All designed around Vendor Lockin, then putting the screws to business with various and complex licensing
CAL's for example would never be possible with out Vendor Lockin, What kind of extortion scheme do you have to have to sell a server licence then charge for every thing that wants to connect to the server.....
CALs - you mean like literally every successful SaaS solution on the market today? CALs are alive and well and aren't EVER going to die. Salesforce.com? CAL. Openair? CAL. Workday? CAL.
Etc. etc. etc.
Even at their most dominant, Microsoft kept adding things customers wanted. AD was a big leap forward for customers, when Microsoft could have rested on the domain model. SQL Server kept adding capabilities, Exchange, etc.