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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.
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
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
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.)
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!
Please wait for your airline reservation while critical update download completes.
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.
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.
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make install -not war