Few CEOs have been more maligned over the past decade than Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. It's a thankless job to follow an industry legend and in his 14 years as Microsoft CEO, Ballmer never managed to step out of the shadow of Bill Gates.
Here are four quick takeaways on the Ballmer era at Microsoft:
Wall Street and the tech industry didn't embrace Ballmer primarily because his product vision never inspired enough confidence that Microsoft would be a winner in the future.
Under Ballmer's watch, Microsof whiffed on the mobile revolution, blowing its lead in smartphones and tablets. In 2007, Ballmer said, "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." By the beginning of 2012, the iPhone was generating more revenue for Apple than all of Microsoft's businesses combined.
Ballmer quietly turned Microsoft into an enterprise powerhouse, building Microsoft's server and services businesses and making the company a trusted partner with many of the world's largest companies, organizations, and governments.
While Bing has been much maligned, it's a solid product and the data it gathers makes it invaluable to the future of Microsoft. Plus, there's the growing Azure juggernaut, which has a chance to be one of the big winners of the future of the cloud.
All in all, history may end up being kinder to Steve Ballmer than Wall Street and the tech industry ever were, especially if Microsoft's lucrative investments in the enterprise and the cloud turn out to be the future of the company.
You can find a lot more perspective on this issue in the links below, including Mary Jo Foley's exclusive exit interview with Ballmer over on ZDNet. Also, jump in the discussion in the comments to add your perspective on how history will judge Steve Ballmer and how you think the future of Microsoft will look.
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