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 $500 million over the next year marketing them to corporations. 'We're unlocking the next wave of growth for Microsoft,' Ballmer predicted during a press conference after his speech." We've previously discussed Microsoft's plans for IBM.
From personal experience working with a large data warehousing company, the anti-M$ '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.
I watched as all the various plays were taken by the various players through the years. I'm biased because I know how Microsoft buys media and politicians to protect its anticompetitive monopoly. You're the one in fantasyland, who thinks the competitors just didn't compete well enough in the market.
Novell's NetWare was the #1 and #3 "PC Network OS", in two different versions, when Microsoft's late-1990s NT onslaught targeted it. IT media routinely compared the marketshare of either one or the other Novell versions to the combined marketshare of all Microsoft OS products, including DOS. Just one example of how IT buyers were sold lies to make the monopoly look like the only choice. While NetWare was a superior product, even more interoperable among MS OS products than the MS products were with each other.
Earlier, IBM's OS/2 suffered even more serious dirty tricks, bound by their "partnership" with MS in OS/2. No one serious believed that Windows was superior technology to OS/2.
Netscape was defeated by Microsoft's monopoly abuse, just as proven in the monopoly case against Microsoft. A travesty of a defense that should have seen Gates and his lying execs do jailtime for perjury, evidence tampering, and contempt of court. But despite being declared an abusive monopoly, in violation of their bundling consent agreement with the court, Microsoft has continued to bundle products with its monopoly package anticompetitively. They still get in some trouble, even today, for such practices. But once Bush took over the White House and Justice Department from Clinton, his Republican government let go of the solution to that problem. A clear case of political favoritism. No wonder, because the Republican Party is the Monopoly Party.
All of these facts are clear history. It is you who is denying them with your false revisions and fantasy world. And it is you, a consumer in the market, who is hurt by them. Unless you're a Microsoft employee or shareholder, in which case you're shortsighted in addition to amnesiac.
--
make install -not war
From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/quotes:
Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!