not the DX).
I’m OK with a 9- or 10-inch screen on a machine that is primarily for Web surfing, checking e-mail and dashing off a quick blog post or three. I’m willing to put up with a cramped QWERTY keyboard and a less powerful machine as a trade-off for something that is truly portable.
Microsoft and Intel are pushing ultrathins as a way for the Windows ecosystem participants to make more money than they do on netbooks…. oh, yeah, and to provide users with a better computing experience. But, to me, they’re doing so by sacrificing one of netbooks’ biggest selling points: The small form factor.
I am still interested in seeing and holding an ultrathin before ruling them out. But for now, I still want a Windows 7 netbook, not an ultrathin. You?
July 30th, 2009
Yahoo costs: The slide Microsoft didn't want you to see
Don’t you hate when a rogue PowerPoint slide slips into your deck? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shares your pain, after a slide including information not meant for public disclosure slipped into a deck he was slated to present to Wall Street analysts attending Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 30.
Ballmer never ended up showing the slide, entitled “Yahoo Deal Overview,” during his FAM kick-off presentation. But Seattle Times reporter Brier Dudley grabbed it,
The slide notes that Microsoft is expecting to lose $300 million in the first two years of the deal, then start earning a “decent return,” explained as “$400 million steady-state.”
There is a bunch of detailed information on the slide about specific costs Microsoft is expecting to incur which is marked as “context — not for disclosure.” Next to that column is the abbreviated, cleaned-up (and far less-specific) information that Microsoft is acknowledging publicly.
The items spelled out as “transition costs” include
* Retention costs (pre- and post-close): $90 million
* R&D paid search: $170 million
* GFS (Global Foundation Services)/COGs (Cost of Goods Sold): $145 million
* Sign-on: $150 million
* Algo(rithm) R&D: $70 million
* Advertiser migration: $50 million
Ballmer and Online Services President Qi Lu both emphasized during their talks today that the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership was a win-win for Microsoft and Yahoo. Ballmer spent much of his hour-and-a-half talk going over the Yahoo deal, claiming that “nobody gets it.”
Microsoft execs have been intentionally vague about exactly how much the Yahoo deal would cost Microsoft in the short and longer term. But during his remarks at FAM, Ballmer told attendees that Microsoft didn’t expect to make a lot of money from the deal in the short term and that they should expect Microsoft to absorb “a few hundred million” in transition costs.” Ballmer said Yahoo got a great deal and is claiming that the deal will result in 70 percent profit expansion for Microsoft’s new partner — in spite of the fact that the market has been less-than-enthusiastic.
July 30th, 2009
The Windows Mobile-Windows continuum: The plot thickens
One of the most interesting question-and-answer exchanges between Wall Street analysts attending Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) and company execs has been around the convergence/divergence between mobile devices and PCs.
Wall Street analysts attending the July 30 confab had a number of questions about how Microsoft intends to address the new CPU and GPU architectures that are emerging in all kinds of mobile devices, ranging from phones to netbooks.
Up until now, Microsoft has maintained a clear division. Mobile phones run Windows CE/Windows Compact at the base level (with the Windows Mobile environment layered on top). PCs run Windows.
But the Windows and CE lines have been starting to blur — and the effects are being felt not just by Microsoft, but by its competitors, as well. (Gizmodo reported recently that there has been talk that Google’s Chrome OS may end up on mobile phones and not just netbooks. And Google’s Android is being ported to both phones and PCs, as well.)
As one Wall Street analyst attending Microsoft’s FAM noted, Intel is working on new lower-power x86 processors that could find their way into phones and other consumer-electronics devices.
Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie had a ready response. He noted that Microsoft has been supporting for years a variety of processors with Windows CE and Windows Mobile, “so the technical transfer is not a big leap for us.”
“For us, the X86 environment is one that we know well and have an easy time supporting. Clearly, adapting that to the environment that we have in the embedded and the phone business would take some work. But it is not a monumental amount of work as it would be if it was an architecture that the company didn’t already have a heavy investment on. So I think our view and (Entertainment and Devices President) Robbie and the business team will have to make the call as to how we see that evolving.”
Bach, for his part, hedged a bit more.
“If they (new x86 processors) go into phones, there is probably work for us to do. but we have a pretty good handle on the X86 environment and we can make a business decision based on volume and our operator customers are looking for.”
Interestingly, no one asked Microsoft during the FAM Q&A about how, when and whether it might make a version of Windows available on ARM processors. Microsoft has said that Windows 7 has not (yet) been ported to ARM processors, which some company watchers have viewed as leaving the door wide open for Linux on ARM netbooks. Windows Compact, however, does work on ARM processors.
In response to another analyst question about Microsoft’s mobile-OS plans, Bach did note that the Windows and Windows Mobile team are working more closely together.
“Today we actually already share components between what we do in the Windows space and the Windows Mobile space. You are going to see more of that share continue over time and you will see us accelerate it and do more,” Bach told analysts. “Understand historically that was tough because the underlying architectures were actually quite different. But to Craig (Mundie)’s point about GPUs and CPUs and the underlying chip architecture, as those get more similar, it absolutely makes it easier to share more. You will see that whether it is work in the browser, on development tools, a number of other places where we will be able to do more of that sharing. That’s baked into our plan.”
Reading between the Q&A lines, do you foresee Microsoft releasing Windows (and not just new versions of CE/Windows Mobile) for future smart phones?
More from the analyst meeting:
- Ballmer: Ultra-thin PCs will be the answer to netbooks
- Microsoft’s Project Natal for business: In your dreams
- How will Microsoft fix Windows Mobile? The Softies still aren’t saying
- Larry Dignan: Ballmer: He knows when you’re using a Mac
- Ballmer on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal: ‘Nobody gets it’
- Slide of the day: Laptop Hunter ads working?
- Yahoo costs: The slide Microsoft didn’t want you to see
July 30th, 2009
How will Microsoft fix Windows Mobile? The Softies still aren't saying
Microsoft execs speaking to Wall Street analysts at the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) have been up front about the fact that Windows Mobile is a problem child for Microsoft. Unit volumes are slighly up but Microsoft’s share of the mobile-phone operating system market is down.
I thought officials might drop a hint or two about Windows Mobile 7, the company’s next big release of its mobile operating system, to show that innovation really is possible in the WinMo business. Or maybe offer up a quick demo of the Microsoft “Pink” phone.
(Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made sure to repeat that Microsoft won’t be developing its own phone; it’ll be providing the software and services, he said. But he didn’t go so far as to say there won’t be a Microsoft-branded phone, built by a third-party phone maker, which is what the “Pink” phone supposedly is.)
At the July 30 FAM event, Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach didn’t provide any new answers to the many questions company watchers have about Microsoft’s mobile fix-it plans.
Bach mentioned Windows Mobile 6.5, which will be showing up on the first phones this October. But beyond that, he remained vague about how Microsoft is going to fix its Windows Mobile business, beyond committing to what company officials have promised already.
“The fundamentals of our strategy are based on the idea of choice and selection. It is our view that one model, one type of phone is not going to build volume into that critical mass that we think we need to make the business successful,” Bach told FAM attendees. “We have people who are going to want Qwerty keyboard, touch keyboard, big screen, people who want small screens. People who will make trade offs on battery life to do media. So it is our view we need to work closely with Samsung, LG, HP, HTC, Sony Ericcson and others to build a broad selection of phones with different price points and different functionality.”
Bach threw in the gratuitous reference to the iPhone, but, again, no mention of Windows Mobile 7 — the first real competitor Microsoft is expected to have to Apple, in terms of multi-touch support.
“You will have a very rich browsing experience on 6.5 devices that will give you access to more Web sites than you will be able to get to on an iPhone that will work actively and work well,” he said. “It really is a much better experience.”
Bach reiterated that Microsoft will be moving to the already-announced “Windows Phone” branding with its advertising and marketing, starting this fall.
Last I heard, Microsoft is quite far along with Windows Mobile 7 and will be providing its phone partners with code this fall. The first WinMo 7 phones could show up by spring 2010, unless the Softies’ schedule slips.
July 30th, 2009
Ballmer: Ultra-thin PCs will be the answer to netbooks
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is feeling misunderstood.
Ballmer spent the bulk of his July 30 kick-off presentation at the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) trying to explain to Wall Street analysts there why the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership announced yesterday is a win-win for the two companies. (And shouldn’t have resulted in Yahoo’s stock tanking, as it did, because many believed Yahoo sold off its biggest asset, its search business.)
But Ballmer also talked up another area where he hoped to sway analysts to take his point of view: Netbooks.
“I think many of you (Wall Street analysts) think we have problems we don’t have in the Windows business,” Ballmer said. “And I think we’ve got — built some great strengths and, yet, I want people to understand kind of how revenue and kind of success in the marketplace, what does it look like if we’re strong in the marketplace, what does revenue look like.”
Ballmer, unlike some Microsoft execs, wasn’t afraid to say the word “netbook.” In fact, he told FAM attendees that netbooks are synonymous with MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices).
Ballmer disputed the notion that netbooks are killing Microsoft’s Windows client revenue base. He showed a slide he admitted the rest of his team had warned him was overly complex (and I have to say I agree) to try to show why netbooks aren’t going to keep chipping away at Windows’ margins.
Here’s a less-confusing Ballmer slide:
(To see a larger version, click on the graphic.)
And here’s the one that’s left more than a few scratching their heads:
Ballmer told analysts there would be a new class of “ultra-thin” PCs” — or high-end netbooks –coming this year that would combine the light weight of netbooks with high-power and high-performance of traditional PCs.
“When I talk to many of our customers, they say ‘I love the Netbook but can I get one with a bigger screen?’” Ballmer said.
Those new ultra-thin PCs, the first of which will be coming later this year and, presumably running Windows 7, won’t be as cheap as $299 or $399 netbooks, Ballmer admitted, but they will combine netbooks’ portability, with some unnamed but higher-sounding prices that will make shareholders, analysts and Microsoft happy. (We’ll see how happy they make customers who are spoiled by current netbook prices.)
“Our license tells you what a Netbook is. Our license says it has to have a super small screen, which means it probably has a super small keyboard and it has to have a certain processor and blah, blah, blah, blah,” Ballmer said. But “we want people to be able to get the advantages of light-weight performance and be able to spend more money, with us, with Intel, with HP, with Dell and with many, many others. So the shifting dynamics here will continue to evolve.”
Nebooks aren’t the only enemy to Windows PCs. So are the emerging generation of new operating systems, like Google’s Android and Chrome OS, Ballmer told attendees. Ballmer dismissed these new competitors as nothing but “thin clients” (while admitting that he still didn’t know what Chrome OS will be. But then again, no one does.)
“Nobody believes in thin clients,” Ballmer told analysts, meaning PCs with limited, if any local processing power.
“We have competitors who say they believe in thin clients. What they are really saying is they believe in our browser operating system and you hear it from Google and FireFox and you will hear it from a number of others,” Ballmer said. “But don’t think there is some magic technology, revolutionary thing that they believe in differently. They don’t.”
I heard Ballmer mention in passing a new message I hadn’t heard before during his hour-and-a-half presentation. Microsoft has built itself on the high-volume, low-cost platform. But today, Ballmer talked about “high-volume, high-value.” (He mentioned it in the context of comparing Windows to Linux.)
It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft can convince users — in a world where netbooks are continuing to gain converts — to spend more on PCs and more on upgrades with the new generation of Windows PCs coming this year.
July 30th, 2009
Wall Street analysts descend on Redmond for annual financial meeting
Summer is traditionally a busy time for Microsoft news and this year is proving no exception.
Today, July 30, is Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), when Wall Street analysts and press are subject to treated to back-to-back presentations from Microsoft’s top execs, where they outline the company’s product and strategy agenda for the company months.
Speakers at this year’s FAM include most of Microsoft’s top honchos — everyone from CEO Steve Ballmer, to Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, Chief Financial Software Officer Chris Liddell, Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie. Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is going to participate in an “executive discussion” panel with a handful of others at the end of the day, but isn’t slated to give a separate presentation this year.
Four of the five Microsoft’s presidents are on tap to speak: Robbie Bach, head of Entertainment and Devices; Qi Lu, head of Microsoft’s Online Services division; Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft’s Business Division; and Bob Muglia, head of Server and Tools. Steven Sinofsky, the newest of Microsoft’s presidents, who heads the Windows client unit, is not part of today’s line-up. Microsoft officials said Sinofsky is “out of town” a week after he and his team released Windows 7 to manufacturing.
Update: Turns out Sinofsky isn’t out of town at all. He is at FAM but not speaking about the Windows business. Ballmer ended up speaking about Windows, claiming that since he (Ballmer) had run the business for most of the past fiscal year, he was going to be the one to talk about it.
Analysts will undoubtedly be asking lots of questions about the July 29 search and ad partnership outlined by Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as more on Microsoft’s ongoing cost-cutting measures, which is always a favorite topic among Wall Street’s Microsoft watchers.
There are always new and interesting tidbits about Microsoft’s product plans that emerge during FAM. I’ll be filing throughout the day about anything new and interesting I hear. FAM kicks off at 11:30 a.m. ET and runs until about 7 p.m. ET.
February 24th, 2009
Microsoft readies a new 'netbook-like' Windows Server SKU
It’s not just on the client side that Microsoft is feeling pressure to lower operating system prices. The company is doing the same with Windows Server and will introduce a new, lower-priced Server version in the next couple of months.
That was another interesting tidbit dropped by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during his February 24 “Strategic Update” presentation for Wall Street analysts.
Ballmer told attendees that a new “Foundation Edition” version of Windows Server is in the works:
“(W)e are introducing a new low cost, low price, low functionality Windows server SKU. If you take a look at it, as server prices, hardware prices have come down, we don’t exactly have a netbook phenomenon, but if somebody can buy a $500 server, they’re a little loathe to spend $500 for the server operating system that goes with it. So we have something that’s akin to netbook at the server level, and we’ll be introducing our Foundation Edition over the next month or two.”
If Windows Server Foundation Edition really is like Windows client, the lower-priced SKU will be available to server makers only and not directly to customers.
I asked Microsoft for more specifics and officials had no comment.
Microsoft officials recently said that there won’t be a netbook-specific SKU of Windows 7, and the company will allow netbook makers to preload any version of Windows 7 they want on their low-priced, lower-functionality netbooks. Microsoft officials said they are expecting most PC makers will opt for either Windows 7 Starter Edition or Windows 7 Home Premium for netbooks.
Analysts asked Ballmer today about how Microsoft would price Windows for netbooks going forward. Ballmer acknowledged that Microsoft currently charges PC makers less per copy of Windows XP for netbooks than it does for full-fledged PCs, but declined to offer further details. During the Q&A period, he told one analyst with netbook questions:
“We will continue to have a netbook product at the current Windows XP price point. The question is, what other price points will we have above that, and how effective are we in trading people up. I think it’s important that we maintain an offer at the price point that we have on netbooks today.”
Update (February 25): Paul Thurrott of Windows SuperSite fame has more information on the new Foundation Edition SKU. It will be targeted specifically at emerging-market customers, be based on Windows Server 2008 R2, and won’t include the Hyper-V virtualization role, Thurrott said.
February 24th, 2009
Microsoft's Ballmer outlines his seven big bets for 2009
For the past few Februaries, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes the trek to Wall Street to provide analysts with an annual “Strategic Update” overview, in which he covers the areas where Microsoft plans to invest and why.
This year, during his February 24 update, Ballmer was more about circling the wagons than staking out new, far-flung territories Microsoft planned to conquer in the next 10 years.
(Here is the list of Ballmer’s strategic bets he outlined in 2007; here’s Ballmer’s list from 2008.)
On Tuesday during his hour-plus presentation (which I listened to via a Webcast), Ballmer outlined seven areas “where we invest serious money.” He told Wall Streeters that Microsoft planned to engage in careful cash management; to maintain “right-size enterprise overhead”; and to put about three percent of its spending into research and incubation projects in the coming year.
Ballmer emphasized that he believed “the economy will be relatively weak for a relatively long period of time” and was adjusting his investment priorities to reflect this fact.
Ballmer’s list of seven investment areas for the coming year:
1. Windows — Netbooks are the lone bright spot in the PC market. Microsoft needs to think through how it will handle SKU pricing with Windows 7 for netbooks, Ballmer acknowledged. While business PC sales are “the most impacted” part of the business due to the economy, it’s still where Microsoft is having a lot of success upselling customers and convincing them to “attach” other Microsoft products. Ballmer called out Internet Explorer as an area where the company is losing market to its competitors, specifically Firefox. “Browsers are not commodities,” Ballmer said. “There’s a lot of work we need to do” to gain market share, he acknowledged. (Microsoft is expected to release IE 8 to the Web in March.)
2. Mobile — Windows Mobile operating systems and gaming/Zune entertainment services — not a combined hardware/software platform like the iPhone — is where Microsoft is investing, Ballmer reiterated.
3. Desktop productivity — This is Microsoft’s most profitable business — Office, SharePoint and ERP/CRM products and services — area at present. No Office 14 until 2010, but higher-priced client-access licenses and strong “attach sales” of other Microsoft products are keeping the business strong.
November 20th, 2008
It's official: No IE 8 until 2009
After one more public test build early next year, Microsoft plans to release the final version of Internet Explorer 8 in calendar 2009.
Microsoft officials shared the updated timetable via a November 19 post on the IE Blog.
Until yesterday, Microsoft’s only official pronouncement of when the final IE 8 release was due was before the end of “this year.” I had heard from insiders that Microsoft was aiming to release the final IE 8 build in November, 2008 — a plan which seemed quite ambitious given how often I “report a Webpage problem” to Microsoft when I’m surfing the Web using IE 8 Beta 2.
IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch provided information on the updated IE 8 timetable on Wednesday. From his post:
“We will release one more public update of IE8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release.
“Our next public release of IE (typically called a ‘release candidate’) indicates the end of the beta period. We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done. They should expect the final product to behave as this update does. We want them to test their sites and services with IE8, make any changes they feel are necessary for the best possible customer experience using IE8, and report any critical issues (e.g., issues impacting robustness, security, backwards compatibility, or completeness with respect to planned standards work). Our plan is to deliver the final product after listening for feedback about critical issues.”
If Windows 7, which includes IE 8 as part of the operating system, is released to manufacturing around mid-year 2009, perhaps the final, standalone IE 8 will debut around the same time.
Anyone else testing IE 8 Beta 2? What’s your take on how close to done Microsoft’s next browser release really is?
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