It's all smoke and mirrors but it works.
It does work and it is very compelling, at least on the tin. The problem is convincing powers that be that it doesn't do what it says is borderline impossible. The most they've built is equal parts astounding and terrifying.
In a sort of funny twist I feel like this is an area Google could really excel in if they got their shit together. Signing up for Workspace and GCP and everything else makes you feel like they don't want you to use their products.
TFA seems strangely relevant as there seems to be some cultural values reflected in both Microsoft's security posture and reputation, and the ability to bundle and market disparate and downright broken (at least in some cases) products effectively.
The problem is that Microsoft still hasn't said that officially and directly out loud despite the writing on the wall. They continue to sell DevOps to new teams and point to its "active roadmap" (despite it being mostly unambitious and increasingly "copy X from GitHub"). So a lot of companies still have just enough doubt in the message that DevOps is legacy/dead that they keep inside it and don't migrate to GitHub, because Microsoft keeps giving them that doubt. I'm not sure if it is superstition on Microsoft's part to not kill DevOps (it is an ancient team with quite a legacy; it's maybe Microsoft's albatross), some sort of "magic" migration strategy they want to keep secret until complete, or just that Microsoft loves telling customers what they want to hear and enough companies want to hear "DevOps is alive and in good health" for a number of sunk cost or emotional support reasons.
Once Microsoft learned that ADO was not, indeed, dead, they began to reformulate the path forward for ADO and have actually released a fair amount of preview and release features since the pivot back.
Enterprises like ADO and even when ADO was “legacy”, MSFT continued to see an uptick in adoption. ADO has better integration with Azure, at least for the web app space I play in.
Microsoft will show up with 10 sales engineer, while others might just be a contractor or a zoom call.
They present themself as the authority for non-technical business and is winning a lot on that.
They're good at capturing market share, no doubt about it.