Microsoft: How Vulnerable?
It's faltering in court. Its crucial Win2000 system is two years late.
And its rivals are ready.
Business Week Online
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Win2000 has its own trials and tribulations. Chairman William H. Gates III calls it the most important product that Microsoft has ever developed. It not only gives the software maker a passport into the so-called glass houses of corporate computing, where mainframes hum away, but also is designed to be the technical foundation for all of Microsoft's future consumer and business software.
RUNNING ON UNIX. Yet it is missing in action at just the wrong time. Today, corporations are rushing to rejigger their businesses to take full advantage of the Internet and are clamoring for ever more powerful servers. But Microsoft's current Windows NT just isn't up to the biggest jobs. Even Microsoft's own 30-million-member HotMail E-mail service still runs on a version of Unix more than a year after Microsoft bought the startup.
Meanwhile, information appliances that allow people to tap into the Web from a kitchen, an office, or even a mountaintop, are catching on fast. From giants Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel to startups like Aplio, companies are spinning out gee-whiz products that do everything from home banking to heart monitoring. When the dust clears, computing will no longer be the exclusive domain of Windows-based PCs. So far, Microsoft's Windows CE, a slimmed-down version of its PC software, has but 25% of the handheld market.
Rivals are pouncing. 3Com Corp.'s Palm device is flying off the shelves, and this month the company will unveil an even sleeker model that has analysts abuzz. At the same time, America Online Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. are deftly beating Microsoft in the Internet portal wars, while powerful non-Windows computer servers made by Sun and HP are selling fast. Even upstart Linux--the free server operating system that has long captivated the pocket-protector crowd--is suddenly getting attention from corporations. The most amazing part: Microsoft's server market share actually dropped a hair in 1998, after three years of skyrocketing growth.
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The software giant is used to battling Sun--and wins its share of skirmishes. But Linux could turn out to be Microsoft's Vietnam. The eight-year-old variant of Unix is designed by a guerrilla army of volunteers who distribute it for free. And official versions can be bought for just $50 from companies that sell service and support. Computer executives began taking Linux seriously when it captured 17.2% of the server market last year. ''Suddenly, Windows NT isn't the thing that's taking over everything,'' crows the software's creator, Linus Torvalds. ''The tide has shifted.''
Linux is still difficult to install, and few stores sell it, so Torvalds' boasting may prove premature. Nevertheless, Linux' list
of brawny supporters gets longer each day. Oracle, Netscape, and IBM are rewriting corporate applications to run on it. And PC makers Compaq, Dell, and HP announced they will ship Linux servers. ''The Justice Dept. case has helped us alot with PC makers,'' says Robert Young, CEO of Linux provider Red Hat Software Inc. ''They don't have to worry so much because Microsoft can't be as aggressive as in the past.''
Nobody ever got fired for going with LINUX! |
