David said:
Furthermore, you would probably embarrass yourself to the superiors when you tell them that you think a NT-based machine is a better business decision than an AS400.
David,
It's unbelievable, isn't it. I feel embarassed for people when they claim that NT will take over the UNIX market, push Mainframes out of the enterprise, etc.. etc..
My guess is that, in general, these people have no exposure to high-performance, high-reliability computing systems. They have been playing solitare on Windows for almost 10 years now and recently heard that Windows may replace "Big Iron". Well, I imagine that it is a comforting thought for these people to imagine that they can play solitare there, too. Something they can understand. Something tangible.
I consider the entire media frenzy a bit hilarious. What an unbelievable mistake on the part of Microsoft to hype NT so early in it's life-cycle. Now, every half-witted Executive who fits the description, above, will start a project to replace large parts of the company infrastructure with NT. But NT is not mature enough, so the projects will fail. And that company WILL NEVER TRY AGAIN.
If Microsoft had waited another 3 or 4 years, they may have been able to make a seriously good play. But doing it this early destroys NT's credibility.
Well, what's Microsoft to do? If they don't figure out how to continue growing at 50% / year, the market won't support a 50+ P/E. It is going to be really interesting to watch what happens when the market realizes that they have capitalized Microsoft to 180 billion on the success of Microsoft Office alone.
-Dan |
