Steve Gilmor makes a fairly straightforward statement in the middle of an otherwise convoluted post on Adobe, Microsoft, and IBM:
Left unsaid but only barely is that Adobe’s play is with developers, primarily those reaching the broad consumer playground known as Web 2.0 and its new kissing cousin Social Media. Of course, cloud computing is in there too, but where Microsoft is rolling out cloud services beginning with Exchange, Sharepoint, and Live Meeting, Adobe is selling tools to developers that will ultimately use the cloud to distribute the results.
Adobe is usurping the close connection with developers that Microsoft once dominated. Instead Microsoft is looking more like ’90s IBM all the time, for example, displacing IBM’s Notes from Coca Cola, and focusing on developing business partnerships with other enterprise software companies.
Microsoft’s push into cloud computing for the enterprise is an effort to hold onto its desktop dominance as that begins to move to the cloud. But they will have serious competition from many quarters — like the turnkey solutions online like Zoho and Google, and a real push coming from Adobe, according to Robert Scoble:
Adobe is working on an Office Suite. Adobe has the developers, but wants the Enterprise. Microsoft has the Enterprise but wants Adobe’s developers and wants to take the oxygen away from Acrobat and Adobe’s Office dreams.
Adobe is in particular moving aggressively in the mobile space, providing a range of tools to allow developers to build apps that can run on a variety of mobile units, as well as Windows/Mac/Linux. Microsoft seems to have lost its driving ambitions in mobile, or perhaps they are becoming resigned to losing in a world in which Nokia’s S60, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platforms seem to have claimed everyone’s attention.
So, the question can be reframed: What’s the best way to dominate the future of enterprise IT? Trying to convert large enterprises and partner with large enterprise software firms? Or to outfit a million developers with better application development tools? I am betting on the swarm of wily developers.
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February 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
I think as the entire industry has become more competitive is may become tougher for Microsoft to dominate the market like it has in the past.