Dancing at Microsoft

One of our presenter talked about how "it is not Microsoft's business model to take a technology and develop a niche market" but that they leave that up to their partners.  I would never have guessed this to be their model but it makes sense knowing that 65% of their revenue comes from the partner ecosystem.  One of the new Microsoft tools is something called "Hohm" that helps homeowners save money.  I have looked at using this tool for my energy efficiency consulting to help people save money on their utility bills.  I wanted to ask how this tool is being used by the Microsoft partners.

The highlight of the Microsoft visit was the "apartment" that had the great new products of Microsoft like the Kinect for XBOX 360.  I had never felt like the Wii was cool enough to make me want to buy one, but this Kinect thing seems very neat.


I kept track of how many times a Microsoft employee mentioned Google, Apple, or Oracle and whether it was in a good or bad context.  Amazingly they mentioned Apple (or its products) twice, once in a good way and once in a negative way.  Google they mentioned three times in a negative way and once in a positive way.  Oracle they only mentioned once in a good way.  This is a subtle hint, I believe, that Google is a big competitor to Microsoft and I can see why.  Just about every product or technology that was mentioned by a Microsoft employee, I could think of a product that Google has developed that would compete directly with it.  In general I am usually a bigger fan of Google products as opposed to Microsoft, but I see the competition as a good thing as it pushes each company to be innovative.