Enterprise Priorities and Roadmap for 2014

A “devices and services” strategy that brings in more revenue from mobile devices and online services will continue to drive Microsoft’s priorities and technology roadmap in 2014.The strategy could prompt more enterprises to evaluate the company’s mobile technology and cloud services, but important releases and retirements are also coming for the company’s OS, application, and database software for PCs and servers.

Transitioning to Cloud Services

Office 365 and other Microsoft-hosted enterprise cloud services sold on subscription will remain a major priority in 2014. For Microsoft, the services promise to expand revenue by capturing enterprise spending on operations (not just software licenses) and reducing license noncompliance. Compared to software, the services deliver more predictable annuity revenue that is less dependent on the company’s product release schedule, and they can be updated rapidly to respond to competitors such as Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.com, whose cloud services compete with Microsoft software. For customers, Microsoft-hosted services can offer quicker expansion, more predictable costs, and fewer personnel focused on low-level infrastructure. However, even customers who don’t adopt the services could see effects, as Microsoft’s software development focuses on scalability, availability, and management features that are required to run the software on a massive scale.