Should the NFL Competition Committee Look into Seahawks Noise Advantage

NFL fans should be pretty pumped up about tonight's Seahawks 49ers game. It pits last years NFC champions versus a great Seattle team. Its a huge NFC West battle and comes with the addition of the Pete Caroll-Jim Harbaugh rivalry plus the Richard Sherman thing.

But strangely, I am not looking forward to the game. Most non Seahawk fans do not enjoy their teams trips to Seattle since the advent of their noise box stadium in 2002. You can look forward to your team committing a bunch of false starts and to struggling on offense because it will not be able to effectively audible at the line of scrimmage. Further you can count on your team being less effective at running the ball because your O-Line will not hear the snap count.

NFC teams have learned to not judge themselves against the Seahawks on the road. CenturyLink field is the equivalent of Tiger and Phil teeing it up on the mini-putt course. I mean who cares which guy is better at the windmill hole or who can most efficiently navigate the clown's mouth.  Lets just get on to the next competition at a real venue.

This is not just pre-game whining by a Niners fan. Here are the stats. Don't mean to go all Nate Silver on you, but the Seahawks have a 10 point home field point differential advantage. The league average is 5 points.

The chart to support this data is below. Seahawks season home point differential is 79.6 points. Since there are 8 home games, their per game advantage is 9.95 points.

Full Article is here.

Every team expects road games to be in a hostile environment and have to tough it out. But Century Link field tips in too far.

Microsoft Recovery Plan. Step 6. Make it Official with Marissa

Microsoft has lost over $12B in its online division since it started. If you add the aQuantinve $6B write down, you have $18B of losses. Wow!!! There is a certainly a case for dumping this division to concentrate in other areas, but I think that is folly.

Microsoft needs to stay in this business. It needs to buy Yahoo and let Marrissa work her product magic to make this a great business. Amateur hour is over, time to step up.

I think Microsoft needs to be in the online business and by extension the Internet advertising business. Here is why:

•      The Consunerization of IT is not a fad. It’s a reality. Great consumer products designed for the consumer are making there way into a core business IT market. Staying in Online allows Microsoft to be part of this trend, not swimming against the tide.
•       Google dominates here. Facebook is second, but I believe Microsoft can be a player in this large growing market and be profitable.
•      In step 2, I recommended that MSFT be a leader in mobile apps. They can’t likely be achieved without staying in the consumer online business.
•     Running Bing and Outlook.com gives them experience building and running massive data centers and huge software systems at a global scale. This knowledge can be applied to their other cloud businesses.

That having been said, Microsoft is a bantam weight in a heavyweight division that features Google playing the role of Muhammad Ali and Facebook playing the role of Joe Frazier. Here is why this deal must finally get done.

·      Market Power. Google does $40B per year in Online Advertising. Facebook does $6.5B. Microsoft does $3.2B. Yahoo does $4.8B. The combined entity will have more market power and be relevant to advertisers.

•       Economies of scale. MSFT lost $1.5B last year here. Yahoo made $1.5B. There are a lot of redundancies that can be eliminated in this combined division can be solidly profitable. Get some merge consolidation experts in there and you will be in good shape.
•       The combined entity has some really nice properties. Bing, Skype, Yahoo Portal, Tumblr plus a lot of good Yahoo Content. If they take my advice in step 2, they could have Dropbox.
•       Executive Skill synergies. Marissa is a kickass product person who is helping change the culture and re-establish Yahoo in Silicon Valley. She can team with some badass Microsoft operators and use Microsoft’s huge cash hoard to compete with the heavyweights here.

Once the deal is done, one more thing needs to get done to make this merger work. Marissa needs to make the trip across Highway 85 to Cupertino. Tim Cook and Apple needs a partner to fight Google. The MicroHoo Internet and mobile applications need to become the default apps on iPhones and iPads. Bing Search, maybe rebranded on iPhones and iPads is a must. 

Microsoft Recovery Plan. Step 5. Win the Connected Car Market and Home Automation market

I am a little less enthusiastic about this series now that Microsoft has bought Nokia. I thought the Microsoft board might be consider a different path, but it now appears that they are committed to a similar course as years past. That having been said, my Dad said "Start what you finish", so here is the next step in my plan to remake Microsoft.

There are two places where computing still sucks. The Car and the Home.

First, the Car market:

There are about 60M cars sold per year Worldwide. There are just over 1B automobiles on the roads today.  The auto industry has made tremendous strides to automate vehicle operations, but the car is still a standalone system that must be connected to the internet and the outside world.

There is a tremendous opportunity to partner with the car companies to develop a connected car that links applications to the telematics of the car to provide a better, safer car that is continuously connected to the internet.

Google has some real big assets here. They have the world’s premier mapping system and are the clear technology leaders in autonomous cars. But it is not clear how or if Google with partner with existing car companies to bring this technology to the market.

Here is what Microsoft can do:

  

• The Ford Sync partnership is a good start and can be built on to broaden the functionality and number of partnerships.
•  I  am not exactly sure what rights to the Navtech maps product were acquired in the Nokia  transaction, but hopefully Microsoft  has broad rights to use the product in cars..
• The former Navtech mapping data and applcication can be used to work with automobile companies to develop geo-aware mobile apps that will be the center of the car of the future. The car manufacturer’s will open up their telematics systems to application development and Microsoft can build applications
• This business is gong to be a hybrid cloud system. The car will not be able to 100% connected to the internet because of wireless limitation, so on board systems will be necessary. Microsoft is good at these hybrid systems and this environment plays to their strengths.
• Lastly, the connected car will need lots of approvals from Government agencies who are concerned that too much technology will distract the driver and compromise safety. Microsoft knows how to work with governments now and with the car companies they can make a connected car that is approved by the regulators. 

There is a lot of work to do here. But car companies need a big technology partner to move their products to the next level. Microsoft could be that partner.

On the Home Front, the opportunity is even bigger

At every tech conference in the past 20 years, some speaker talks about how the Internet connected refrigerator will know when your milk is empty and will then order it for you, If I hear it one more time, I will stick a fork in my eye. We have been talking about home automation for decades. In fact, I think I went to some home of the future display at Disneyworld that was created in the 60’s with GE. But lets face it we are not close to this. Not evenly remotely close.

But we can be. The home’s we live are the least “smart” of all environments . Someone needs to fix this. Microsoft could win this. They need to start winning new categories not playing catch up on ones that you have already lost.

I also think that Microsoft software and services background works well here. Unless we get 1GB Fiber to all homes soon, the home automation market is going to need software and maybe a server in the home. Microsoft could do that and then connect it to its cloud. There are three areas that it would make sense to focus on:

• The entertainment space. You already have Xbox and some great gesture technology. Apple and Google TV are very mediocre. There is still room for a  great device that does entertainment for all in the home. Watch out for Youtube though. It’s Google’s best weapon here. User generated and third party content are a powerful combination. I would not let Netflix stay independent if I were you.
• The Connected appliances – Refrigerator, Stoves, Washer, Dryer  are all possible. But I would start with heating/cooling and lighting. Very valuable to consumers and it would have a huge “green” impact.
•  Home Security. Seriously, I still have keys that let me in my house that do not have a computer chip in them. I spend money for third parties to monitor my house and the video system is standalone and not integrated. Please someone fix this!!

So, don’t despair, you lost the mobile operating system war, but there are lots more categories to re-invent. 

Since you ignored step 1, Try Step 7. Win Wearable computing

Win Wearable computing

I promised to give the Microsoft my humble advice on 7 steps to re-establish themselves as a technical leader. I had only written to step 4 when the Nokia deal was announced. Sorry, I have a day job so the advice comes out slowly. :-). But now that you have ignored step 1, let me skip ahead to step 7 and maybe, just maybe the $7B acquisition will not be a dinosaur mating session.

First if all, for those non-regular readers of this blog, please see my advice on why Microsoft should exit the phone/tablet and windows phone pace. The purchase of Nokia does not change the dynamics of the game. Developers don’t want a third platform and they will not build cutting edge application for your devices. The battle is over and you were not a winner.. You can pour billions of investment into this space and maybe you can win 5-10% of the market. Your prize for that accomplishment will be billons of dollars in losses. It will make the $18B you lost in Microsoft online properties seem like a paper cut.

But there might still be a way to win. Win wearable computing. This market is early. The winners have not been decided. Google Glass, the activity monitors, the soon to be launched watches are real early. Developers have not committed to a platform and they will build to any great device that gains market share.  These applications are not going to be phone/tablet ports, they are going to be new applications that take advantage of the unique nature of wearable devices. They battle for the hearts and minds of wearable developers is just beginning. While we have not heard much from Microsoft or Nokia in this area. I am sure you have resources on this. I would double and triple down here.  Make great wearable devices and applications that that work well with Windows and iOS and Android.

And you are likely in better shape here now that you own Nokia. They have produced some brilliant hardware over the years. Take your best and brightest and put them on this project. Surely they must be frustrated in the current phone/tablet war. I mean how motivating can it be to sit around the Monday phone/tablet staff meeting with the rallying cry; “We can be #3!!!” or “Let’s crush Blackberry!!!”

I was at a recent conference and Gary Vaynerchuck gave the audience this advice: “The biggest mistake you can make is being romantic about the way you have made money in the past” I would suggest to you that Microsoft is being too romantic about it’s past. Its’ idea is to control the operating system, then win the high margin app business on top of it. We understand it!!! You want Windows on PC/Tablets and Phones! It’s a wonderful romantic idea, but is just fantasy!!!! You have lost the phone /tablet space and you can only win if Android/Apple make a huuuuuuuuuuge mistake or that asteroid thing comes through for you.

If you want romance, pull out a copy of “Casablanca” or better yet, pop in a Betamax tape of the Windows95 launch.  But if you want to regain tech leadership, give up on phones/tablets. Win Wearables.

PS – I will go back and cover steps 5 and 6 later this week.

How Microsoft Can Regain Tech Leadership. Step 4.....

Step 4: Win the Cloud Business War.

Sorry Microsoft, I am late in writing this. But what the heck its free advice, so a day late should not kill you.

So far, I have not talked about two de-investment areas and only one investment area. Here is another investment area. You need to win the Cloud Business War or at least a big part of it. So far the battle is pretty much all Salesforce.com. They are revenue and thought leaders with a great freaking CEO who pretty much founded the category. Amazon Web Services is rolling in their category and upstarts like Workday are also growing really fast. SAP, Oracle and IBM are buying cloud companies, but it is still a tiny part of their sprawling businesses.

Microsoft has some good assets here. After all, you run Bing and Hotmail/Outlook email services that are huge. Running massive data centres that crawl and house copies of the entire internet is really impressive. I think the scale and expertise you have here is second only to Google. You can capitalize on that knowledge and build massively scalable, multi-tenant business systems that will replace large scale on premise systems over the next ten years.

Microsoft has good enterprise DNA and can reach CIOs and LOB executives. Office 365 looks like it it generating  good revenue and is a good place to start and expand from. Windows Azure also looks like a decent competitor. Lots of work to do, but you can be a leader in this category. I would also get out your checkbook on cloud based business startups. Acquisitions make sense. The big guys are not really acquirable, but there are lots of companies that are not overpriced that can be used to round out your portfolio.

One note of caution, you need to dump the notion of porting on premise software to limited multi-tenant architectures. You need to build true cloud based systems in order to get the long term economies of scale that real cloud based systems offer. the cloud based system should be complemented with mobile applications for iOS and Android. Existing cloud vendors are moving too slowly in this area and if you move quickly, you can lead in cloud/mobile business systems.

It's a great business and it not too late, but you need to invest quickly and aggressively.

Stay tuned for Step 5.

Step 3 for Microsoft: Milk the Cow.

Step 3: Milk the Windows Cash Cow

I know this is simple advice. But unbelievably Microsoft seems to need tis. Windows is a cash cow. It has dominant share in a mature and potentially declining market. While many are calling Windows and PC dead, let us not forget that this product generated $19.2B in revenue ( 2% growth) and made $9.5B in profits for Microsoft. If it was a standlaone company it would be #140 of Fortune List of America's Companies, just above Time Warner Cable.

But Microsoft has made the most basic mistake with its cash cow. It spent a huge amount of money trying to reposition the cash cow for growth with Windows 8. And like all cash cows, the result was pretty much as any Harvard B school student would have predicted. The huge investment did not lead to more growth and in fact led to a $2B decline in profits. Its called a cash cow because you don’t need to invest in it. Let the cow out in the pasture and eat the free grass and then milk the cow. Low Costs, Low Growth, but really high profits.

The Windows 8 debacle could have been worse. The massive user interface change that was foisted on users to try and win the unwinnable tablet market, could have killed the cow. I mean, if you have to learn a whole new interface, then why not bite the learning curve bullet and get a MacBook Air.  But the Windows Cash Cow is too strong to be killed or damaged by the user interface, It survived Vista, so this Windows8 thing should be little more than a cracked hoof for this strong cow.

So step 3 is simple. Do less with Windows. Move the development teams to higher growth businesses. You can still release incremental, non jarring upgrades every 2- 3 years to goose the revenue a little. People still need to upgrade to get your support and security patches, so no worries people will adopt even if the next version is incremental.

PCs are not going away. There are about 1.5B of them connected to the internet now and all the projections are that this number grows at about GDP. People may upgrade hardware less, but they still need your software. Hire a cost cutter and economizer to run the unit and boost profits above the 2011 levels and get them up to $12-$13B per year.

Step 4 tomorrow.

How Microsoft can regain tech leadership - Step 2

Build a Huge Mobile Apps Business

In step one, I counseled Microsoft to get out to the Phone and tablet business. The operating system and device segment must be exited because there is no reasonable way Microsoft can win. But you can’t regain tech leadership by exiting businesses, only by building them. Thus Step 2 is:  Be the leader in Mobile Apps on iOS and Android. Start by taking the world’s alltime best selling application, Microsoft Office and make a great mobile version for iOS and Android. Make a tablet version and phone version. And do it fast. Don’t let all these half baked Office translator products eat into your space. Microsoft Office must be dominate on mobile, just like it is on the desktop. And don’t limit the functionality. Since you will no longer be in the Windows Phone operating system business, you don’t need to neuter Office functionality so that Office on Windows Phone is better. You can just make a  great mobile first app and people will pay for it. By the way, you need to nail the collaborative editing ting that Google Docs does so well. You need to stop Google Docs and this is the one killer feature that they have that you don't. After Office, you need to up your game with the Outlook App. Its OK now, but it can be alot better. Don’t let all these calendar and email apps eat into Outlook. You should win that category too. And How about Sharepoint for Mobile. Get that moving. Don’t loose this space to someone like Box.com.  And take Skype and Lync and make them world class mobile first apps. Don’t let Facetime or Google Hangouts win here.

Some more advice. I think Skydrive has to go. No one likes it. Its a distant 4th in the marketplace. I think acquisition makes the most sense here. Are you really going to wait around until Google makes Google Drive good and eat your lunch here? The market leader in file sharing is DropBox. Don’t let them slip through your fingers. It can beat iCloud and Google Drive, especially when you pair it with a great version of Office for mobile. It will cost you a pretty penny, but you have money. Spend it.

Once you have done all that, you can surround the “mobile office platform” with more mobile apps that you can acquire or build. Microsoft should own the whole Mobile productivity app suite on both iOS and Android. Its a big business that will grow as smartphones reach 80%+ penetration and tablets keep selling by the boatload.

Becoming a mobile apps company is not easy. You will need different skill sets and people, but Microsoft has  track record of building great apps for a 15 inch desktop screen, you just need to build great ones for the 4”, 7” and 10” touch world that will dominate for years to come.

So, lets recap:

Step 1: Get out of the Smartphone and Tablet business

Step 2: Build a big Mobile Apps Business

Step 3 will be available tomorrow.