>>This is a long term game, (enterprise computing). MSFT doesn't give up easily. (Remember Windows 2.0 and 3.0?) MSFT continues to erode the Unix and NOVL server base, though not as fast as the most enthusiastic MSFT bulls believed. IMO, MSFT will eventually dominate the enterprise computing market. It may be another 2-5 years, but there has been no reversal of their encroachment. MSFT has the will and the resources to continue to improve NT until it overcomes its weaknesses.
As far as directory services are concerned, same story. >>
DownSouth::
Microsoft's window is closing FAST. They can't afford another 2-5 years to get this right. The market is moving lightening fast right now. Companies have to get their enterprises internet-fired TODAY.
Swithching gears, not one person has commented on what I posted a fw days ago.
Here it goes again....... From a person who is smack thick in the middle of this revolution that is fast leaving Microsoft on an island of its own making.
Gates has burned ALL bridges to every island out there. The world is moving away from Windows toward Java, Jini and internet-fired mega servers. That's MY bet.
Your argument takes NONE of this into account. What you are saying above is a lot like someone during WWII saying because they have the world's biggest and the best bombing fleet they will win the war.
Then came the Atom bomb........
Again, I'd like for you to comment on this.......
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This is where I am going with my thinking and the slide of Microsoft is the demonstration that today large software cannot be built for the commercial world. Once this technical fact is recognized, you have to look at the best way to do what classical economics mandates: division of labor to create something large and stable.
The best way to divide up a problem and solve it, is to portion it to the
entities that do that one thing better than anyone else. Instead, Microsoft wants to produce commercial quality software including:
mission critical operating systems (something big)
embedded o/s (something small)
databases (big and small)
word processors
spreadsheets
directory services
proxy servers
firewalls
transaction middleware
clustering
disk management
.
.
.
No matter your market cap and cash on hand, you could never create all of this stuff AND weave it together in a way that the commercial world wants to run its business. You simply could not assemble (culturally, pragmatically) the best in each of these domains to execute this in the grand manner Gates is trying to design for. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN, IT HAS NEVER HAPPENED in the
history of economics.
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So DownSouth, Gates may have a warehouse full of firebombs and more bombers than all the rest of the competition, but these are old weapons and he's already on trial for these tactics. His company could get broken up by the DOJ, but more likely is that forces in the industry will encourage Gates to make this move.
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