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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: johnd who wrote (34786)	11/24/1999 3:31:00 PM
From: John F. Dowd	Respond to of 74651

johnd: You are right about SUNW,AOl but CSCO will keep adding to EPS through acquistion faster than the speed of light. They know that this business is growing too fast to grow solely from within. MSFT is selling at about a 40% discount and for you skeptics out there look at this article from a source that is usually critical of MSFT: Microsoft waits for no one Updated 9:30 AM ET November 24, 1999 By Mary Jo Foley, Sm@rt Reseller If you think Microsoft execs are sitting around and wringing their hands over the DOJ antitrust trial, think again. These guys aren't waiting for Judge Jackson, mediator Richard Posner or the Supreme Court before moving ahead with their strategies and plans. Just when everyone -- from the lawyers charging ahead with a wave of class action suits against Microsoft, to many of Microsoft's competitors -- is focusing on how the antitrust case might impact Microsoft as a software company, Microsoft is already well on its way to reinventing itself as a services company. Skeptical? Check out the latest keynotes and comments from Microsoft officials speaking at a variety of venues. One common thread that runs throughout: Microsoft is gearing up, sooner rather than later, to sell software as a service. What this means, exactly, seems to vary, depending on which executive is speechifying. But however you interpret "software as a service," one thing is clear. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for any entity to force changes in Microsoft's business practices via remedies like splitting the operating systems group from the applications group, or opening up the Windows programming interfaces or source code, if software isn't an easily definable, shrink-wrapped collection of bits and bytes. The idea of tying independent products, like Internet Explorer and Windows, or IIS and NT, loses just about all meaning when software is a service. In such a world view -- based on my interpretation of various Microsoft comments -- users and developers will be able to pick and choose among Microsoft -- and third-party components, services and Web sites and assemble their own applications from them. In such a world, bundling becomes the province of the user or developer, not the software vendor. Microsoft's already taken some steps toward selling software as a service. Its Windows Update (and soon-to-come Windows 2000 Update) Web sites provide customers with access to patches, fixes and new features via Internet download. The company's various hosting programs and pilots, such as the ones it currently offers to application service providers interested in selling Exchange, Commerce Server and Office Online, are just the tip of the iceberg in the app-rental part of the software-as-service space. There is a lot more to come in the coming months from Microsoft in this arena. Watch for the company to launch more "marketplaces" from Microsoft and third parties in the MSN.Com space. Expect more licensable, cross-platform Microsoft Internet services, a.k.a. "megaservices," like Passport. And don't be surprised to see Microsoft launch two new sites like its bCentral small-business portal that will be aimed at enterprise customers and home/consumer customers in the not-too-distant future. All this will add up to a world where next-generation Microsoft commerce products, coupled with megaservices becomes the new platform for world domination. Because Microsoft's already moved beyond the view that Windows will be the be-all/end-all, the outcome of the DOJ case is looking increasingly irrelevant. What do you think? Will the current trial and its results have any real impact on Microsoft as it moves forward? Talk back below and let me know.