What's Microsoft's next billion-dollar business? (Hint: it's not search)
While many company watchers continue to fret over what Microsoft will and won’t do to make money in the search/online advertising space, there are other less sexy Microsoft business units plodding successfully along with relatively little public notice.
Until fairly recently, SharePoint was one of those businesses. But now that Microsoft’s SharePoint sales have passed the $1 billion barrier (they were $1.3 billion for fiscal 2009, which ended for Microsoft on June 30), what’s Microsoft’s next big thing? What products is the company betting on to become the next big, near-term hits?
At Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) last week, company officials shared a few tidbits about one of those businesses: Microsoft System Center. System Center encompasses a variety of system-management tools that Microsoft sells to IT professionals who want to manage their Windows — and Linux/Unix — clients, servers, hypervisors and more.
