Reset your watches – Microsoft announces another delay

Surely, please, the next announcement from Microsoft will be that finally, yes finally they’ve released something – anything  – on time. This afternoon Microsoft announced it was to delay yet another key product – Office 2007.

Microsoft said it will now aim for a launch of Office 2007 to business customers by the end of 2006 rather than an earlier target of October. Microsoft also said it would delay the general availability of the Office upgrade to early 2007 from its previous January target.

Somehow perversely, this seems OK, releasing Office 2007 in 2007 rather than 2006 seems to make sense, though let’s forget the title and realize that this is another product well behind schedule. What is Microsoft up to?

Office and its OS account for over 50% of Microsoft’s revenue, so another delay will obviously impact on the bottom line.

Sadly Microsoft has already ‘flat-lined’ over the last five years, actually returning a negative result for investors. So is the problem Gates or Ballmer, and is it time for a more radical overhaul.

We think that Microsoft needs to loose, rather than gain. Its company is now bloated and bureaucratic  – innovation, where it was, is now in a quagmire and dead. Microsoft needs to deliver something at least – it really needs to look a few hundred miles south towards Cupertino, it needs to figure out how Apple is beating it with less than a tenth of the R&D budget.

Mr. Gates – leave now or fix it – don’t leave Microsoft in quicksand for the next two years.