From the WSJ:
February 17, 2000
Microsoft Aims at Sun Micro
With Windows 2000 Launch
By DAVID BANK and DAVID P. HAMILTON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
REDMOND, Wash. -- Steve Ballmer has a message for Scott McNealy:
It's payback time. And this time, it is personal.
The chief executive of Microsoft Corp. says Windows 2000, which will be
formally released Thursday, is aimed straight at software markets
traditionally dominated by Unix-based computer systems, and in particular
by Sun Microsystems Inc., the leading Unix provider. And because Mr.
McNealy, Sun's chief executive, has been one of Microsoft's most
outspoken critics, Mr. Ballmer is already savoring what he believes will be
the taste of eating Sun's lunch.
"Where are we going to have fun today?" Mr.
Ballmer asked in an interview on Microsoft's
campus on the eve of the product's launch.
"Helping customers and taking market share from
Sun." Warming to his new mantra, he repeated:
"Helping customers, taking share. Help, share.
Help, share."
Both companies use the rivalry as a marketing
tactic to highlight their contrasting approaches to
computing. But Mr. Ballmer made clear the
personal animus is also very real, noting that he
hasn't spoken to Mr. McNealy in years and would
have a "hard time" chatting with him. Mr. Ballmer blames Sun for "whining"
to antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe and for pursuing its own
federal lawsuit against Microsoft for its use of Java software licensed from
Sun.
"I just think it's irresponsible behavior," Mr. Ballmer said. "It has gone
beyond the ha ha ha, funny-guy phase."
But if Microsoft has taken its lumps in the courtrooms, it is hoping to exact
retribution in the marketplace. Mr. Ballmer said the increased reliability and
power of Windows 2000, along with the lower cost of PC-based
computer hardware, finally allows Microsoft to challenge Sun's market
strength among Internet service providers that host Web sites and
companies building sophisticated electronic-commerce systems. He said
Microsoft would start at the low end of those markets and move up as
customers become more comfortable with the new software.
"We're going to eat and eat and eat," Mr. Ballmer said. It may take a
while, he said, but "all they can do is lose. They have no upside. They're on
the downside of the slope, baby."
Sun Officials Unfazed
Sun officials say they are unfazed by
Microsoft's new aggressiveness, arguing that
Microsoft's PC-based technology still doesn't
cut it in the demanding and fast-growing world
of the Internet.
"Microsoft is targeting where Sun was five
years ago," said John Loiacono, chief
marketing officer at the Palo Alto, Calif.,
company. "They're trying to pick a fight in a
game we're not even playing anymore."
To Mr. Ballmer, the coming battle will test
Microsoft's proposition that off-the-shelf PC
hardware running Windows can top Sun's
strategy of supplying its Solaris operating
system primarily with its own hardware.
"They're carrying that big overpriced hardware on their back, and now
they're in a dogfight," Mr. Ballmer said. "I just think they're on an
outmoded model."
'Scalability' Battleground
The battleground is what the industry calls "scalability," the ability of
software and hardware to manage the massive computing power needed
to handle, say, multiple millions of Web hits or trillions of bytes of data. Put
simply, Sun's strategy is to "scale up" with server hardware that
incorporates ever more microprocessors; the company's next generation of
server computers, expected later this year, will contain 128 processors.
Microsoft's approach is to "scale out," by using Windows 2000 to manage
many smaller, and cheaper, PC-based servers as a single system.
Expect a furious round of claims and counterclaims. "We're talking about
building a telecom-like infrastructure for the Internet, and they're talking
about scaling [servers] to eight or 16 CPUs," said Sun's Mr. Loiacono.
Jim Allchin, who heads all of Microsoft's Windows development, said that
with a rack of standard PCs linked together with Windows 2000, "one
machine can die and you whip in another. Our ultimate view is that 'scale
out' is the ultimate price-performance winner, and also the
raw-performance winner."
Intel Takes a Shot
Microsoft isn't the only major competitor taking shots at Sun these days.
Earlier this week, Intel Corp. abruptly denounced Sun's efforts to make
Solaris run on Intel's new line of server-based microprocessors as "less
than promising' and said it will limit its future support for Solaris.
The move poses a potentially serious problem
for Sun, which is ramping up its efforts to
adapt Solaris to run on Intel's chips to win
wider support for the operating system.
Paul Otellini, head of Intel's
microprocessor-architecture group, said Sun had failed to "follow through"
on its commitments to make Solaris run quickly on Intel chips and to
generate enthusiasm among software vendors who would develop
applications for the system. Sun officials insist that they were fully
committed to the Intel program.
Write to David Bank at david.bank@wsj.com and David P. Hamilton at
david.hamilton@wsj.com |
