As a follow up to my last post, Henry Blodget of Business Insider wrote an interesting piece, “The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft’s Business Will Collapse,” citing how cloud-computing and mobile is making Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office increasingly irrelevant.  The battle lines are being redrawn and it’s between Google and Apple with Microsoft sitting on the sidelines.

They used to say that business software had to include Windows and Office.  We run our business Microsoft-free because the alternatives are powerful and cheap-to-free.  We don’t run on Windows, but either run on Mac or Ubuntu machines. Ubuntu desktop is a very mature Linux distribution and since we have increasingly moved to the cloud, which OS we use has become irrelevent except for some specialized roles.  We don’t use Office, but run mainly on Google Apps, which we love for collaboration (I got hip to Apps working at Google, which needless to say, uses Apps internally). Also, managing email is much easier in Gmail than in Outlook. Google Apps does have some limitations for creating highly formatted documents or complex spreadsheets, which I know will be overcome in time. To address these shortcomings we use OpenOffice.org, which has fully matured into a robust product that is already in many ways superior to Microsoft Office.  Since we use Google Apps, nothing makes more sense for our mobile phones than Android due to its tight integration.  People often refer to company so-and-so as a “Microsoft shop,” I guess you could call us a “Google shop.”  Just five years ago, I think we would have been tied to at least Microsoft Office.  It’s liberating to be free from the so-called “Evil Empire.”

Microsoft has always been playing catch-up and has been damn good at it, in the end out-maneuvering the innovators they ripped off.  Maybe the steam has run out now and their game has become unsustainable.  Then again, Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates.

Again, check out Henry Bloget’s piece.  I really enjoyed reading it.