My apologies for two Microsoft posts in a row; yeah, they are starting to bore me too. But CIOs can't afford to ignore the prospects of the 800 pound gorilla in the industry.

There is this meme going around that "Microsoft has lost its focus" and that it is this supposed recent loss of focus on some particular notion or sector or something that is responsible for the hard times in which the business finds itself.

You may find some clue as to my argument in the sentence above, because as I was casting about for the word to fill in the blank in "Microsoft has lost its focus on ______" I came up dry. So you tell me; when was Microsoft ever focused, and what exactly was that supposed focus on?

This first came up in the article I blogged about yesterday by Jason Hiner, and he provides the best answer I have seen yet to that question, who quotes the old company motto, "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software." But I am not sure I can accept that as evidence of focus. Software is a pretty broad field, and Microsoft has explored most of it at one point or another, starting out with languages and moving into operating systems, then desktop applications, then even more specialized applications, leading today to product offerings in CRM and finance, maps and games. They have made repeated, if less clearly successful, forays into hardware as well, since the very early days of the company.

The new company motto is "Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices" which, okay, doesn't sound quite as intense as "A computer on every desktop" but if it is less focused, the distinction escapes me. They are both about selling software; the market has simply changed. The strategy the company is using to implement this vision is not dramatically different than the one they used to dominate the desktop: get into a lot of different markets and leverage them against one another. Before, your Pocket PC would plug into your Windows desktop which connected to your Windows server (after which you might go home [finding your way using Streets and Trips, of course] and relax by playing Halo on your Xbox). Now, you'll use your Mobile to pull up a document from Live and dump it to Azure so you can pull it up later in Vista. And then go play Halo III on your Xbox to relax.

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft was never focused and that lack of distinct concentration is one of the company's strengths, not a distraction or a weakness. Perhaps in another company, this would be a drawback and I understand the conventional wisdom behind it. But if you look at Microsoft's successes, they've almost always come from being unfocused... flexible enough to change the course of the business when necessary, or when presented with a new opportunity. Their biggest business units today aren't what they started out with. From operating systems to applications, from desktop software to servers, from desktop-centric applications to the Internet; a more focused company would have never made the transitions. One which didn't have dalliance bred into its DNA could never have found the expertise internally to pull it off. It's ironic that Shane O'Neill, among those decrying the company's lack of focus, lists as his "lifeline" departments the search, Web applications, and mobile groups. Who thinks those groups would even exist if the company had heeded advice to "focus" on its core desktop and server offerings the last time the tech sector hit a downturn? It's just as telling that everyone I read who says that Microsoft needs to focus lists a different area that it needs to focus on. If there is so little agreement on what exactly it would help to be focused on, I would submit that the case for focusing isn't nearly so clear-cut as the proponents assume.

Microsoft is in trouble today because it is too focused, not because it is unfocused. As is wont to happen with successful companies, Microsoft has become overly attached to the businesses which made it a success, and is having difficulty making those experiments and adaptations to new markets the way that it used to. It's true there needs to be ruthless pruning and hard decisions made about where the company invests resources. That's always been the case and the company has historically been able to do so when necessary... enough so that I am nervous recommending certain Microsoft software to clients until the user base increases to a point where I think it's off the chopping block. But the company really needs to step back and broaden its base, reduce the emphasis and commitments to traditional software models. It's in a good position to make the jump to the next paradigm of computing, if only it can manage to ignore all these calls for focus.