Questions I would ask Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer may be called a lot of things, but he is a good sport when it comes to interviews. Guy Kawasaki in this video here and the audience had a chance to ask him just about any question for about an hour and Ballmer joked, pushed back, handled them well.

While Guy was humorous and probing 90% of questions were consumer-ish - Apple, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, XBox dominated the questions. The audience asked Steve a few more questions about enterprise search, Silverlight and developer communities etc, but overall the tone was decidedly consumer oriented.

If I had run this session, my questions would have been:

a) Some of the hottest innovation areas for enterprises are virtualization, telemetry, mobility, cloud computing, enterprise search, predictive analytics, social networking. Why has Microsoft not led or innovated much in any of this?

b) CIOs fund much of your profits - should you spin off a separate enterprise division to give them much more attention?

c) What is going on with Dynamics? Is integration across all the acquired products finished? Is the channel rationalized? Why has Dynamics leadership been a revolving door?

d) Why the focus on Yahoo!? Why not SAP?

e) Most CIOs have said no to Vista. When do you cave in and say stay with XP and NT for 5 more years?

f) Where is your  telecommunications future - tactically fight it out with Cisco around gear and software or get more ambitious against the telcos themselves?

g) When can enterprises expect to see a robust SaaS version of Office? And will pricing be competitive with Google and Zoho?

h) You have always had a vibrant developer community. SAP has a big one now. Oracle does. Open Source does. How does the software industry deliver productivity when it has become so dependent on labor?

i) It is mind boggling, the volume of bug fixes and patches Microsoft releases. Now Vista and XBox 360 issues add to that litany. Has Microsoft lost control of its quality processes?

j) Just  a few years ago Oracle was public enemy number 1. Now it is Google. Does that not summarize a lack of enterprise interest at Microsoft?

k) How do you expect to leverage Tony Scott, your new CIO and his experience at Disney, GM etc in your enterprise business?

Yes, boring I know.

But Ballmer is game to show up at a number of events and answer all sorts of questions. Someone just needs to ask him enterprise questions.

Comments

[Deepak]

That's a great set of questions. I keep wondering about Microsoft's enterprise plan. That's one area where they can continue to dominate and they seem to be doing a Yahoo and spreading themselves too thin.

[Krishna Mony]

Vinnie,

Ballmer probably had you in mind when he leaked out his email ID to that audience:) So go pick up the slack and have your inventory mailed to Ballmer. If his mood in that sitcom were for real, he'll make your day! You may well be in for some honest answers too.

A word of caution: rest easy with some stock answers and don’t pry too much. Just leave it at that. Guy did. (didn't quiz Ballmer much beyond frosty crumbs over Yahoo bid, Vista bugs and Google threat). Then who knows, you'll be richer by a generous slice of Microsoft PR largesse. How generous? Ask Guy :)

[vinnie mirchandani]

Krishna, I think I am on his blocked list -)

so pls be my proxy and send him a link and see if he responds.

And by the way, wait a week - as he said during the interview he will likely get bombarded for a few days

[Padmanabha Rao]

Very helpful questions.