This is annoying because Ars is one of the better tech blogs out there, but it still has instances of biased reporting like this one. It's interesting to decipher this article with an eye on what they said, what they implied, and what they didn't say.
Would be good if a sales person chime could in to keep me honest, but:
1. There is a difference between sales quotas and sales growth targets. The former is a goal, latter is aspirational, a "stretch goal". They were not hitting their stretch goals.
2. The stretch goals were, like, doubling the sales in a year. And they dropped it to 25% or 50% growth. No idea what the adoption of such a product should be, but doubling sounds pretty ambitious? I really can't say, and neither did TFA.
3. Only a fraction met their growth goals, but I guess it's safe to assume most hit their sales quotas, otherwise that's what the story would be about. Also, this implies some DID hit their growth goals, which implies at least some doubled their sales in a year. Could be they started small so doubling was easy, or could be a big deal, we don't know.
4. Sales quotas get revised all the time, especially for new products. Apparently, this was for a single product, Foundry, which was launched a year ago, so I expect some trial and error to figure out the real demand.
5. From the reporting it seems Foundry is having problems connecting to internal data sources... indicating it's a problem with engineering, and not a problem with the AI itself. But TFA focuses on AI issues like hallucinations.
6. No reporting on the dozens of other AI products that MSFT has churned out.
As an aside, it seems data connectivity issues are a stickier problem than most realize (e.g. organizational issues) and I believe Palantir created the FDE role for just this purpose: https://nabeelqu.substack.com/p/reflections-on-palantir
Maybe without that strategy it would be hard for a product like this to work.
Would be good if a sales person chime could in to keep me honest, but:
1. There is a difference between sales quotas and sales growth targets. The former is a goal, latter is aspirational, a "stretch goal". They were not hitting their stretch goals.
2. The stretch goals were, like, doubling the sales in a year. And they dropped it to 25% or 50% growth. No idea what the adoption of such a product should be, but doubling sounds pretty ambitious? I really can't say, and neither did TFA.
3. Only a fraction met their growth goals, but I guess it's safe to assume most hit their sales quotas, otherwise that's what the story would be about. Also, this implies some DID hit their growth goals, which implies at least some doubled their sales in a year. Could be they started small so doubling was easy, or could be a big deal, we don't know.
4. Sales quotas get revised all the time, especially for new products. Apparently, this was for a single product, Foundry, which was launched a year ago, so I expect some trial and error to figure out the real demand.
5. From the reporting it seems Foundry is having problems connecting to internal data sources... indicating it's a problem with engineering, and not a problem with the AI itself. But TFA focuses on AI issues like hallucinations.
6. No reporting on the dozens of other AI products that MSFT has churned out.
As an aside, it seems data connectivity issues are a stickier problem than most realize (e.g. organizational issues) and I believe Palantir created the FDE role for just this purpose: https://nabeelqu.substack.com/p/reflections-on-palantir
Maybe without that strategy it would be hard for a product like this to work.