“It’s been almost 20 years since IBM’s Lou Gerstner got an elephant to dance. Now Microsoft, one of the companies that forced IBM to confront its problems, finds itself in need of a new dance partner who understands the realities of 21st-century computing,” Tom Krazit writes for mocoNews. “Steve Ballmer is not that person.”
“Microsoft is at a crossroads, not the first one it has stared down in its 36-year-history, but perhaps the most important,” Krazit writes. “It is both enormously successful and astonishingly off-course at the same time, generating billions in profits off of Windows and Office but ill-prepared and out-gunned in making the transition to a new style of computing that old rivals like Apple and Google are appearing to lock up for themselves.”
Krazit reports, “It took a new CEO from a completely different industry who was willing to question every single part of IBM’s business and culture in order to prime the company for a new era, and IBM remains one of the strongest tech companies on the planet as a result. Perhaps not as top- of-mind as it once was, but secure in its own identity and now once again more valuable than Microsoft. Microsoft needs such a leader.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Ballmer is that leader. His strategy just needs more time to unfold. We urge Microsoft’s board to continue with Steve Ballmer’s vision for as long as it takes.