Until recently I had no idea Microsoft made hardware (other than mice and keyboards), let alone that they were in the Wi-Fi business. (Image from GeekTimes.)

While I think the company did the right thing by killing the unit they're missing a Key Clue that would let them make a ton of money in this space.

Are you listening, Redmond?

Every company should do what it does best. It should not be, as Random House explained in one of its great "word of the day" features, ultracrepidarian Or, as the Greek painter Apelles first put it, loosely translated, "shoemaker, stick to your last." (A last in this case is the form from which a shoe is built.)

This image, by the way, is of a band named (believe it or not) ultracrepidarian..

The trick is knowing what your last is. In Microsoft's case, it's creating software platforms that other people can use to build big businesses.

In recent years, with its monopoly position and its need to grow, Microsoft has forgotten this Key Clue.

I hope the closing of the hardware division forces someone at the top of Microsoft to re-think this Clue, and understand what it means.

In the context of 802.11, it means Microsoft should be building a software platform for wireless LAN applications. It has the beginnings of this in terms of WinCE, its embedded operating system, along with software that can be updated and patched remotely from any ISP, not just your local phone company but also from, say, MSN. Or Earthlink. Or twoguysandatruck.net. (I made that up -- there is no such ISP.)

The platform should guarantee security on both sides of the connection -- Internet and LAN -- but it must also be robust, scalable, and open.

Obviously the platform will be expressed in hardware, but as in the PC world, where it just created the operating system hardware, Microsoft should limit its efforts to creating a reference platform, perhaps in conjunction with a hardware outfit like Intel (which also has great motivation to get into this because its communication efforts are lagging), then working on the "killer apps" to drive that platform forward.

That's what Microsoft does best. That's what MS-DOS, MS-Windows and MS-Office were all about, if you're looking at it from Microsoft's perspective. Microsoft built platforms, and it built the key applications. I'd say it did well with this.

The key to Microsoft's success in the future should be just what made it successful in the past. That is, it must make others successful.

If we have an open, expandable platform for wireless LAN applications, applications that use the Internet existing in the air, tieing together the Internet of Things, then we have the next Big Boom. We have the World of Always-On. Microsoft will profit hugely, but it will not profit exclusively. Its ISVs, its channel, and the companies building hardware for its platform will also profit.

That's what Microsoft does best.

Do what you do best.