Recently Steve Ballmer sent a memo to every Microsoft employee. One short snippet of the very long memo caught my attention.

“We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions, including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security.”

Let’s consider this compound sentence in more manageable pieces, shall we?

“We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions…” Translation: Our customers have their own ideas about our products. Perhaps they tried to use them recently.

“…including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough…” – Translation: Microsoft ships beta. Our products are disposable and meant to be replaced frequently.

“..and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security.” Translation: Was it the rampant virus attacks, or the never ending stream of updates we release on a daily basis that clued people into the issues with our software?

Microsoft is a maturing company in a maturing industry. And the greatest challenge they face is not their competitors, but their customers.