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2008年2月24日 星期日

Maybe Microsoft Should Stalk Different Prey 雅虎會變成微軟的AOL

Digital Domain

Maybe Microsoft Should Stalk Different Prey


stalk (FOLLOW)

Published: February 24, 2008

OVER the years, Microsoft has pummeled countless rivals, including the superheavyweight I.B.M. But it has never faced a smaller foe as formidable as Google. The tale of the tape gives Microsoft a $100 billion advantage in market capitalization, but it counts for little: Google appears to be its superior in strength, speed, smarts.

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Lawrence J. Ellison is chief executive of Oracle, which has made acquisitions that dovetail with its core business. Last month, it reached a deal to buy BEA Systems for $8.5 billion.

Having exhausted its best ideas on how to deal with Google, Microsoft is now working its way down the list to dubious ones — like pursuing a hostile bid for Yahoo. Michael A. Cusumano, who has written several books about the software industry and about Microsoft, is not impressed with Microsoft’s rationale for its Yahoo offer. He said the bid seemed to be a pursuit of “an old-style Internet asset, in decline, and at a premium.”

Determined to match Google in search and online advertising, Microsoft has managed to overlook a plain-vanilla strategy, the oldest one in the book: build on its own strengths. What it does best is to sell software to corporations, for all sorts of applications, visible and not so visible, at a handsome profit.

If Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should not pursue Yahoo. Rather, it should acquire another major player in business software, merging Microsoft’s strength with that of another. This is more likely to produce a happier outcome than yoking two ailing businesses, Yahoo’s and its own online offerings, and hoping for a miracle.

For an illustration of how Microsoft could select targets more judiciously, Mr. Cusumano, who is a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed to the Oracle Corporation’s strategic acquisitions and its prudent use of capital to “roll up firms with similar products and customers to its own.” With impressive regularity — 13 strategic acquisitions in 2005, another 13 in 2006 and 11 in 2007 — Oracle has picked up key products and customers while avoiding an “oops” slip, venturing too far away from its core business, or paying too much. At no point along the way has it acted in a fit of desperation.

Last month, Oracle pulled in another major prize, BEA Systems, a leading software company, for about $8.5 billion. You’ve probably never heard of BEA: it’s doubly obscure, producing the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that large companies use to build behind-the-scenes software systems for their entire business, or “enterprise software.” Both Oracle and BEA are based in Silicon Valley, but their side of the street is not lit by klieg lights and does not get the same attention as the Googles and Yahoos.

And, to be honest, it’s not much fun hanging out on the enterprise side of the software business. BEA says its software helps organizations “ensure that business processes are optimally defined, managed, executed and monitored.” Unless you’re playing Business Jargon Bingo, it’s hard to sit still and remain attentive. You have to admire Oracle’s ability to remain focused on the business that serves business and to not be distracted by the buzz of the Web crowd gathered across the street.

Microsoft does business software well. Approximately half its revenue comes from business customers for its e-mail infrastructure, database systems, developer tools, Office productivity applications and other mainstays. It has also assembled, through acquisitions, a fledgling line of enterprise software that it calls Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft would like Dynamics to be viewed as competing head to head with the No. 2 name in enterprise software, Oracle, or the No. 1, SAP of Germany. For the moment, however, Microsoft Dynamics’ parity with those big names is nothing more than wishful aspiration.

Professor Cusumano has a suggestion: Rather than acquire Yahoo, Microsoft should pursue SAP.

It’s not an outlandish idea. The two companies held merger talks in late 2003, and perhaps since then, too. Microsoft is in an enviable position: it is a nearly universal presence in corporate data centers, and large enterprise customers are arguably the best customers a software company can have. Clients pay very dear prices for the complex, semicustomized software that runs their business. And once they’ve got their systems running — a process that can take years to complete — they aren’t inclined to change vendors lightly.

A few dozen well-paying Fortune 500 customers may actually be more valuable than tens of millions of Web e-mail “customers” who pay nothing for the service and whose attention is not highly valued by online advertisers.

Today, SAP’s market capitalization is about $59 billion, and a sizable premium to get a deal done would send its price well north of that. Microsoft cannot put both SAP and Yahoo in its shopping cart, deals that together might run well over $120 billion. Microsoft must pick one or the other.

Suppose that Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, were the head of Microsoft and was doing the shopping. Which deal would he choose? Past experience suggests that it would not be Yahoo. That acquisition would bring little but duplication headaches — and no large enterprise customers.

It’s amusing to note that the most Larry-like choice, Microsoft’s acquiring of SAP and leaving it alone as an autonomous division to avoid a cross-cultural integration fiasco, is the course that would be most discomfiting to Oracle. Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics, an information technology research firm, in Irvine, Calif., said that “a Microsoft-SAP combination would be Oracle’s worst nightmare.”

Google would not be happy with a conjoined Microsoft and SAP, either. It has made a pro forma expression of its own opposition to a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, but we can speculate that it may be cheering that deal on. Working in Google’s favor are the hostile nature of Microsoft’s bid, the colossal potential for integration problems, and organizational paralysis in, and exodus of talent from, Yahoo.

But were Microsoft to turn and head in SAP’s direction, Google would have reason for concern. Whatever strengthens Microsoft is bound to influence, later if not sooner, its continuing competition with Google. For its own part, Google is keen to expand its foothold inside large companies. Last year, it acquired Postini, whose software filters corporate e-mail. Google has not done so well with corporate customers on its own, however. Google Apps has conspicuously failed to win adoption quickly.

If Microsoft is to rededicate its attention to its most valuable assets, business customers, a prerequisite is dropping its ill-advised bid for Yahoo. And to find the best acquisition strategy, ask, “What would Larry do?”

If Microsoft tries to fight Google with wobbly legs, scared witless, it will lose.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.


微軟要以四百二十一億美元收購雅虎。看到這個新聞,我頓覺嘩然。微軟到底要收購雅虎來幹什麼?微軟可以在雅虎身上得到些什麼?我真的一點也摸不着頭腦。蓋茲這個天才的思想太高深了吧。

微軟是看中雅虎的網上應用科技嗎?不見得。雅虎近年沒有推出過什麼令人注目的科技創新,就算是原先不少人寄以很高期望的search engine Panama也令人大失所望。

微軟是要羅致雅虎的科技人才嗎?雅虎近年已陷入沉船般的困境,樹倒猢猻散,很多好的科技人才早已擇善而棲,走了不少。甚至楊致遠重新掛帥掌舵,也不能吸引走了的人回巢。

而且,微軟、雅虎企業文化大不相同;就算收購成功,兩間公司的文化衝突必定會導致更多人才流失。現時美國有理想的科技人才,大都加盟Google或Apple般當時得令的偶像派公司。對自己的能力有信心的人,更往往自立門戶,搞start-up。自己創業,既有挑戰性又有賺大錢的機會。有想法的科技人才又怎會垂青雅虎般的「百年」老店?

雅虎既沒有科技,又缺乏人才,究竟微軟看中這檔在夕陽中沉落、前景昏暗的生意些什麼?
我真的不明白。

雅虎是網絡經營的先驅者,不幸它的經營概念滯留在開墾時的視野框框中。那是個只顧搶eyeballs、盡量scale up,那是個無所不為、而又一切皆可為的奔放不羈時代。當時的網絡經營者都相信,網絡可以高速地四通八達,網絡的經營模式不僅要是個conglomerate,更要是個多層次的conglomerates。這基本上還是雅虎的經營模式。

網絡的世界是個壯闊浩瀚、自由奔放。這是個入市門檻低的經營世界,只要你有創意、有能力,用很少的資本便可以參與經營,因而這是個比地下市場更富競爭的世界。競爭愈大的環境便愈需要更專注、更專業的能力才可以取勝。在這樣的經營環境,莫說是多層次的conglomerate的經營模式,就算是普通conglomerate,也會分散領導階層的專注、分薄其能力,削弱競爭力,以致無從取勝。

是的,六七十年代流行過的conglomerate經營模式,現今除了GE這僅存的例外,其他都早已煙消雲散,證明conglomerate是行不通的。現今網絡的經營漸趨成熟,人們開始覺悟過去奔放不羈的想法和做法是行不通的,故此正朝�更專注、更專業的經營模式發展。

雅虎的經營概念和模式已經顯得既過時又殘舊。在網絡世界,若然沒有不斷以自我摧毀的創造(creative self-destruction)來維持新的經營概念和模式,那麼十多年下來,驀然回首已是老態龍鍾的「百年」身了,雅虎不幸便是這樣的一間網絡公司了。

雅虎近年迷失了方向,成為收購目標,那是無可避免的厄運。它的管理層沒有焦點,策略混亂,執行能力差,缺乏發展願景遠見,因此運作起來缺乏堅定的信心。

例如,現時紅透半天的Facebook本來已是它的囊中物,甚至跟Facebook的CEO Mark Zuckerberg協定以十億美元作為收購價了,但臨門一腳,舉棋不定,三心兩意,害怕買貴了貨,結果錯失良機。到回頭要人家減價為八億五千萬元,這反而給Zuckerberg一個脫身的機會。後來Zuckerberg以二億四千萬美元的天價賣了一?六%股權給微軟 —— 相當於整間公司市值一百五十億美元。

同樣,雅虎也幾乎買到了YouTube,亦因為猶豫不決

、裹足不前,以致吃到了口中的deal也給Google搶走。還有,雅虎也認真考慮過收購Jotspot —— Facebook和Myspace等social network科技的原創者。同樣也因為意向不堅定,而給當時還羽毛未豐的Google收購了。

從這些例子,我們可以看到,雅虎在對業務缺乏視野、沒有信心,因而遇事遲疑,錯過了不知多少黃金機會。雅虎明顯地已陷入迷惘的旋渦中。

有一個時候,雅虎的graphical display廣告帶來不錯的利潤,可是這門生意已在走下坡,與此同時Google則創新了不少賣廣告的方法。時至今日,如果雅虎想增強它的廣告收入,最簡單和有效的方法是讓Google幫它推銷它的search engine的廣告。Google推銷廣告的能力比雅虎實在強大得太多了。雅虎有能力迎頭趕上嗎?想也不用想了。



去年楊致遠回朝重掌帥印,當時他誓言要大刀闊斧改革,可是至今我們仍未看到他有過什麼改革或創新了什麼科技產品。雅虎依然死氣沉沉,而其股價也一直在尋底,不要說迎頭趕上氣勢凌厲的Google,就算是要阻止業務繼續滑落下去也不容易。這麼一來,被收購的厄運是無法避免的了。若然收購了雅虎,微軟有本事將它止跌回升,追貼Google嗎?不見得。

收購後,微軟和雅虎合併起來的search市場占有率將會是三○%。不過這也是死氣沉沉的三○%而已,跟虎虎生威、創意盎然,占有六二%市場的Google比,簡直不可同日而語。

不過,微軟財雄勢大,又有個強大的科技人才陣容。收購了雅虎,雙劍合璧,可以挑戰Google的優勢嗎?看來也不可能。微軟要是有這個能力,它自己的網上業務又豈致掙扎多年,而依然毫無起色?


矽谷現時流傳的看法是,完成收購,雅虎便會變成微軟的AOL。.....

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