Joe, it was a huge mistake to believe that Novell ever had any sort of technical superiority other than having been in the game long enough to keep a notch or two ahead of MSFT in this space. Being ahead with a bucket of bolts because you have been hacking, patching and cobbling your proprietary tangle for x years longer than the competition doesn't make you superior; it makes you first. The reason I bring this up is that I think you are making a mistake with Microsoft as they are about to get Microsoft'ed themselves by IBM and Sun Microsystems. Naturally I am talking about distributed computing technology in the form of Java.
Forget all the hype; forget all the noise; forget all the claims to technical superiority; forget the fact that Java software is growing exponentially. Focus instead on the political nature of this clearly superior technology. There is a strong aversion to Microsoft's dominance in France, England, California, Japan, Germany, Australia and elswhere; however, that's only half the story. Consider the banks, retailers, broadcasters and consider what choice they will make given the availability of applications for an open, industry standard software infrastructure. Ironically, this is precisely whey IBM, Sun, Oracle and others will seriously damage Microsoft's revenue stream. Sure, Java and CORBA technologies are vastly superior to Microsoft's home-brewed answers, but the political winds are what will drive it forward.
Compare Microsoft's price/revenues ratio to that of IBM, Sun, Intel and others and you can see where Microsoft has already priced in the next 5 years worth of growth. They are going to crash, it's just a matter of time. IBM rakes in excess of 80 billion compared to Microsoft's 12. Microsoft has a long way to fall. |
