Great article. Just recently subscribed. Wondering if you could expand on this point “consider (broadly) the trek from mainframes [chips, hardware, operating system, and applications all fused together] to Wintel [hardware and chips modularized but OS and applications integrated] to enterprise cloud [hardware, chips, OS, and applications all modularized]”.

Specifically, the Wintel picture seems more appropriate for the PC rather than the enterprise IT stack. Would you not consider Microsoft integrated across the operating system, database, middleware, and application layers? And then as we progress into Enterprise Cloud, it seems as though Microsoft will stay integrated across these while offering modular solutions on AWS/GCP (say running Windows Server for example) while AWS will be an integrated player across the database, middleware, and application layers. If we also through in sales and distribution as a critical layer then both Azure/AWS integrating across that layer also.

Does this leave Microsoft in a powerful position of playing both vertical integrator (server OS, DBMS, applications) as well as horizontal integrator on the desktop (Teams) and on the server (Azure)? Particularly if these integrations combine with demand for performance rather than flexibility and scale.