Why Microsoft Can't Beat Salesforce

But going 100% SaaS would end up sending a shot of poison to Office and to some degree Windows itself. This is Microsoft's second challenge: its legacy on the desktop and in packaged software will always be a reminder that this is where the profits lie, no matter how many cloud-based initiatives and press conferences it has weekly.

Microsoft would say, and rightly we think, that its justification for Windows on the client side - to put it more exactly than some Web browser -- is that it runs the applications that businesses use and that most of us feel comfortable with. However the dynamics, if you were, are changing and the balance between the Web and Windows is changing. When was the last time anyone cared what OS you ran on your work PC? Is that so, 1997?

Finally, as the Web takes more mindshare of its developers, Microsoft for all that needs to support a vast army of legacy server businesses, just as Sharepoint, Exchange, and even its own Web server IIS. These aren't going away anytime before long, and as a matter of fact, the smarter developers are putting in hooks to various Salesforce apps from these servers as ways to embrace and extend this legacy. Harrumph - as a rule Microsoft likes to be in that driver's seat, and doing the embracing to keep its lock on its APIs.

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