Microsoft and the Fast Follower Delusion

Microsoft has made a $50B company by "scaling up" innovations pioneered by others and using its vast resources to make products viable with substantial market share that are in fact fairly pedestrian.

Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface. Apple popularized it in its easy to use and innovative Macintosh. Microsoft followed Apple with its Windows interface, always behind technologically but a market leader due to Microsoft's Intel platform operating dominance.

Then came the internet and Netscape, the browser that invented, well, the browser. Microsoft followed with it's Explorer browser and eventually won the battle. I credit Bill Gates with his ability to turn the ship and achieve market dominance while almost always following someone else.

The Xbox followed the PS/2 and achieved a beachhead in the evolving battle for the entertainment console of the home. MS Word followed Wordperfect. MS Excel followed Lotus 123. Microsoft Outlook followed Lotus Notes. SQL Server followed Oracle's DB. Microsoft's "Wintel" servers followed several early leaders. Zune is following the iPod (not very well).

None of these products is dramatically better than the one that was "followed". But many (Zune strongly excluded) have become the de facto standard in their own right mostly due to the ubiquity of the Microsoft platform.

I run Vista on my PC, outfitted with 2 GB of memory, along with Microsoft Office 2007. It is slow. Microsoft Outlook crashes about twice a day. Microsoft Explorer crashes about once a day. It gets the job done but it is not particularly satisfying to use.

One of the next big battles in Microsoft's "fast follower" playbook is virtualization. VM Ware is the market leader. I have seen numerous references lately how the battle for virtualization dominance will be fought between Microsoft and VM Ware. The fact is that VM Ware has a 6 year head start. That does not sound like much of a battle to me.

Microsoft thinks of themselves as a fast follower. But they are not so fast. The Windows operating system took a decade to really find itself and is still only adequate. If Microsoft thinks it can knock off VM Ware and the iPod then I wish them luck, but I'm doubtful.

Disclosure: at the time of this posting the author was long MSFT and EMC (86% owner of VM Ware).