Enterprise

Cooperation Is The New Normal At Microsoft

Comment

Image Credits:

When Microsoft settled its patent lawsuits with Google yesterday, it ended a long battle with the search giant, but it wasn’t an isolated action. It was part of a continuing pattern of serving its customers instead of its corporate ego. Whether it’s evolving agreements with Apple, Salesforce or Box or putting an end to senseless lawsuits, Microsoft is attempting to present an entirely new public face and fresh way of doing business.

In a Bloomberg report yesterday, the two companies ended their fight with a statement of cooperation:

“Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers,” the technology giants said in a joint statement.”

Notice the focus on customers. That’s not a coincidence.

When I talk to analysts and other industry watchers, I’ve heard a consistent story. CIOs want their tools to work together. They want their vendors to work together, and vendors who are at war with one another can’t possibly be collaborating. It’s just too hard.

Microsoft appears to be listening. It doesn’t hurt that like many large companies, Microsoft sees a shifting marketplace. Surely CEO Satya Nadella realizes the status quo, which was Microsoft being mostly uncooperative and filing a bunch of lawsuits, was no longer going to work.

Making Friends And Influencing People

Last week at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce customer conference, Nadella appeared on stage. Think about that for a moment. It wasn’t that long ago that Microsoft was suing Salesforce for patent infringement — another patent lawsuit, how about that?

Clearly there was a time when lawyers had way too much power inside of Microsoft and suing everyone in sight was the way to go, but that’s changing. People talk about the new era under Nadella, and it’s hard not to notice a concrete change that is much more than window dressing or a good PR effort.

It is incumbent upon us, especially those of us who are platform vendors to partner broadly to solve real pain points our customers have. Satya Nadella

That has meant a massive cultural shift inside the company, one which seems to have stunned some long-time industry watchers, who have been used to a Microsoft that was traditionally difficult to work with. That’s no longer the case under Nadella, and the change is palpable to anyone paying attention.

Nadella appearing at Dreamforce was part of that. Microsoft and Salesforce products work together and there is an increasing spirit of cooperation and camaraderie that Benioff expressed in his introduction.

“Satya and I have become good friends. We are delighted he accepted our invitation to come to the conference. He is an incredible person, an incredible visionary and an incredible leader of an incredible company,” Benioff told the packed auditorium.

That he gave such an effusive introduction was, well, incredible, but Nadella spoke more broadly when asked by Wired journalist Jessi Hempel about the challenge of partnering across the industry.

“If you look at our industry, how is our industry going to succeed? It’s only going to succeed if we can add value to our customers. Our customers are going to make choices that make the most sense for them, and it’s not going to be homogeneous choices. They are going to use all these different applications and multiple platforms. It is incumbent upon us, especially those of us who are platform vendors to partner broadly to solve real pain points our customers have,” Nadella said.

He added that he doesn’t see this as a zero sum competitive game. Of course Microsoft will compete hard within markets, but he sees such a huge opportunity around digital transformation, and these partnerships can only help amplify that.

Box, Apple and Microsoft Sitting In A Tree

The other day at BoxWorks, the Box customer conference, more conviviality was on display on stage. As with Salesforce, Box and Microsoft have not always had an easy relationship. Box made its early reputation with huge billboards on Route 101 in California making fun of Microsoft SharePoint, one of its earliest competitive targets.

Box is like SharePoint without the...billboard from 2009.
Courtesy of Box

 

But times change and companies change and Box is making a slew of important friends including Apple, IBM and Microsoft. In fact, Box showed off how well integrated its services are with Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365. CEO Aaron Levie pointed out that customers who use Box are demanding this integration and the two companies are giving it to them.

Apple too is finding ways to make friends with Microsoft. For years, the companies have been bitter rivals, but Tim Cook, speaking at BoxWorks on Tuesday attempted to bury the hatchet.

“Apple and Microsoft can partner on more things than we can compete on, and that is what the customer wants…Office on the Mac is a force,” Cook told the audience. “Partnering with Microsoft is great for our customers and that’s why we do it.”

There it is again: It’s what our customers want. Microsoft certainly recognizes that. Their new frenemies do too. Customers are insisting on a high level of integration and everyone is listening and trying to work together.

A couple of years ago, this kind of esprit de corps among these disparate companies would have been unthinkable. Today it’s the standard way of doing business and Microsoft is transforming before our eyes to be a part of it.

More TechCrunch

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which…

OpenAI and Google lay out their competing AI visions

Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In…

Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’

When Jeffrey Wang posted to X asking if anyone wanted to go in on an order of fancy-but-affordable office nap pods, he didn’t expect the post to go viral.

With AI startups booming, nap pods and Silicon Valley hustle culture are back

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But…

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

A new crop of early-stage startups — along with some recent VC investments — illustrates a niche emerging in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike the companies bringing robotaxis to…

VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don’t need roads

When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying…

Deal Dive: Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: OpenAI moves away from safety

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the…

Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…

Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas

Welcome to Startups Weekly! We’ve been drowning in AI news this week, with Google’s I/O setting the pace. And Elon Musk rages against the machine.

Startups Weekly: It’s the dawning of the age of AI — plus,  Musk is raging against the machine

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…

IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises

YouTube TV has announced that its multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. The Android launch comes two months after YouTube…

YouTube TV’s ‘multiview’ feature is now available on Android phones and tablets

Featured Article

Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

CSC ServiceWorks provides laundry machines to thousands of residential homes and universities, but the company ignored requests to fix a security bug.

1 day ago
Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and the buzz is palpable. But what if we told you there’s a chance for you to not just attend, but also…

Harness the TechCrunch Effect: Host a Side Event at Disrupt 2024

Decks are all about telling a compelling story and Goodcarbon does a good job on that front. But there’s important information missing too.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Goodcarbon’s $5.5M seed deck

Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

Slack under attack over sneaky AI training policy

A Texas-based company that provides health insurance and benefit plans disclosed a data breach affecting almost 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security number stolen. WebTPA said…

Healthcare company WebTPA discloses breach affecting 2.5 million people

Featured Article

Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

1 day ago
Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Ember has partnered with HSBC in the U.K. so that the bank’s business customers can access Ember’s services from their online accounts.

Embedded finance is still trendy as accounting automation startup Ember partners with HSBC UK

Kudos uses AI to figure out consumer spending habits so it can then provide more personalized financial advice, like maximizing rewards and utilizing credit effectively.

Kudos lands $10M for an AI smart wallet that picks the best credit card for purchases

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking…

A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’

U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…

Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.

X pushes more users to Communities

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?

Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.

Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more

We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…

Astronauts fall over. Robotic limbs can help them back up.

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.

Tesla keeps cutting jobs and the feds probe Waymo