Wonderful report, J&D, wonderful.
I think the question of .NET vis a vis BEAS is an interesting one, but not, at the end of the day, one which should affect our investment decisions. It's obvious that should BEAS become as vast as many are expecting, Microsoft would fight back--and hard. And it's also obvious that the weapon would involve .NET in some way.
Importantly, however, were this to happen, BEAS would have already proven a very lucrative investment. Moreover, Microsoft's likely response is still very hypothetical now. The reality today appears to be that BEAS has one legitimate competitor, IBM, and if they beat WebSphere, they basically have a green field for a while.
BEAS impresses me more than many more vaunted competitors to MSFT--e.g. RNWK, NSCP. Solid management, business model and technology. They could do very, very well. I would not be shocked to see them as public enemy #1 in Redmond within the decade.
I'm curious, BTW, what you mean by your repeated assertions that BEAS architecture is more "open" than .NET would be. It seems to me that both companies would try to as open as possible in order to win the game, and then gradually milk the product ("close" it) once the battle is won. In the short run, MSFT obviously has a greater opportunity to integrate with other MSFT products. It does strike me, someone naively maybe, that the whole wave 5 architecture will have to be pretty open no matter who wins. B2B demands openness.
Not for nothing, but Microsoft's "wave 4" architecture is generally thought to be the most open consumer PC architecture out there. cf, e.g. Apple. |
