Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Goes Head-to-Head With IBM
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Microsoft's latest announcements that it is going after large-business computing, a realm that IBM currently has a stronghold on." From the article: "In both cases, the company has fashioned 'enterprise' versions of the products with additional security and collaboration-enabling features for sale to large businesses. Microsoft has spent $20 billion over the past three years on these upgrades, and Ballmer says it will spend $500 million over the next year marketing them to corporations. 'We're unlocking the next wave of growth for Microsoft,' Ballmer predicted during a press conference after his speech." We've previously discussed Microsoft's plans for IBM.
Wouldn't that require an operating system that didn't suck?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
smart investors buy pharma stocks, because Microsoft is gonna need a lot of analgesics!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Ok, they threw $20 billion at it and will throw another $500 million at it. But what it is is a mature market, wherein customers have grown weary of the old business model of turning over buckets of money for software and support. Many big buyers are moving along on old, unsupported versions of Office, which they are loathe to upgrade for no reason other than to buy a pile of features they're not convinced they need. Usually the push for upgrades comes from some brash executive who thinks by the seat of his/her pants that it's about time they got into the 21st century (whatever the hell that is really supposed to mean) just before they, themselves pack it in and move along to their next rung up the ladder (with a new line for their resumee: Modernized infrastructure)
While I was a bit of an IBM hater, back in the 80's, for the attitude their sales people conveyed, I do believe IBM is now a far better company, much wiser and behind the winning hand -- Open Source. Their time in the trenches will serve them well as a the cocky crew from Redmond attempt to strut in like they own the house.
Considering Microsoft's track record, particularly in the press with all the vulnerabilites, I think they've got a tough sell. Some will be low-hanging fruit, easy to pluck, but others will be much harder to reach. It will be interesting to see how much further.
Personally, I'm already advising our shop to dump Microsoft. We simply can't afford them anymore.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
$20 Billion bozo. With a "B". $20 billion, $500 million.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I hope your not in accounting...
I must be dyslexic or something....
20 Billion, not million.
IBM backed the "Netscape" antitrust case the government won against Microsoft in the 1990s. That decision didn't protect consumers from Microsoft's monopoly abuse so well, but it did protect IBM's Lotus/Notes product line from Outlook/Exchange taking over the Internet. Let's see how well either of them fare, without a Republican government to protect Microsoft and with a real competition between them keeping them too busy to crush the smaller players entering the groupware market, especially on Linux servers. Interoperability is the most likely winner in a multilateral vendor competition.
--
make install -not war
This won't work until Microsoft has completely changed Windows to be Unix-like. They are working on it. With each release, they learn their lessons and add backwards implementations of Unix innovations. As long as they continue down that path, they might someday be able to take over the big iron market. But they're not quite there yet.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
20 billion, actually. The proportion's about what I'd expect.
I thought they tried this a few years ago with Unisys. Long story short, it was supposed to be a 32-processor version of Windows on Unisys iron. AFAIK it went nowhere. (This was about the time that Unisys was pitching connecting web servers running on mainframes to the Internet.)
..er, no - thats Billion! (with a B)
But yes, with your keen eye to detail you should have gone into advertising. Not so much an emphasis on things like 'facts' in that industry.
Starsucks
They have an iPod killer.
They have a Google killer.
They have a Java killer.
They have an IBM killer.
Microsoft has a killer for everything!
Dubya should hire Microsoft to develop a terrorist killer! War on Terror would be victorious!
I guess going into math didn't help that much :) But hey, you're only off by a factor of 1,000...
20 BILLION, not million :)
Reversing those figures sounds like Windows development.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Any sympathy I might have had towards IBM in this confrontation vanished upon reaching the word "Lotus". Save me, Microsoft!!!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Please wait for your airline reservation while critical update download completes.
...I say, bring it on, Billy Boy!
What, Windows doesn't run on mainframes? So sorry, let's talk again when you have at least one heavy-duty operating sytem (like z/OS or Linux). Not to mention the applications to run on it.
How's that for a marketing slogan, Mr. Ballmer?
And I'll even sell it to you for only $100 Million.
(That's less than your current yearly office furniture budget...)
For servers, Windows is a poor system (it is for desktops too, but that is another thing). Most server application / services install themselves everywhere in the system and updates things in the OS/Windows folder (this is particularly true for Microsofts own products). For this reason, if you want stable operations you put just one, or a few server products on each server. Combining development/test/production on the same machine is impossible. This is partly a Windows problem - partly a problem about how applications are built for Windows - both things are equally bad. Who wants to VMWare everything just to not have thousands of servers more or less doing nothing but hosting an OS and a single service?
This is a familiar sound. Like when they announce the problem was not the scalability of the OS, but there was no hardware good enough for it. But now that Unisys supports windows, were ready for the enterprise. LOL
$20B not $20M
Oooh, they implemented OLE in Outlook! How 1995 of them.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Okay folks, lighten up... I think he's got it.
- Andrew
I meta-moderate because I care.
lol. dummi.
From personal experience working with a large data warehousing company, the anti-M$ 'attitude' is the norm. As my boss once put it:
If it's development, we run Solaris, if it's serving, we run Linux, if it's graphics, we run Mac, and if its the sales guy's laptop, we run Windows."
These old-school guys love their unix. I cant see this happening any time soon.
20 Billion. And listen to your fellow Slashdoters. 20 billion. This better be the last mistake you make. You've been warned.
I hope your not mrs. tingle...
From the article: Microsoft argues that by integrating those user-oriented software packages thoroughly with back-end programs for data storage, communications, and business-process management, it puts companies' ordinary employees, rather than the geeks, at the center of the computing world. "Our innovations facilitate the power of people" in businesses, he said.
It's true that MS is taking a completely different approach from IBM. MS espouses off-the-shelf software products (theirs of course) glued together by the customer's own employees. IBM espouses an army of consultants armed with a collection of applications and CDs packed full of open source, writing your company's custom business software.
Now which approach do you think will win? What does history tell us? Personally, I think things in computerdom always trend towards off-the-shelf standardization. the reasons for this are obvious. There is someone to call when there's a problem. The cost typically drops as volumes are high. And the learning curve is lower because people already are familiar with the building blocks. I can't think of any examples where customization is a longterm solution to a problem. This is why I think MS has a good chance of success here.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Windows for mainframes.... Virus infections at the speed of light!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You do realize that in some spaces, such as application servers, IBM can't even win in a fair fight until they start *giving away free consulting* from IBM Global Services in order to push the adoption of their software, right?
As for mainframes... I don't know who is investing in new mainframes. All of my customers (government & financial) seem to be going with clusters of blade servers.
IBM has a good story because they do have their hands in every kind of technology, from processors and hardware to operating systems, open source, and enterprise software... but in the enterprise space, the story isn't about the software, it's about IBM pushing consulting.
So don't underestimate Microsoft. And don't think they are the only thorn in IBM's side. :-)
[...]Ballmer says it will spend $500 million over the next year marketing them to corporations[...] (Emphasis mine)
'Nuff said
20 Million should be enough for anyone. Who would need more?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Microsoft Goes Head-to-Head with IBM.
This is soooo 1970s.
Ballmer's pronouncements were reminiscent of Yankee baseball slugger Babe Ruth standing in the batter's box and pointing to the place in center field where he planned to hit a home run.
The only difference was that a chair was thrown towards the center of the press conference.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I dunno, he seems about as qualified as all the other accountants I've dealt with.
From now on, I buy only Intel.
I don't even see how that's possible. They must've been throwing some pretty good parties for the dev team...
'We're unlocking the next wave of growth for Microsoft,' Ballmer predicted during a press conference after his speech.
Microsoft getting bigger? I only have one word for that:
Tetsuooooooooo!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
$20 Billion bozo.
Is that the sequel to Million Dollar Baby?
This guy's the limit!
Microsoft is just trying to inject some testosterone into their stock. Well, they got a big warchest... let's see them spend it.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
They are going after IBM yet their real competition is Google in web services, Linux on servers, and Apple on the desktop and multimedia.
Could this just be a $500M ploy to make people think they aren't paying attention?
I remember these guys. Wasn't it them who said they were going to build a desktop operating system to beat OS/2? Then they were going to build a word processor to beat Word Perfect, then a spreadsheet to knock Lotus 123 off its perch, then they were going to build a database that was cheaper and easier to maintain than Oracle. At one point they even said they getting into games machines.
You know your latest enterprise-class Operating System, OS/3? Well ... it's been "liberated" and will henceforth be known as Microsoft Windows Vista.
(I wish there was a +1, Sardonic tag...)
The Roman Empire was done in not by an equal country, but by small bands of invading hordes. And perhaps the rules of political empires apply to technology empires, too.
Businesses are like people. Each one is unique and different, each one has specific needs, has specific goals, and the route through life is a little bit different for each one. On one hand, it makes sense for Microsoft to go after the big money that exists in the enterprise market; there is a lot of money to be made there. On the other hand when you go to an enterprise and offer them something, they won't usually take it straight off of the rack, they will want it tailored to meet their specific needs. Companies like IBM and Oracle seem to understand this far better than I expect a company like Microsoft will.
I'm not saying that I am against Microsoft entering the market, competition is usually good. What I am saying is that I think Microsoft will have to learn a lesson or two in order to actually compete. They won't be able to get away with delivering a product out of the box and then providing only a minimal level of support for it. Microsoft will have to play ball like the other big boys and learn to accept some of their rules. I expect that there will be some resistance to this from their end but, they will end up between a rock and a hardplace on the this because their enterprise level customers will simply demand it or look elsewhere.
Microsoft argues that by integrating those user-oriented software packages thoroughly with back-end programs for data storage, communications, and business-process management, it puts companies' ordinary employees, rather than the geeks, at the center of the computing world. "Our innovations facilitate the power of people" in businesses, he said.
Microsoft has to sell software to those geeks in the back office. If the sales pitch is to take the effort out of the back room and dump it onto the employees, how are the geeks (who make the decisions on IT) going to keep their jobs with this decision? Even if they did opt for this, they don't want users building complicated ill-thought-out custom crap and then calling IT for support when the $h|t don't work.
Microsofts customer is not a desktop user - it's the IT manager.
20 billion. 3 years. Pity they didn't catch that WMF thingy. So what exactly was the money spend on? I am old enough to know that in IT it is very easy to both spend time and money yet accomplish nothing.
Now it is just possible that WMF was the one last bug in Windows that MS overlooked and that Vista will indeed be the bee knees when it comes to security.
Anyone willing to bet any money on it? No, didn't think so.
Will MS sell some in the big iron market? Sure. There is a sucker born every minute and they all seem to go into management. Even if it fatally goes wrong it won't matter. If people will still buy windows for their desktop after more then a decade of crap they will stick with it for their business. If you made a bad decission then you can't ever go back because that would be admitting your wrong.
So IBM has something to worry about. Not because MS has a better product but because crap sells as long as it seems cheaper and shinier.
Lets face it, IBM lost the round for the desktop OS. Why should the server OS be any different? Because server OS buyers are smarter then desktop OS buyers?
If you want to know the answer too that, just check wich OS is on the desktop of the server OS buyers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mod parent troll.
MS has practically killed Borland, Novell, and Sun, who were all wolves in their days. And I think they have picked their opponents well, Sony is struggling, and can't write software anyway. IBM's eyes are off the ball as they go after "Business Consulting", and anyway their HW/SW portfolio is hopelessly obsolete, confused, and incompatible with itself.
Google will be hard to beat of course, but they might beat themselves considering the hype they have to live up to.
MS would have to get on a big stool to go "head to head" with Big Blue.
this story recycles every 4 years. god knows MS has be "locking horns" with someone all the time.
helps them feel like they really have testicles
Humans exist, and air is breathable!
"What does history tell us? "
That IBM has survived for over a hundred years and is still the largest computer company in the world despite predictions of imminent death since about 1924.
It also teaches us that people are kinda getting sick of being forced to do upgrades at Microsoft's pace.
"I want to buy SQL Server 2000"
"Sorry, you have to buy 2005"
"No, I just need to buy SQL 2000, plus I want to make sure you support thsi version for a few years"
"Sorry you have to buy 2005".
"But you just released 2005 2 months ago!"
"Sir, you don't have to apologize for takign so long!"
Thrown any chairs lately?
Microsoft is a software company. IBM is a hardware/service company that happens to sell some software.
Microsoft thinks they understand the "business enterprise" computer market, but it's just the bottom, low-end stuff compared to IBM.
And don't even bother comparing Microsoft customer "service" to IBM customer service, there's just no comparison.
One thing to remember when thinking about what Microsoft does is how important their stock price is to them. (Think of all the compensation in the form of options or stock grants.) It's important to them to keep the perception that Microsoft is a "growth" company. Here's why.
The price/earnings (P/E) ratio for a common stock is a measure of the earnings growth expected by the market: other things equal, a higher P/E corresponds to higher expected growth. At this writing, Microsoft stock (MSFT) is trading at $27.58, which is a P/E ratio of 22.8x the latest 12 months' earnings. IBM is trading at $83.12, which is 17.1x trailing 12-month earnings. If MSFT were to trade at the same P/E as IBM (meaning that it was expected to grow about as fast as IBM), its stock price would be $20.68, a decline of almost 25%. I think that might result in a few unhappy campers in Redmond.
Microsoft's practice of consistently announcing fabulous new products that generally turn up later and with less capability than they were touted with is entirely consistent with their need to keep the stock price up.
Actually any company I've ever worked for has used the technology to extend monitoring of the workers even more. The typical PHB is more than happy to monitor number and duration of phone calls, read our email, monitor what web sites we visit, use a swipe card on doors so as then can tell how long we spent in the Loo and so on.
Finally they use the self same technology to hide information so as to consolidate their own little empire. I don't feel so empowered all ready. See here for some empowered employees.
See here for a comment on Microsofts' most innovative achievements.
This is nothing but retribution against IBM for it's walk on the Linux side.
Though, of course, the same could already be said of Microsoft's generous donations to SCO at the time SCO's frivolous lawsuit began against IBM..
Which leads me to something interesting. Microsoft quietly gives a large deal of money to a group who seems to have completely devoted their entire business 100% to legally punishing IBM for making Linux part of their business strategy-- a group which seems to be violating at least the Lanham Act in the process of doing so. Shortly after (a couple years) Microsoft announces plans to attack IBM head on in the market where Linux is relevant to IBM's business strategy. This means that Microsoft performed direct and possibly illegal actions to damage IBM's ability to compete in this market as a prelude to entering the market themselves, just a few short years after losing (but not being sentenced or in any way punished from) a major antitrust case.
I wonder whether the courts will or can pick up on that.. there have been subpeonas related to Microsoft's involvement in SCO funding but it is unclear whether it will actually come out in the court case.
"...a realm that IBM currently has a stronghold on."
stronghold, noun. A fortress. A place of refuge or survival. (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stronghold)
You probably meant stranglehold, but didn't want that choking sound out front. Besides, IBM are the subtextual good guys in your metanarrative, and if they've got a stranglehold, that impugns their paladin quality.
In this, um, realm.
z9 with z/OS???
I hardly think one can begin to compare M$ to MVS.
I guess it's still true.... You can haul a wagon full of brick using one Ox or 10,000 chickens.
MVS: It don't rust, It don't bust, and sure don't collect dust.....
/*Dave
of our mainframe Windows system, and it's only Tuesday! Why?
IT Guy: Because that's how you fix most Windows problems! You wouldn't want me to reinstall or rebuild, would you?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
yeah, and a fly picked up a straw and started beating over the elephant like mad.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
That's how I still view Microsoft. They know how to build a Desktop OS, so is their Enterprise system going to be 10,000 Desktops?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
you're right, they would have to start a huge professional services division.. which they could do, but then would anyone want it? Usually hardware vendors are involved, Sun, HP, IBM, EMC, Hitachi. etc. Who's going to back or certify Microsoft's work with the iron?
Once again, I just couldn't help myself.
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Ok, I hope this was a joke:) Either that, or you should be threated as a specimen showing late symptoms of oxygen deprivation:)
I especially liked the part of joke where you proclaim "Microsoft has the best tools. The best Network OS (Win2K3)". Good one, indeed:)
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
The biggest story on Microsoft is how they have lost the server market.
Microsoft has had, for over ten years, a monopoly on the desktop. A generation has grown up thinking that Microsoft is synonymous with computing. Microsoft also has billions and billions of dollars to spend on research and advertising. With all of its name recognition and money, Microsoft has not been able to build a serious name for itself in the server market.
This is the type of statement that will generate a lot of comments on both sides: Unix people who say that any version of Windows couldn't be considered seriously at all for a server, and Windows people who will point out XP and Windows Server are now stable and secure enough for mainstream usage.
But the fact still remains, that if you check out netcraft, Microsoft products seem to place a far third behind commercial Unixes and Linux. For a company with Microsoft's name recognition and research resources to not be a dominant player in the server market after 30 years of business and over ten years of market dominance is a staggering fact in itself.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Not only not the same game, but it's a whole new league.
A typical M.S. based business task...
1. Write a letter and format it for mail merge with Word.
2. Assemble a list of a few thousand names with Excel.
3. Merge and print with the printing taking all night on an "office" laser printer. Don't forget to hang around to refill the hopper!
4. Manually stuff the envelopes.
Typical Mainframe based business task...
1. Format the letter using any number of different applications or markup languages...your choice.
2. Select a few million contacts from your Oracle, Sybase, Informix, etc. database...again your choice.
3. Have one of your IT staff code up a Cobol/MRJE job to print the few million letters and automatically stuff and stamp them in a few hours.
The back end of a large business (GM, IBM, GE, Boeing, you name it) involves volumes of data that would choke any M.S. product, printers that run through a ream of paper in less than a minute, hundreds of jobs running all night, every night.
The process involves hundreds of constantly changing programs, most in Cobol or Fortran, that perform generally small discrete steps, all controlled by some kind of Job Control Language. The Mainframe business invented the term legacy code, and none of it will run on any M.S. OS.
Word to M.S....never bring a knife to a gun fight.
:)
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Ctrl, Alt, Delete
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Has a stronghold on?
Stronghold: An area dominated or occupied by a special group or distinguished by a special quality: a feminist stronghold; a stronghold of democracy.
The writer likely meant 'has a stranglehold on'.
Stranglehold: complete power over a situation; "corporations have a strangelhold on the media"
If you people at SlashDot don't like to edit then why don't you just turn over the editing to people who would enjoy doing it?
Maybe he's using imperial billions, not metric ones. Or the other way round. Anyway, can anyone convert that into elephant libraries of congress per quartic hectoparsec?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
But only slightly less well known, is never go head to head with IBM.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
They're both stupid as a brick.
They both have a plan that will work better, but have not started planning it yet.
They both want to screw you.
They both think that their past shouldn't be looked into.
They will both shoot you in the back, then claim that makes them a hero.
They both want your money, even when you don't want their products.
They both know they can do better things with your money than you would.
They will marry you for your money, then complain about those rich people who won't pay their fair share.
They both want to suppress your constitutional rights.
I am not so sure that M$ will ever be that reliable/trustworthy in the enterprise market. IBM primarily lost to Microsoft in the Desktop environment, which includes Windows, Office and its support infrastructure like Exchange, Files & Print, and Active Directory.
When it comes to mid-range, mainframes, and databases, IBM still rules.
pantent portfolios.
I think IBM will win on that front.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
"Microsoft listens to the market."
Huh? wtf, I say.
Market:
I want documents that I can share with *anyone* of my choice and not be so rude as to make them buy a product they may not want in order read, edit and exchange them.
Microsoft:
Ah, best we can we can do is rename MSXML to OpenXML and restrict it to closed source projects.
Market:
I want interoperablility with applications/servers in a mixed environment.
Microsoft:
Sorry, it's our way or the highway!
Market:
But I'm the customer.
Microsoft:
Sorry, our priorites are Share holders, might us and last, you, the pee-on consumer.
Market:
C:> del *.*
And thus cometh a memo from the domain from the fearless & clueless Ultimate Leader:
"After a six-martini lunch and eighteen holes of golf, I have seen the Light: Thou shalt install Microsoft."
And so it was in the small- and medium-businesses, and so it shall come to pass elsewhere.
Regards;
While they are touting (as always these days it seems) security, it is going to be a BIG hurdle for MS to clear. Many of the larger institutions, such as banks and gov't agencies, using high end IBM apps and hardware are truly paranoid, and IBM has done a good job accommodating that (ever hear of anyone cracking a RACF? I haven't). MS has a huge stigma to overcome before it can really crack that market.
And all this talk of integration makes me nervous. Now we have a set of pipes from Outlook to Office to SQL Server to AD to IIS etc.? Not my idea of a good time trying to secure all the possible attack vectors.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
... a tearful Sam Palmisano announced that IBM was immediately directing its vast army of Indian developers to begin rewriting zOS as a .Net client.
"When I woke up this morning and saw my kid's pony's severed head in bed next to me, I just knew it was Balmer. When I went down for breakfast and found all my coffee dumped on the floor, I knew he meant business."
At least he didn't threaten with chairs and profanity.
Seriously, after IBM exited the desktop PC hardware business, any usefulness they had to Microsoft vanished, and they became just another competitor -- one with considerable corporate influence and a bigger source of Java legitimacy in the corporate world than Sun (who is on a short leash to Microsoft in any event), AND the biggest legitimizer of Linux for corporate use around.
The miracle is that Balmer wasn't throwing chairs and spewing profanities during the interview.
if you check out netcraft, Microsoft products seem to place a far third behind commercial Unixes and Linux.
I'm not sure Netcraft tells the whole story. After all, Netcraft surveys webservers. Whether that is a true reflection of Microsoft's share of the overall business server market is debatable at best.
That said, I agree with your assertion that Microsoft has failed to effectively leverage its desktop dominance in the server market. Throwing money at it and making big announcements doesn't mean squat. Deliver the goods and people will believe you, MS. Until then, it's just hot air.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There was no tying (either rumored or otherwise) of the OS/2 operating system to IBM hardware, unless you're talking about something which happened in the v1.x days...?
The real competition between OS/2 and Windows occurred after 1992, when IBM's OS/2 (the 32-bit version, or versions from v2.0 onwards) was brought to market as a direct competitor.
It failed for a plethora of reasons, amongst them:
* Poor marketing and focus on the product by IBM as a whole.
* Various tactics on the part of Microsoft (some brilliant, many found to be illegal by the US Federal Court during the anti-trust case) to discourage ISV's from developing for OS/2, to prevent PC vendors from bundling it on new computers, and to spread FUD about its own platforms (remember "Chicago"?) and paint them as superior solutions to OS/2.
* The IBM PCCO's hostility towards OS/2. IBM's PC Company was very much pro-Windows.
* The trade press (in general) was hostile to anything not Microsoft. Some exceptions did exist, and OS/2 won dozens of awards, but head-to-head reviews (when they were done) usually seemed to hedge in favor of Windows. This in spite of some benchmarks and other tests done by folks like David Barnes and pubs like InfoWorld which showed OS/2 absolutely destroying Windows NT in various client and server performance tests.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHA.... ...........
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHHAHAA
ok..
when microsoft builds HARDWARE to run their SOFTWARE on that's as reliable or MORE reliable than say.. a mid range p series.. then they can claim to have "enterprise" solutions..
standard PC's aren't enterprise machines..
dedicated hardware with dedicated software is what differentiates them..
MS clustering doesn't even work right..
i'm sorry.. i'll stick with rs/6000's, AIX and HACMP as it's *PROVEN* and not proven by some slick 500 million dollar marketing campaign.. it's proven because it already works.. and it's worked for the last 15 years.
You're so right, I'll take it even one further... why would Microsoft even want a services division? Right now all Microsoft does is sit back and collect license fees, what could be better than that? They keep looking and looking for somewhere to make 80%+ profit margin like they do on their Office and Windows divisions. It ain't gonna happen. They'll never find a business better than what they have now, which is to make something once and sell it millions of times over.
Microsoft want supercomputer-on-a-chip for games console, IBM develop and manufacture it for them. It was Linux that caused IBM to sell OS/2 on to some little Dutch company. Not Windows.
Forgive me for not knowing exactly which Netcraft survey you're referencing, but from my own personal experience it's not that way at all.
Sure, the majority of *websites* are served by Linux/Unix machines. No doubt there.
But if you're talking about typical business servers (ie: print servers, file servers, application servers, email/calendaring servers, collaboration servers, intranet servers, etc) I think you would find most of them are running Microsoft.
This is especially true if you look at the small/mid-sized market. Around here, I can't think of a single business that is running a non-MS server somewhere in their operation -- except for highly specialized services needed in the financal or health industries -- and even then it's one machine among a dozen MS servers.
-David
Firefox is free, open source, and runs on anything. When OS X is all of those, then Microsoft might have something to worry about at least on the desktop.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
M$ will sell to big ones once they buy those who buy, of course.
Firefox is competing against IE, which is free as well. The average user (ie 99% of the marketshare) doesn't really care about open source or runs on anything.
OS X is not free. Windows is not free. Single user/processor licenses of them are similarly priced.
Looks like a fair comparison to me.
should be more than enough to break Mircosoft's monopoly on the desktop which certainly will have a mighty impact on their ability to throw around with money. How?
5 .pdf, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?t=105955 or http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798. html). The Ubuntu Bug #1 (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1) would finally be solve and the future as outlined here (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html ) would become true. All would win, well maybe not MS. So why doesn't IBM size up with Novell, Sun, Oracle, Google and others and throw in 10 million each? I think each of them are able to scrap together this 10 millions without much problems.
Assume you have a 1000 developers who would one year fully concentrate on writing OpenSource applications according to the guidelines of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/). This would easily achieve up to a few hundreds cross-platform applications which are better or at least equally good as any Windows-only application. This base stock will force any software vendor who wants to stay in business to change their applications as well to comply to wyoGuide. Any application soon will be converted to cross-platform that's no question. Together with the already cross-platform Mozilla and OpenOffice this will definitely break MS monopoly on the desktop.
Then nobody would ask again for none-Linux applications anymore as here (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Judging from the headline, /. could have defied space-time to bring us a 20 year old dupe.
The new features that Ballmer showed off during his speech seemed useful. He showed how, using Microsoft's integrated applications, people can draw capabilities from a number of applications without even paying attention to which one they're using at any given time. That means you could, for example, get a jpeg of Anna Kournikova and infect your whole network, right in Outlook!
From the trenches of a large investment firm, where Microsoft was rarely dominating: decency often prevailed over a decision to get unmaintainable Microsoft products. Recently, however, I noticed that some of the executives started to fly to Redmond. Then you can hear from their offices a talk similar to one of the drug pushers: they were pushing almost openly unreleased versions of crappy future Microsoft products. These things don't work, they don't integrate in our environments, they are almost unmanageable, because of poor scripting capability and integration with standards. But drug dealers keep flying to Redmond....
So, what we have heard over the last few weeks out of Microsoft is that they are really serious about security now, that they are really serious about offering software as services on the web, and that they are really serious about competing with Microsoft by making Office even more of a central component of enterprise computing.
What this basically shows is that Microsoft talks big and promises a lot. But we know from past experience that they are only delivering on a fraction of what they are promising. So, don't plan your IT infrastructure around any of those promises just yet.
Aw, you are so full of shit! No WAY is Z/OS a Unix! I love IBM mainframe OS's, and I love Unix too, and I can see that the Unix services in Z/OS are just a compatibility layer. I'm glad they're there, because they make application porting easier, but calling Z/OS Unix-like is an insult to it, completely ignoring its way-older-than-Unix history.
And people stuck using M$ cruft will need tranqs and anti-depresents. However, someone has already thought of that and beat ya to your pharma stocks...
Actually that's a good point. Furthermore, how much of MS' current profitability is due to buying and selling its own stock? Sales of Windows and Office have been eroding for ages, the money has to be coming from somewhere else... unless it's mostly just creative accounting.