Andy Patrizio, in this blog post, continues discussing his thoughts on the Vanity Fair article, "Microsoft's Lost Decade." This last article mentions some things Microsoft has done right!
One thing he mentions is the growth of Windows Server. While at the start of the "lost decade," Windows Server was considered a departmental server; according to IDC, Windows Server sales now represent 71% of all quarterly server shipments, powering most major ecommerce servers - in contrast to a decade ago, when UNIX was the leader.
Something not mentioned in the article was the growth of Microsoft's Server Management Tools division. Ten years ago, we had MOM 2000 and SMS 2.0. The term "System Center" had not yet seen the light of day. (System Center was first announced at MMS 2003.) Since then there have been three new releases of Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, two of Service Manager, not to mention Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Orchestrator ... and all the other components now part of System Center 2012.
To have an enterprise-capable operating system, you have to have tools to manage it. You need to know when systems may be having issues (preferably proactively), you need to be able to manage software deployment, patch management, to monitor for malware, and have a functional helpdesk. You need to manage your backups, be able to integrate the various components in your datacenter, and manage virtual machines and the cloud.
The growth of the Server Management Tools division and adoption of System Center goes hand in hand with the growth of Windows Server! Yes, Microsoft definitely got that right.