Why We Need Xbox for Enterprises: Page 2

Companies could toss those special-purpose video-conferencing systems in the recycling bin, and embrace all-purpose systems that do real work. For example, imagine Xbox for Enterprise versions of online meeting applications. Imagine using voice-recognition to automatically create a transcript of meetings, which you can then e-mail to all participants. Imagine a video-conferencing system that zoomed in on each speaker automatically.

Data centers could be able to monitor and manage more information on larger screens, and control management applications with gestures and voice.

Great for Partners

The industry would love to sell second systems (two full PCs per user instead of one), and larger-screen systems. Xbox for Enterprises could give a needed boost to the enterprise hardware market and to VARs.

Enterprise and business applications and services are hitting a kind of wall caused by information overload. A new Kinect-based interface could help break through that wall with innovative new ways to present complex data sets on a big screen.

Great for Microsoft

How is Microsoft going to move Office forward? How many more features can you cram into Word? How can you make people not hate PowerPoint presentations?

Xbox for Enterprise could enable Microsoft to come out with a voice- and gesture-controlled version of all these apps, and make users and enterprises happy to shell out a premium to use these new, enhanced versions.

And remember, Xbox is a Microsoft hardware product. So, like Apple, Microsoft could make enormous money from not just application and OS software, but also third-party app "royalties" and hardware as well.

Apple is still a minority player, but has all the initiative and momentum. Apple achieved this with a bold strategy to leverage a popular consumer platform into a total-industry take-over.

Well, Microsoft has a popular consumer platform, too.

If Microsoft wants to beat back the Apple onslaught, it's going to have to think outside the box – and inside the Xbox.