The argument for Microsoft's Steve Ballmer as one of tech's top CEOs

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer has been frequently criticized for his tenure as the top executive at Microsoft, with increasing calls for his resignation. But a VentureBeat blogger argues that he has been an unmitigated success. Agree with the blogger or not, he makes an intriguing argument.

Peter Yared's blog post on VentureBeat is practically a valentine to Ballmer. Here's the core of his argument:

"During Ballmer's 10-year tenure, Microsoft has tripled revenue and doubled net income. Legacy products such as Office, Exchange and SharePoint have been transitioned to the cloud. Windows 7 is a huge hit with over 400 million licenses sold, and early looks at the upcoming Windows 8 are resulting in rave reviews. Windows Phone 7 is a very late entrant into the modern smartphone category, but it is already being declared the number three player, with its innovative user interface and upcoming distribution via Nokia. Some analysts even predict that it will outpace Android within a few years."

He goes on to claim that Ballmer has also made Microsoft a "big player" in the two growing markets of console gaming and search.

Yared is right that Windows 7 has been a hit, and Windows 8 looks like a winner as well. And revenue and income have certainly increased. But those increases have been driven largely by old products, not new ones, including Windows, Office, and other long-time Microsoft hits.

The truth is that Office has not been successfully transitioned to the cloud. True, there is a Web-based version of Office, but it lacks some important basic features, such as automatically syncing documents with client-based versions of Office.

As for Windows Phone 7, it's far from a success, and even Ballmer admits it's not where it should be. Predictions about where it will be in the future are one thing, but the reality of where it is today is another, and that reality is not a very good one. I'm a fan of the just-released Windows Phone 7 Mango, but it still lags in the market.

Microsoft has certainly done will in console gaming, but as for search, the company has invested billions of dollars, and continues to invest billions, and is still well behind Google, showing no signs of catching up.

So Ballmer's tenure is decidely mixed, so much so that influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn has called for him to resign. Microsoft's own employees rate him as tech's worst CEO.

Mango is a very solid product, and from my look at Windows 8, I believe it will be a winner as well. So Ballmer still clearly knows how to get a team to build good products. But one of tech's top-performing CEOs? I'm not convinced.