Microsoft reigned over tech world in 2016, but why 2017 is going to be a tough year

Global tech giant Microsoft ruled the roost in 2016 in the world of technology making acquisitions and profits all over. With hundreds of millions of devices running Windows 10, Microsoft had reportedly earned billions of dollars of revenue in the past year. Microsoft also made a big acquisition, LinkedIn along with a launch of the Slack competitor called Teams. But most importantly, after Satya Nadella took over as the CEO of the company, its focus on Cloud computing has reaped huge dividends and will continue doing so. Interestingly, once a closed software system, Microsoft also embraced open source in this period. The result can be seen in its amazing new product launches.

The surge in popularity of Microsoft started with its latest operating system Windows 10 which people found to be highly efficient and great to use. With many updates, including the virtual assistant Cortana, Windows 10 managed to gather the imagination of the masses. Additionally, Microsoft also promised a Creators Update in October which is expected to get users the ability to create 3-dimensional content and many other new functionalities. Microsoft seems to have had hit the right note by making products targeted both for work as well as creativity. Microsoft later surprised everyone by joining Linux, almost 15 years after former CEO Steve Ballmer calling it a ‘cancer’. Microsoft has indeed taken up Satya Nadella’s vision, making Visual Studio Code, PowerShell, and Microsoft Edge’s JavaScript engine as open-source recently. At the Connect conference for software developers in New York, Microsoft’s executive vice president Scott Guthrie along with Linux Foundation president Jim Zemlin, announced that Microsoft is joining Linux. Computational Networks Toolkit, Xamarin, PowerShell and Chakra JavaScript engine have all been examples of how the company has been adopting open source.

The tech major had also said that Google will join a committee of the independent .NET Foundation too. Google is considered Microsoft’s rival in applications and cloud services. Apart from this, Microsoft also made inroads into the latest tech fever of VR/AR technology challenging heavyweights in the category like Oculus. This will be an area which Microsoft looks very promising. Microsoft also launched the highly anticipated Surface Studio packed with amazing new game changing features. However, since it was a premium model and highly priced, it remains to be seen how the company lures the average user in 2017 towards variants of this product but it sure has drawn them towards the possibilities such hardware can possess. Microsoft also upgraded its gaming hardware with Xbox One S along with the promise of Project Scorpio with more processing power, scheduled to release next year.

The company also added many new functionalities in its popular Office platform, especially with the real-time collaboration. Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn got mixed reactions, as many believed it to be a flawed one. But as the company plans to overhaul the design and features of the website along with new addition in tools, it won’t be far fetched to consider it as a great investment. But undeniably this move will be challenging for the company. Microsoft needs to improve the user interface of the website which has been receiving a lot of flak, along with an overhaul of the mobile app. It also has to take care of spam on the website, as it has been one of the biggest reason of criticism against the website. The good part is that LinkedIn has one of the largest collection of employee data of the world (more than 450 million). With such a big data treasure the company can use it to target its own sales as well and eventually monetising it. Apart from that Microsoft’s another challenge its cloud platform, which however great it is right now with Azure, has a huge task of showing how the future holds for it. With more and more tech giants investing in cloud, Microsft has a challenging task ahead. Microsoft has to leave behind its mobile market debacle with Nokia and look into opening newer avenues like it is doing right now. All in all, if Microsoft is able to deliver on its promises in due time (that is sooner than later), then it will enter the market yet again with a bang.