Apple and Google are focused on the consumer and not particular good at enterprise offerings. Thus, focus on enterprise, quit trying to do everything.
Azure
On the right track, keep going!
Continued focus on .NET and dev tools, a historical competency and strength.
Bing
Make the search engine non-profit and spin it out.
All profits from ads on bing go to charities.
Rationale: this, unlike now, makes people want to use it. Usage would skyrocket. (a) This division then goes from losing money to break even. (b) if used a lot, less share for google, which is a nice thing.
Helps with the brand reputation too by doing something “nice”.
Windows
A Big Focus on Security
Passwords don’t work. Add something two-aspect for next version of windows, especially for the business version. Default to encrypted file volumes. Enterprises care about security. Do what enterprises want.
Make next versions of Windows a gaming monster.
Lots of things are moving into the cloud, but the best video games won’t as they need local video and horsepower. Put a big r&d investment in making an existing strength of the operating system even better. Make it very, very easy to write games that run on windows. Then people still need the OS in the consumer space. Some people anyway.
Make Visio Free
Make Visio free, but windows only. (No mac version.) People will use it a lot and then want to have windows to view the files. Same thing with some other productivity apps that don’t generate gigantic revenues. Or, alternatively, throw it into Office at no additional charge and that makes Office better.
Mobile
Focus on enterprise mobile. Buy RIMM and integrate the heck out of it with Office. Yes, this would be quite expensive. But RIMM may get cheaper over the next year being under pressure from android and iphone.
No Advertising Related Businesses
Divest these.
Brand
Improve the reputation of the brand. For example:
Open source some old stuff.
Give away the source code for the old gwbasic (in assembly language) just for fun. Give away the source code for Microsoft Flight Simulator. etc. Builds goodwill for the brand without anything lost. Look for other goodies in the archives that aren’t generating significant earnings.