Last year I read a piece in Vanity Fair that talked about Microsoft and how the company has appeared to stagnate somewhat over the last decade. As a stockholder, I've been a little disappointed in Microsoft's performance, especially as I've seen many other technology companies grow rapidly in that time. The performance has been more suited to some of the stodgier industrial companies than a high tech offering.

There was a time when Microsoft courted developers, and created an excitement that resulted in many individuals and companies writing new applications for the Windows platform and caused an explosion of growth, not just for Microsoft, but for everyone in the ecosystem. The last six or seven years it seems Apple has taken over that crown with the excitement generated by iOS. Even as Microsoft made a fantastic update to its core OS with the lean and fast Windows 7, and even as SQL Server has grown to become a platform that can power almost any application in the world.

Read the rest of "The Microsoft Sideshow" at SQLServerCentral.