George,
<<Is this a fantasy?>> re: MSFT dropping Active Directory, and even parts of NT that they are trying to scale up to enterprise?
My pedestrian observations come up with this analogy.
MSFT is a sports car, great on smooth paved roads, and able to perform well around turns and accelerate within a very scaled down environment.
NOVL (with NDS, NW5 etc) is more like an offroad 4WD, Humvee, capable of working like a horse, driving eagerly through heterogeneous environments, full of fallen trees, stump holes, overhanging brush, etc. It gets you where no other software will or can go.
So what will happen? I think MSFT will try its darnest to take their Window's based homogeneous environment sports car into the offroad environment, where things will slow down very fast. I won't even speculate on the carnage from businesses trying to implement their system on the enterprise.
Of course, like you George, I'd like to here the guru's thoughts too. If MSFT comes out with a frontal FUD assault on NOVL later this year, without the goods, its going to be the kiss of death for them IMHO.
Will be a great "case study" for MBA's in school, as I'm sure the monopoly hearings are already.
Regards,
QuadK |