Sometimes companies get to believe their own myth and end up going down a path that is different to the path taken by their users. This creates a major disjoin between the company and its users which the users recognise immediately but the company doesn’t. The users usually then perceive the company as arrogant and out-of-touch and as a company that has stopped listening to its customers.

Sometimes the company fails with a particular product line (e.g., HP and its first tablets) and sometimes its fails altogether. Recent examples of companies that completely misread the market are the aforementioned HP, Kodak and Blackberry.  It was also only a few years ago that IBM almost came to the same crossroads but it managed to stem the collapse.

I guess the lesson is that it doesn’t matter how old the company is or how big or how respected, it can still get it wrong and it can still fail. This is probably truer today than it has ever been because trends and fads and favourites change so rapidly compared to yesteryear. For example, for how long will Twitter and Google rule the roost? I am positive that the next Google and Twitter are already in production and gearing up for the conquest. Does anyone not think that Google is arrogant; dictating what users want, not asking?

However, the company I fear is in more danger than most of becoming suddenly irrelevant is Microsoft. To my mind, Microsoft has pursued a path of change for change’s sake (and to hell with what the customers want) for too many years and I see it today as a giant room full of programmers and marketing people with no one minding the shop and no one steering the ship.

It makes most of its money from Windows and Office and yet these are two of the most disliked pieces of software on the planet. How many people actually love Windows 8 and Office 2013? Does anyone at Microsoft actually know this? They could ask me or anyone out of millions of users but they don’t and won’t. Like HP and Kodak and Blackberry they will internalise all marketing discussions and push through users’ complaints doggedly pursuing their own wayward path to the cliff top.

Windows ME and Windows Vista should have been big red flags but obviously they weren’t because we now have Windows 8 and Metro soon to be replaced by Windows 9. Remember the old expression, “Those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat history.”

In the past Microsoft has got off almost scot free because there was no real competitor waiting in the wings.  Even today, there may not be a single competitor waiting to replace Microsoft but there are competitors such as Apple PCs and phones and tablets, Android PCs, phones and tablets, Linux PCs and servers, Chrome books and the like. There is also Windows 7 (Vista fixed) and Office 2003 and Office 2010 to tide people over under a really strong challenger emerges. You do not have to buy Windows 8 and you do not have to buy Office 2013; there are alternatives.

Even the major fall-off in PC sales over the last couple of years doesn’t seem to have been taken seriously by Microsoft.

There are a lot of factors pushing Microsoft towards the edge of the cliff and all that is needed is a really strong ‘alternative’ (to Windows and less so, Office) or an acceleration of the trend away from Windows PCs to push Microsoft over the cliff. When the end comes, it will be fast, like the next ice age.

When it happens senior management at Microsoft will say to investors and soon-to-be-redundant staff, “We didn’t see this coming” and the rest of us ordinary consumers will just smile knowingly and shake our heads, “Why didn’t you talk to us?”

The post Microsoft era will be one of much, much simpler operating systems (e.g., iOS), much more stable operating systems, much simpler office products and corporate application software that runs in a browser on most devices and under most operating systems (e.g., iOS and Android and Linux).

We won’t need Windows and without Windows, we won’t be forced to use Microsoft Office.

The most important factor contributing to Microsoft’s downfall will be software vendors like us moving away from developing for Windows and into developing for browsers.  This is happening now and the pace is quickening. I predict that by the end of 2015 almost any application software you or any company needs will be available running in a browser. You will not need Windows.

By my reckoning, Microsoft needs to change direction and have a new and popular paradigm in place by the end of 2014 or it doesn’t have a future as the desktop king. Let’s see if I am right; we don’t have long to wait.

Frank McKenna is the CEO of the Knowledgeone Corporation, a long-time Microsoft ISV and the producer of the RecFind 6 product suite.

I run a software company called the Knowledgeone Corporation and we produce enterprise content management software for government and business. Because it takes so long to design, build and test a new product or even a new version, we have to try and predict where the market will be in one or two years and then try to make sure our product RecFind 6 ‘fits-in’ with future requirements.

Years ago it was much easier because we were sure Windows would be the dominant factor and mostly we had to worry about compatibility with the next version of Windows and Microsoft Office. Apple however, changed the game with first the iPhone and then the iPad.

We now need to be aware of a much wider range of devices and operating systems; smart phones and tablets in particular. Three years ago we decided to design in compatibility for iOS and Android and we also decided to ignore Blackberry; so far, a wise move.

However, the prediction business is getting harder because the game is changing faster and probably faster than we can change our software (a major application).

I was just reading about CES 2014 on ZDNet and the major technologies previewed and displayed there. Most are carry overs from 2013 and I haven’t noted anything really new but even so, the question is which of these major trends will become major players during 2014 and 2015 (our design, develop and test window for the next major release of RecFind 6)?

1.     Wearables

2.     The Internet of Things

3.     Contextual Computing (or Predictive Computing)

4.     Consumerization of business tech

5.     3D printing

6.     Big Data

7.     The Cloud

Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet, wrote an excellent summary of things to think about for 2014, see this link:

Larry sees China and emerging Chinese companies as major players outside of China in 2014 but I think the Europeans and Americans will resist until well into 2015 or later. Coming on the heels of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 their governments won’t take kindly to having their local high tech industries swamped by Chinese giants. He also talks about the fate of Windows 8 and the direction of the PC market and this is our major concern.

The PC market has been shrinking and even though Microsoft is still the major player by far a lot depends upon the acceptance of Windows 8 as the default operating system. Personally I saw the Windows 8 Metro interface as clumsy and as change for changes’ sake.

I really don’t understand Microsoft’s agenda. Why try to force a major change like this on consumers and businesses just when everyone is happy with Windows 7 and we have all almost forgotten Vista. Windows 8 isn’t an improvement over Windows 7 just as Office 2013 isn’t an improvement over Office 2010. Both are just different and in my opinion, less intuitive and more difficult to use.

Try as I might, I cannot see any benefits to anyone in moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8 and in moving from Office 2010 to Office 2013. The only organization benefiting would be Microsoft and at the cost of big disruptions to its loyal customers.

Surely this isn’t a wise thing to do in an era of falling PC sales? Why exacerbate the problem?

Smart phones and tablets are real and growing in importance. Android and iOS are the two most important ‘new’ operating systems to support and most importantly for us, browsers are the application carriers of the future. No software vendor has the resources to support all the manifestations of Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, etc., in ‘native’ form but all operating systems support browsers. Browsers have become what Windows was ten years ago. That is, a way to reach most of the market with a single set of source code.

We lived through the early days of DOS, UNIX, Windows and the AS/400 and at one time had about fifteen different sets of source code for RecFind. No vendor wants to go back to those bad old days. When the world settled on Windows it meant that most of us could massively simplify our development regime and revert to a single set of source code to reach ninety-percent of the market. In the early days, Windows was our entry point to the world. Today it is browsers.

Of course not all browsers are equal and there is extra work to do to support different operating systems, especially sand-boxed ones like iOS but, we are still running ninety five percent common source and five-percent variations so it is eminently manageable.

Does Microsoft realize that many developers like us now target browsers as our main application carriers and not Windows? Does it also realize that the Windows 8 Metro interface was the catalyst that pushed many more developers along this same path?

Let’s hope that the new CEO of Microsoft cares more about his customers than the previous one did. If not, 2014 won’t just be the post-PC era, it will also be the beginning of the post-Microsoft era.

I run a software company called the Knowledgeone Corporation that has been developing application solutions for the Microsoft Windows platform since the very first release of Windows. As always, our latest product offering RecFind 6 version 2.6 has to be tested and certified against the latest release of windows. In this case that means Windows 8.1.

Like most organizations, we waited for the Windows 8.1 release before upgrading our workstations from Windows 7. The only exceptions were our developers workstations because we bought them new PCs with Windows 8 pre-installed.

We are now testing the final builds of RecFind 6 version 2.6 and have found a major problem. The problem is that Microsoft in its infinite wisdom has decided that you can’t install Windows 8.1 over a Windows 7 system and retain your already installed applications.

The only solution is to install Windows 8 first and then upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. However, if you are running Windows 7 Enterprise this won’t work either and you will be told that you will have reinstall all of your applications.

I am struggling to understand Microsoft’s logic.

Surely Microsoft wants all its customers to upgrade to Windows 8.1? If so, why has it ‘engineered’ the Windows 8.1 upgrade so customers will be discouraged from using it? Does anyone at Microsoft understand how much work and pain is involved in re-installing all your applications?

No, I am not kidding. If you have a PC or many PCs with Windows 7 installed you are going to have to install Windows 8 first in order to maintain all of your currently installed applications. Then, after spending many hours installing Windows 8 (it is not a trivial process) spend more precious time installing Windows 8.1. Microsoft has ensured that you cannot go direct from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1.

Of course, if you are unlucky, you could be living in a country where Microsoft has blocked the downloading of Windows 8, like Australia. Now you are between a rock and a hard place. Microsoft won’t let you install Windows 8 and if you install Windows 8.1 you face days or weeks of frustrating effort trying to re-install all of your existing applications.

Here are some quotes from Microsoft:

“You can decide what you want to keep on your PC. You won't be able to keep programs and settings when you upgrade. Be sure to locate your original program installation discs or purchase confirmation emails if you bought programs online. You'll need these to reinstall your programs after you upgrade to Windows 8.1—this includes, for example, Microsoft Office, Apache OpenOffice, and Adobe programs. It's also a good idea to back up your files at this time, too.”

“If you're running Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, all of your apps will need to be reinstalled using the original installation discs, or purchase confirmation emails if you bought the apps online.”

If the management at Microsoft wanted to ensure the failure of Windows 8.1 they couldn’t have come up with a better plan than the one they have implemented. By making Windows 8.1 so difficult to install they have ensured that its customers will stick with the tried and proven Windows 7 for as long as possible.

Can anyone at Microsoft explain why they thought this was a good idea?

I run a software company called the Knowledgeone Corporation and our main job is to provide the tools to capture, manage and find content. As such, we need to be on top of the hardware and software systems used by our customers so that we can constantly review and update our enterprise content management products like RecFind 6 so that they are appropriate to the times and devices in use.

I have spoken in previous Blogs about tablets and form factors and what is needed for business so other than providing the following links, I won’t go over old ground.

Will the Microsoft surface tablet unseat the iPad?

The PC is dead, or is it?

What will be the next big thing in IT?

Could you manage all of your records with a mobile device?

Why aren’t tablets the single solution yet?

The real impact of mobilization – How will it affect the way we work?

Mobile and the Web – The real future of applications?

Form factor – The real problem with mobile devices doing real work

Since my last Blog on the subject we have all seen RT tablets come and go (there will be a big landfill of RT tablets somewhere) and we are now all watching the slow and painful demise of Blackberry. In both of these cases we have to ask how big, super-clever companies like Microsoft and Blackberry could get it so wrong. Just thinking about the number of well-educated and highly experienced marketing and product people they have, it is inconceivable that they couldn’t work out what the average Joe in the street could have told them for free.

Then let’s also think about HP’s disastrous experiment with its TouchPad tablet (another e-waste landfill) and it becomes apparent that some of the largest, richest and best credentialed companies in the world can’t forecast what will happen in the tablet market.

In my opinion the problem all along, apart from operating system selection (iOS or Android?), has been matching needs to form factor and processing power. For example, no one wants a 12 inch phone and no one wants to write and read large documents on a 3 inch screen. This is why most of us still carry around three devices instead of one; a phone, a tablet and a laptop. This is just plain silly, what is the point of a small form factor device if I have to supplement it with a large form factor device? Like most other users, I really just want to carry around one device and I want it to have the capabilities and processing power for all the work I do.

It is for this reason that I believe the next big thing in the tablet market will be based on phones, not tablets. I envision slightly larger and much more powerful phones with universal connectors (are you listening Apple?) and docking capability. I would also like it to have a minimum of 4G and preferably 5G when available.

I want to be able to use it as a phone and when I get to my office I want to connect it to my keyboard, screen and network. I want to be able to connect it to a projector when visiting customers and prospects and I want a dynamically sizing desktop that knows when to automatically adjust the display to the form factor being viewed. That is, I want a different desktop for my screen at work than I want on the phone screen when travelling.

This brings up an interesting issue about choice of operating system as Windows owns about 95% of all business PCs and servers. I have previously never thought about buying a Windows Phone (I had one once a few years ago with Windows CE and it was awful) but my ideal device is going to have to run on the Windows operating system to be really usable in my new one-device paradigm.

I wonder why Microsoft didn’t think of this?

I run a software company called Knowledgeone Corporation that produces a content management system called RecFind 6. We need to be on top of what is happening in the hardware market because we are required to support the latest devices such as Apple’s iPad and Microsoft’s Surface tablet. Our job after all is to capture and manage content and the main job of devices like the iPad and Surface tablet is to allow end users to search for and display content.

At this time we plan to support both with our web client but each device has its special requirements and we need to invest in our software to make sure it perfectly suits each device. The iPad is by now a well-known partner but the Surface tablet is still something of a mystery and we await the full local release and our first test devices.

As we produce business software for corporations and government our focus is on the use of tablets in a business scenario.  This means using the tablets for both input and output meaning, capturing information and documents from the end user and well as presenting information and documents to the end user.

When looked at from a business perspective the Surface tablet starts to be a much better proposition for us than the iPad. I say this because of three factors; connectivity, screen size and open file system. To my mind these are the same three factors that severely limit the use of the iPad in a business environment.

Let me elaborate; I can connect more devices to the Surface, the slightly larger screen makes it easier to read big or long documents and the open file system allows us to easily upload and download whatever documents the customer wants. Ergo, the Surface is a much more useful product for our needs and the needs of our corporate and government customers.

So, after a superficial comparison, the Surface appears to have it all over the iPad or does it?

Maybe not given the early reviews of the buggy nature of Windows 8 on RT. Maybe not given that Windows 8 will never be as easy to use or as intuitive as iOS. Maybe not given that the iPad just works and no end user ever needed a training course or user manual. I very much doubt that end users will ‘learn’ Windows 8 as easily as they learnt iOS.

One unkind reviewer even referred to the Surface as a light-weight notebook.  I don’t agree though with its attached keyboard it is very close. I do think it is different to a notebook and I do applaud Microsoft for its investment and innovation. I think the Surface is a new product as opposed to a new generation notebook and I think most end users will see it that way too.

As is often the case both products have strengths and weaknesses and the real battle is yet to come as early adopters buy the Surface and test it. This is a critical time for acceptance and I hope Microsoft hasn’t released this product before it is ready. The early reviews I have read about the RT version are not encouraging especially as everyone still has awful memories of the Visa experience.

Microsoft is super brave because it is releasing two new products at the same time, the Surface hardware and Windows 8. Maybe it would have been smarter to get Windows 8 out and proven before loading it on the Surface but my guess is that Microsoft marketing is in one hell of hurry to try to turn the iPad tide around. There must be a lot of senior executives in Microsoft desperate to gain control of the mobile revolution in the same way they dominated the PC revolution. The Surface plus Windows 8 is a big-bang approach rather than the more conservative get-wet-slowly approach and I sincerely wish them all the best because we all need a much better tablet for business use. Apple also needs a little scare to remind it to be more respectful of the needs of its customers. Competition is always a good thing for consumers and Apple has had its own way with the iPad for too long now.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPad but I am frustrated with its shortcomings and I am hoping that more aggressive competition will force them to lift their game and stop being so damn arrogant.

I am about to place my orders for some Surface tablets for testing as soon as the Windows 8 Pro version is available and promise an update sometime soon about what we find. Watch out for an update in a month or so.

I run an application software development company called Knowledgeone Corporation that develops enterprise content management software applications. My customers are generally big business and big government and part of my job as the designer of our applications like RecFind 6 is to predict what my customers are going to ask for in twelve or twenty-four months’ time.

I read a lot of technical papers and forecasts and blogs and try to ingest and evaluate as much as I can about where our business is moving so that I can make the changes necessary in our products to meet future demand. I have been doing this for twenty-nine years and like most pundits, sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong.

Like Gartner (that never seems to get it right) I have been silly enough to publish a number of my predictions as white papers and they make interesting reading years later. Some examples are listed below:

2009   Windows 7 – Frank’s views

2007   Technology as a Tool – Where is Records and Document Management Heading?

1998   The Thin Client – The Next Panacea?

1997   Knowledge Management – The Next Challenge?

1996   Information and Records Management Towards 2000 – Electronic Document Management Principles.

1995   Document Management, Records Management, Image Management, Workflow Management,…What? The I.D.E.A.

I have also published more predictions in my blog, a few examples follow:

09/2011        Will developers, Corporates and Government upgrade to Windows 8?

11/2011        Mobile and Web – The future of applications?

12/2011        The real impact of mobilization – how will it affect the way we work?

01/2012        Will desktop virtualization be the final nail in the computer room coffin?

03/2012        What is the future of software applications in 2013 and beyond?

The obvious problem with publishing prediction is that you can’t always get it right and you will be judged at a later time when everyone is a lot wiser. However, people in my business have to predict the future because we start working on a new product a year or more before we are able to sell it. In a way, it is a silly business. We invest man years and large amounts of money designing, building and testing software applications long before we can get any kind of return on our investment.

Games makers have a similar problem, they have to invest millions and many man years long before they know if their game is going to be a success or not. This is why we have to predict the future and why we need to get it right more times than we get it wrong.

Right now I happen to believe that the world of software applications is going through a major paradigm shift. The advent of powerful mobile devices that really began with the first iPhone has changed the way most people want to work with applications. Like the PC network paradigm change of the early 1980’s, this one is also end-user driven, not IT Department driven. In fact you may conclude that the often reactionary IT heads of the commercial world have been dragged kicking and screaming into this revolution just as they were in the early 1980’s.

The availability of smarter and more powerful mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad have already had a major impact on PC and notebook sales and have caused major vendors like Intel to re-evaluate their product lines and strategies. In Intel’s case it first tried to leverage off old technologies with the promotion of ultra-books and now it has announced a move into new processors for mobile devices to rival those from companies like ARM and Qualcomm. Similarly, Microsoft, late to the party as usual, is now focusing on its new range of surface tablets and new versions of Windows 8 to support mobile devices.

As I said above, it is significant than none of these major changes have been driven by the usual suspects like Microsoft and Intel, they have been caught napping and are now in catch-up mode.

So, what are my chances of correctly predicting the future if giants like Intel and Microsoft with their huge budgets and research departments can’t get it right? Or, is the problem not one of budget but one of corporate arrogance? I will leave that judgement to you.

In my view the move to faster, smarter, more powerful and more user-friendly mobile devices is inexorable. When I now look at my office with its bulky PCs and masses of wires and connections it looks like a museum honouring the 20^th century. My iPad in contrast, looks like the beginning of the 21^st century; still not there yet but definitely the progenitor of coming office computing.

I see the same picture when looking at enterprise application software. Most of it, including my product RecFind 6 (based on the very latest Microsoft .NET technology), needs to be completely redesigned for the coming mobile world and this is the real challenge.

Everyone now knows (or should know) how to design games and small simple apps for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad but most of us are still struggling with the redesign of heavy-duty, feature-rich and enterprise-strength applications like RecFind 6 for the new mobile platforms.  We can’t just scale them down, we have to come up with a completely new way to communicate with our mobile end users. We have to discard the technology we are most familiar with and re-invent our solutions using new and unfamiliar technology.

Just like Intel and Microsoft we have to change our game and we have to do it fast because this particular revolution isn’t being driven by us, it is being driven by end-users and the innovative people at companies like ARM and Qualcomm and Apple all of whom have had very little impact on corporate application software in the recent past.

The current paradigm shift is still in its early days but it will completely change the way we all run our businesses in the near future. If only I could predict exactly how.

We all know about the success of tablets both in the home and enterprise. It is one of those overnight success stories that took around ten years or more. The real breakthrough was the iPad and it is still the market leader and the trend setter; the one that all others try to emulate.

The fact that many tablets failed before the advent of the iPad and that many more have failed since is testimony to the uniqueness of the iPad, to its creators getting it ‘just right’ and to Apple being the premier marketing organization of our time. The fact that the iPad outsells all of its competitors despite having fewer features is due to the understated brilliance of its design and Apple’s overachieving marketing department.

Despite their best efforts, huge budgets and amazing technology, both HP and Samsung have failed to topple the iPad. Now we have Microsoft with its vapourware Surface about to attempt the same task; good luck Microsoft but for now I am placing my bets on Apple to win this contest. Then again, maybe Google’s coming Nexus 7 tablet will be the deal-breaker?

I own an iPad 2 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab and despite the Samsung having more capabilities I would choose the iPad every time and it is the one I carry around with me despite the missing USB port and sandboxed file system. It wins because it is just ‘right’; it is super easy to configure and use and just does what it is supposed to do without irritating bugs, idiosyncrasies or pain. This is due to the maturity and robustness of iOS. The Samsung on the other hand suffers because of the immaturity and instability of the Android operating system; I feel sorry for Samsung because they have done a good job with the hardware only to be let down by the software. Google, are you listening?

However, the iPad has not replaced my smart-phone, desktop computer or laptop and it isn’t likely to until it matures and grows a lot past both the iPad 2 and the stupidly named New iPad (I guess even Apple can’t get it right every time). The reasons are pretty self-evident:

·         It can’t run all the applications I need

·         Its screen is too small for some jobs

·         It is too big to replace my phone and doesn’t work as a phone

·         It has limited connectivity

·         The sandboxed file system is next to useless when I need to transfer data between applications. In fact, you may as well say it doesn’t have a file system.

·         It can’t be networked (connecting via Wi-Fi is not the same as networking; for enterprise use it needs to connect to Active Directory)

So even though the iPad is the ‘best’ it is still light years away from being the single device I could use in my business. This means it is an ‘additional’ device, not a replacement. I still need my smartphone and my desktop and my laptop and this is just too silly for words because all of these devices can receive and send emails, all of these devices can receive and send messages and all of these devices allow me to type and create and read documents, etc., etc. There is an enormous overlap of functionality, a duplication of functionality which is more than silly; it is stupid; why am I receiving the same email on four devices?

You may ask then why do I have four devices? The simple answer is that each one of them is more appropriate in a given situation. For example, at my desk there is nothing better than the desktop, in the airport just before my flight the smart-phone is best, in my hotel room the night before the meeting the laptop is perfect and while having coffee just before a meeting the iPad is the ideal device. However, none of them are appropriate for all the things I do and all the places I go. This is the major dilemma of the modern office worker.

I do not want to work with four devices, I do not want to carry three devices (phone, laptop and iPad) on business trips and I think it is just plain dumb to have to send and receive the same email on four different devices. We need a single solution and everyone in the industry tells me it will be a tablet but I have yet to see a tablet that fits the bill or even comes close.

I want a screen big enough to view and compose important documents or presentations. I want a real keyboard. I want connectivity, I want security. I want to be able to run all the applications I need to run my business. I also want lightness and small size and a phone. I am not Robinson Crusoe; every business person I speak to wants the same capabilities and until tablets can come close to satisfying my needs they will never be the single device business people need.

To all the tablet makers out there, Apple, Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Google, and the like; please, please listen to your customers and produce a new generation device that will simplify our lives and reduce our load. Please give me a single device that does everything.