What's next for the post-Ozzie Microsoft? No one knows.

Walter H. Pritchard
Analyst, CitiGroup

    Pritchard felt Ozzie's departure was inevitable. Whereas Nelson thinks Microsoft has fallen behind in the enterprise sector, Pritchard thinks the opposite. He sees the company placing more emphasis on enterprise and potentially less on the consumer side, attributing that change in strategy to the company's inability to keep up with rapidly-changing trends.

    "In the consumer space, I would say the Microsoft strategy is evolving and not complete," he says. "They've got two big properties -- mail and messenger -- that attract a lot of consumers, but I don't think they're the first company that even those consumers think of when it comes to those types of services." Microsoft needs to figure out if it wants to be a large general-purpose provider of consumer services, and if it does, need to strategize accordingly.

    Regardless, Pritchard predicts the company's enterprise revenue, currently more than 50%, rising significantly over the next five years.

Sasa Jorovic
Analyst, Janney Capital

    For Jorovic, Microsoft is dying a death by a thousand cuts. The company has yet to successfully transition into popular areas of consumer tech like tablets and mobile. Sure, it's sold 240 million Windows 7 licenses since the OS launched a year ago but with Google (GOOG) pushing the idea that operating system software, namely its Android mobile OS, should be free, the Windows franchise could be one with an inevitable expiration date not too far in the future.

    Moving forward, Jorovic thinks Microsoft's cloud-based services will become increasingly important and should be a higher priority for the company ("I don't think it's happening fast enough," he says.) He even goes so far as to suggest the company eventually drop its "sacred cow" (ie. Windows).

    Says Jorovic: "They should consider it a declining business and move on to where the business is heading next."

Marc Benioff
CEO, SalesForce

    In 2005, the straight-shooting CEO told SalesForce.com (CRM) employees that Microsoft, with its traditional Office software, was a dinosaur. Over the years, his opinion hasn't changed much. In 2008, he took the company to task again, claiming it was clinging to its past more than its future, trying to hold onto its monopolistic position around technology. And in a Gartner keynote last week, Benioff took the opportunity to comment on Ozzie's departure.

    "Ray Ozzie left Microsoft," he said. "Just kind of vaporized. It happened much faster than a Microsoft upgrade. That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to make any point. Ozzie invented Lotus Notes -- it was a breakthrough idea. It was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg was. Can we learn something from this?"

    Perhaps Microsoft is wondering the same thing.