Microsoft is ready to change the world, but are you ready?

On the 1st June 2018, Microsoft’s Market Cap was slightly ahead of Alphabet (Google) having surpassed them a few days earlier.  The following leader board represents tech firms that have all embraced artificial intelligence including chatbots that will revolutionise interactions.  

• Apple Market Cap US$918bn
• Amazon Market Cap US$790bn
• Microsoft Market Cap US$759bn
• Alphabet (Google) Market Cap US$756bn
• Facebook Market Cap US$555bn
• IBM Market Cap US$129bn

Microsoft’s growth strategy is driven by Azure, which is a powerful ubiquitous, serverless infrastructure-as-service, underpinned by consumption pricing.  Azure is so ubiquitous that much of the consumption processing is driven by open-source software. Even traditional Microsoft competitors like SAP are now running their software on Azure.  

Though the Azure success story is growing stronger and stronger, it seems most of the market has still failed to understand the true potential of the Azure infrastructure-as-a-service. Within this infrastructure-as-a-service, Microsoft has rapidly been building a deeper and deeper foundation that is aimed at empowering partners and clients to disrupt and overturn every industry.  Within this capability is a growing collection of component technologies known as microservices that can be picked and mixed in any combination.

In this mix already is cyber security, big data, analytics, visualisation, machine learning, cognitive services, omnichannel, blockchain, tokenisation, IoT, chatbots, virtual reality, augmented reality and much more.These microservices are also interoperable with the growing portfolio of Office 365 and Dynamics 365 capabilities. The combinations of consumption based microservices is so pervasive that it is simply too mind blogging for most people. But it does not stop there.

Microsoft recently launched a new type of partner category called an IP Partner. These are partners that have unique intellectual property in the form of microservices, which can be picked and mixed with the above. The permutations are already incalculable to drive consumption growth faster and faster. In the forthcoming year, Microsoft is moving up another gear as it focuses on partner-to-partner value creation. Naturally, an IP Partner can work with other partners.

The stumbling block is no longer technology. The single biggest issue is there is insufficient new sense making frameworks to help business executives make informed decisions to shape new ways of doing business. There is also a distinct lack of technologist thought leaders on the ground to shape these new sense-making frameworks and show how much of the technology is readily available to be connected for rapid deployment.  

We are truly embarking on a new form of industrialisation, where competitive differentiation will be won or lost on its intellectual capital and execution capabilities, within shorter and shorter timeframes.