Is Microsoft Cool Again?
Microsoft captured the financial headlines today. While that’s not a big surprise, the fact that it was positive news was a change from the norm. The technology giant announced they were moving their Office suite to the cloud via their new Office 365 product.
Having access to Office products via the web is being dubbed a “game changer” by Microsoft.
Microsoft has seemed to lag behind the adoption of new technologies in recent years. It seemed they were determined not to be left behind in the shift to cloud computing.
Today’s news actually made Microsoft seem cool again. And that’s probably the first time since the 1990’s that anyone has thought that.
Investors were certainly jumping on Microsoft’s cloud sending shares up 2.4 percent on high volume. The Office cloud announcement from Microsoft actually added $5 billion to the company’s market cap today.
The move by Microsoft is certainly a shot across the bow of other major tech stocks. Most noteworthy would be Google – which currently offers their competing Google Docs via the cloud.
Microsoft clearly needs another revenue driver. Their online businesses are hemorrhaging money and growth is slowing for their core Office and Windows products.
As a result, Microsoft stock has dropped 10 percent since the beginning of the year. IBM even briefly overtook Microsoft as the second most valuable tech stock in the world last month.
Whether Office 365 can deliver meaningful revenues remains to be seen. However, at least for a day Microsoft has gone from being viewed as the evil empire to just a cool tech stock that is embracing new technology.
There is one response to Is Microsoft Cool Again?
June 29th, 2011 at 7:43 am
RALPH NADER OWNER OF 18000 THOUSAND SHARES OF CISCO IS TIRED OF THE POULTRY DIVIDENS COMPANYS GIVE THIER SHARHOLDERS MICROSOFT WHO ARE SITTING ON 30 BILLION DOLLARS IS NOT PASSING ON THE MONEY TO SHAREHOLDERS THAT BALD HEADED GUY MUST HAVE THE FIRST DOLLAR FROM THE LAST SUPPER e.b
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