Microsoft Says IBM/Linux Their Biggest Threat

krypt0n0mic0n writes "An article at The Register shows that Microsoft sees IBM and Linux as the biggest threats to their market domination. Microsoft's Eric Rudder is quoted as saying that Linux is a "formidable" challenge and that "IBM is our greatest competitor. In the way they sell products and compete in corporate accounts." It goes on to say that they believe the NET server will be a challenge to these competitors."

Comments

To die by the hand that feeds you.

[suso]

I find this rather ironic since Microsoft's big break in the beginning was to be able to create MS-DOS for IBM.

continued growth

[f00zbll]

I told by a CEO once when asked about the future of the company. He drew the following comparison. "We have no revenue right now, so we can only go up. Whereas some one like MS has to always push to sustain the growth, because if they don't the stock market will think they've peaked and are on their way down."

Microsoft has to become a major player in enterprises services. If they don't they won't be able to sustain their past growth rates. The OS is rapidly becoming a commodity, now that win 2K is stable enough that that most people don't need to upgrade ever again. Win 2K already does what most people want and more, so the only way to continue to grow is new markets.

That everyone already knows. Microsoft is doing all these interviews to paint a picture that .NET really is ready for the enterprise world of 24/7 computing. Back in 98 MS commissioned some company to prove SQL Server was good enough to run the NY EX, but everyone in the RDBMS business knows Sybase ASE run the stock market. Is it possible that if MS can't get it's act together with .NET, that they have reached their peek?

Re:Good old Way-Back Machine..

[Bobzibub]

I remember!!!

MS threatened to jack up their prices for W95 if they marketed their competition, and that would have been the death of their PC line. IBM was *forced* not to market OS/2.

It didn't make any sense why OS/2 was left to die at the time but it all came out in court documents later.

Happily, Linux being a kind of "public good" this is a real problem for MS this time around. No one set of thumbs to screw, nails to pull.

Cheers,
-b

Remember the trial...

[Kefaa]

We have still not finalized the penalty phase. So now that MS has "true competition" the DOJs
proposal makes perfect sense. MS has been pushed aside in the onslaught of the IBM/Linux OS machine.

While the sarcasm light was on, let's face it, MS announces nothing that does not benefit them directly. If they are claiming IBM/Linux is a threat it is because they need to be seen as having a competitor.

Now the question remains "Why?"

Re:the enterprise will determine who wins

[javacowboy]

Conversely, if Linux/Unix/Java win the enterprise space, Microsoft will have no new source
of revenue and the encroachment of deskop alternatives (OSX and Linux and BSD) will
eventually destroy their financial base.

Sun needs to open-source Java in order to get the OpenSource community 100% behind Java. The SCP is simply not a large enough community to provide the depth of input needed to ensure Java evolves as quickly as .NET. Microsoft, as well as their partners and large customers represents a community much larger than the SCP. Only the legions of OpenSource programmers can hope to compete with it. As Linus Torvalds said in a famous mailing list thread a while back, software mostly evolves according to customer requirements and outside influences, its creation has much less to do with design. With a far larger community around it, Java's evolution would accelerate.

If Java became OpenSource, both Linux and Java would feed off each other. Suddenly, Java would benefit from the full support of the OpenSource community, and features would be added at a record clip. All the innovations that the Apache Foundation made to Java tools would be magnified substantially. A better compiler would replace javac, for instance.

Java would be more tighlty integrated into Linux, especially Swing and AWT. Not only would client-side Java dramatically improve, but so would the Linux GUI, as visual components could be assembled far more easily. Linux on the desktop would actually stand a chance. More client-side GUI applications would be written in Java, and hence would run cross-platform, removing much of the incentive for people to stick with Windows.

BTW, I realize that this will never happen. Sun is a commerical entity and has little reason to do this. Still, it's fun to dream :)