Microsoft and its Competition: A Developer-Friendly Market Analysis

Microsoft and its Competition

A Developer-Friendly Market Analysis

Andrew J. Brust, Founder/CEO Blue Badge Insights

Code Camp NYC 2011

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Who Am I?

• Founder, CEO, Blue Badge Insights• Microsoft Regional Director, MVP• Organizing team, Code Camp NYC• Co-chair Visual Studio Live!

Co-moderator, NYC .NET Developers Group– http://www.nycdotnetdev.com

• Founder, MS BI User Group NYC– http://www.msbinyc.com

• brustblog.com, Twitter: @andrewbrust

Column and Blog

Read all about it!

Agenda

• Smartphones• Tablets• Data Platform and Business Intelligence• SOA/Enterprise Service Bus• Cloud• Conclusion

SMARTPHONES

Strong Competitors

• Apple/iOS– iPhone is the ubiquitous successful person’s

phone, with the largest number of available apps– iPad has sold 29 million units in 15 months

• Google/Android– Android outsells iPhone now, both in US, and

globally– Android tablets have thus far flopped

Weak Competitors

• RIM (Blackberry)• Samsung (Bada)• Nokia (Symbian)• HP (webOS phones and TouchPad)

US Smartphone Share as of 08/11Nielsen

Europe Smartphone Share as of 07/11Comscore

Source: Canalys

WW Smartphone Share as Q2 ‘11Gartner

Windows Phone Report Card (+)

• “Mango” update being pushed to phones now; new handsets with Mango on-sale

• Nokia WP7 handset expected to be introduced this month at Nokia World in London

• New pact with Samsung• Customer satisfaction at 93% (Greg Sullivan, MS)• Marketplace app count at > 32,000 (as of Sept 25)• Developer productivity is high• New NPD Group study says 44% of

current/upcoming smartphone owners considering purchasing WP7 device

Windows Phone Report Card (-)• That same NPD Group study says 45% of

consumers are still not aware of WP7. • Marketing and retail presence have been

abysmal• Verizon and Sprint have only 1 WP7

handset, each• eWeek says total 2011 Q2 for WinMo

+ WinPho was 5.8%, down from 7.5% in Q1.

Developments to MS’ Benefit• Google bought Motorola Mobility, leaving

HTC, Samsung, LG and others in the lurch• Death of webOS• Blackberry users are bailing, and need

good email and calendar fidelity, productivity

• Social media integration is becoming a must-have

• Nokia’s bet on WP7 as its exclusive Smartphone platform

TABLETS

Market Roundup

• Right now, the tablet market is the iPad market– Android tablets have not caught on

• Kindle Fire could change that• Windows 8 could change that

– Critically acclaimed– Non-derivative– Phone + PC + Xbox all on Metro

• But– Landscape mode is awkward, especially with 16:9– Metro + Desktop is a bit jarring– Substituting Start screen for Start menu is controversial

Windows 8 Value Prop

• Variety of form-factors, just like PCs• Intel or ARM; you decide• Metro apps are “fast and fluid”• Stop remoting in from your iPad; just run

local• Stop traveling with laptop + iPad• Enterprise deployment of Windows devices

easier than iOS• My personal one: browsing with Metro IE

much nicer than iOS Safari

Wildcards

• Windows 8 + Windows Phone synergies• Windows 8 on ARM• Amazon Kindle “Fire”• Steve Jobs’ health (sorry, but it’s true)• Enterprise preferences• Consumer preferences– Consumption, production or both?

DATA PLATFORM AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

RDBMS Competitors

• Oracle• IBM• MySQL• SAP-Sybase IQ• Data Warehouse Appliances:– Teradata– HP-Vertica– IBM-Neteeza

Relational Database Market

• RDBMS market is very mature• SQL Server now #2, beating out IBM DB2

(does not include Neteeza)• Real changes are coming from “Big Data”– SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse Edition (PDW)

helps Microsoft; so do Hadoop connectors; so does SQL Azure Federations feature

• MySQL still hurts at the commodity end• NoSQL’s impact is hard to discern

Key BI Competitors

• IBM (Cognos)• Oracle (Hyperion)• SAP (Business Objects)• MicroStrategy• SAS• QlikTech QlikView• Tibco Spotfire• Tableau (partner too)• Open Source: Pentaho and JasperSoft

Microsoft’s BI Situation

• Embedded functionality, rather than discrete products

• All BI functions “surface” in SQL Server, Office, SharePoint

• Features are very competitive, but often overlooked

• Many Microsoft customers own the full BI stack and yet use one of the competitors’ products

• Competition costs much more, which ironically often helps them be the selected platform

• Addition of SQL Server MDS, DQS compelling

MS BI Pros

• SQL Server Analysis Services is one of the longest-established and best OLAP servers on the market– Many competitors interoperate with it

• Microsoft’s VertiPaq technology is very competitive, capable, compelling

• Likewise Project “Crescent”• Microsoft BI has a strong ecosystem of

complimentary products– Panorama, Dundas, SoftArtisans, Roambi, etc.

• MS BI in the Gartner “Leader’s Quadrant”

MS BI Cons

• Microsoft has no iPad story, obviously– Dundas Dashboard mitigates– Windows 8 should help too

• Microsoft has almost no Cloud BI offering– Only SQL Azure and SQL Azure Reporting– No BI features in SharePoint Online (Office 365)

• Most of the BI stack requires SharePoint– Excel Services, PerformancePoint, Crescent– Otherwise just Excel and Reporting Services available

SOA/ENTERPRISE SERVICE BUS

The Stack

• On-premise:– .NET: WCF, WF– Windows Server: AppFabric (Dublin, Velocity)– BizTalk Server

• Windows Azure:– Worker Roles/WCF/WF– AppFabric (Service Bus, Velocity, Access Control)– Forthcoming: AppFabric Integration Services

Key Competitors

• IBM (WebSphere, WebSphere MQ)• Oracle– Bought BEA (WebLogic), Sun (SeeBeyond)

• Tibco• RedHat-JBoss• SAP, sort of

The BizTalk Conundrum

• Mature product, with rich set of adapters• In use at a number of very important customers• Capabilities like EDI, RFID, SWIFT, HL7 give BizTalk

real credibility in specific industry verticals• But it doesn’t generate huge sales, so:– Investment is minimal, and dev is offshore– Field does not know product or work hard to sell it– Roadmap is wishy-washy

• AppFabric and BTS have different architectures• StreamInsight should be tightly integrated, but

isn’t

CLOUD

Public Cloud: Main Competitors• Amazon Web Services• Rackspace• Salesforce’s Force.com• VMWare’s Cloud Foundry• Google App Engine• Red Hat - Makara

Public Cloud: IaaS vs. PaaS

• Infrastructure as a Service helps with scale and provisioning but not with maintenance and simplicity

• Microsoft has thus far been Platform as a Service-specific, Amazon and Rackspace are IaaS

• VM Role and Elastic Beanstalk are the crossovers• Azure is .NET-first but accommodates lots of

other platforms• Most other PaaS offerings are Java-only or Java-

mostly

Public Cloud: Interesting Tidbits• Amazon’s EBS (Elastic Block Storage) has fault

tolerance issues within a data center• Amazon and Microsoft’s prices are nearly

identical in many cases• Some of Microsoft’s best and brightest are

working on Azure right now• There have been many false starts, and some

things, like the VM Role, have been taking forever.

• Microsoft’s capital investment in Azure is said to be in the billions

Private Cloud

• Main components: Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (w/ Self-Service Portal)

• Microsoft is stepping up its game here with Windows Server 8– Better virtualization in new version of Hyper-V– Better multi-tenancy

• Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track: partnering with HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco, others

• But the Azure appliance has receded• With Hyper-V coming on Windows 8 client, the

compete with VMWare starts to become more credible

CONCLUSION

Versatility, and its Consequences

• Microsoft is in more markets than anyone• Consumer, SMB and Enterprise• Client and server OS, developer tools and

platforms, data/BI, SOA, Email, portal, online

• No one else does this– This can make for jack of all/master of none, more

fronts in the competitive war, though.• Microsoft is aging– But doing an impressive job at reinvention

Future

• MS doing amazingly well, given its challenges• But there is still a decline, and it must reverse

that• Consumer play is key• Sustained marketing and investment are key• Big issues (solving them is make/break):– CEO successor-ship– The Redmond groupthink effect– Morale

• This is your battle too…the company is the platform

Questions?

• Now?• Later?– Andrew.Brust@BlueBadgeInsights.com– @andrewbrust on Twitter– www.brustblog.com

• Want to get the weekly Redmond Roundup Plus dispatch? Just text the word “bluebadge” to 22828