The next natural step from here is Windows as a service. And that’s what Microsoft thinks it has in Office 365. What you care about is delivering great services that will keep customers coming. Not only is that where its enterprise customers are now, but if you’re offering services instead of packages, you don’t care so much about having control of the bits. That’s one of the reasons why Microsoft has been embracing open-source software. Why? Because, looking ahead, Microsoft wants to cash in on services and not products. Heck, a Microsoft web developer told Mozilla’s developers on Twitter that they should throw in the towel on Firefox in favor of Chromium. It wants you to use archrival Google’s Chrome instead. The upshot: Microsoft no longer cares if you’re using Microsoft bits on your computer. And what are modern browsers? They’re Chrome-based browsers. And, even more amazing, Microsoft senior cybersecurity architect Chris Jackson actually blogged that Microsoft wants you to stop using IE and start using “modern” browsers instead. Second, Microsoft is cutting off support for Internet Explorer (IE) 10 years sooner than expected. It’s replacing Edge’s internals with Google’s open-source Chromium code. First, Microsoft gave up on developing its Edge web browser. You can see this in what might first look to you like two unrelated developments. And the money is in cloud-based services. Microsoft is continuing to move its business model to where the money is. In Microsoft’s last quarter, Microsoft reported that its Office revenue increased 11%, which was driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 34%. Back in 2015, I pointed out that Microsoft made only 10% of its revenue from Windows sales. Instead, it wants you to rent a service from it forever and a day. Microsoft doesn’t want to sell you bits on a floppy, CD, DVD or download anymore. What does Microsoft’s marketing push against itself mean? It means that it is moving from being a product company to being a service company. In the software industry, a 16-year drought for killer apps was once inconceivable. What exactly can you add to an office suite these days, anyway? As far as I’m concerned, the last worthwhile “new capabilities” came with Office 2003. I’m sure the line of users wanting to sign up for those “new capabilities” is already forming.

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