[MarkL]

For Microsoft, I see no decisions to the better and a continued slide in oblivion as Visual Studio gets worse and does not provide incentive to use it, therefore no incentive to use Windows or Office products.

I really doubt that. As the buzz about "the cloud" has grown in the business world, Microsoft is shifting to software as a service for applications, as well as migrating an awful lot of data centers into "the cloud," including web apps and MS SQL, and using AD and Azure. It still has a way to go, but I see an awful lot of drive to that direction in s lot of businesses.

Mark

[CodeToad]

“Microsoft is shifting to software as a service for applications”

Companies like Amazon dominate that market with Microsoft having weak and poor quality offerings.

Office 365 has been a disaster for those trying to implement it. Hosted email is nothing short of frustrating. The migration from server-based Exchange is often a disaster with such failures as no cloud based public folders or the ability to convert them to a new form.

Microsoft support is Indian based and they have zero clues what to do past the scripts they read. Multiple contacts to Microsoft results in the reading of the same scripts that can be found on a google search. “Have you tried...” “Yeah, I found the same thing on google, too, pal.”

So, no, Microsoft, is not offering innovative or working solutions.