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

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (40086)	3/28/2000 11:14:00 PM
From: taxman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

unfortunately nasdaq futures down slightly, but still a long night ahead of us till market opens. article on microsoft versus real player. regards nytimes.com

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (40086)	3/29/2000 12:45:00 AM
From: Ian Davidson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

From the WSJ: Microsoft Elbows Into the Crowded Business-to-Business Web Marketplace By LEE GOMES and JEFF COLE Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The crowded business-to-business Internet marketplace has a brand-new player: a software operation named Microsoft Corp. With investors and Old Economy companies swooning at the profit potential of business-to-business commerce via the Internet, Microsoft is serving notice that it is not going to be left out of the picture. Microsoft President Steve Ballmer announced that the Redmond, Wash., company will be involved in a Web-based business-to-business exchange for the aerospace industry, where companies such as Boeing Corp. would buy parts. Until now, Microsoft had scarcely been heard from in the arena. But Mr. Ballmer promised more such announcements by his company. And Microsoft executives have begun aiming their massive marketing guns at Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif., a longtime Microsoft rival that is a business-to-business leader. B2B, as the market segment is known, is one of the hottest in the technology world, and Microsoft's emergence in the field shows how the company is fully engaged in today's big battles even while trying to conclude the government's antitrust case over a prior marketplace fight involving Internet browsers and the Java programming language. Indeed, some of the Microsoft executives who were point men in those efforts, notably Charles Fitzgerald, a director of business development, are coordinating the current business-to-business effort, especially on the public-relations front. That is a crucial area, because business-to-business is such a new area that many customers don't know what technology they need for it, and will choose their partners based instead on often vague marketplace perceptions. "We are definitely going to be getting more aggressive about this," Mr. Fitzgerald said of Microsoft's marketing effort. A key difference between the Microsoft and Oracle approaches to the new form of commerce, Mr. Fitzgerald said, is that Microsoft is not insisting on getting a small percentage of every transaction its software makes possible, which he said was Oracle's plan. Ray Lane, Oracle's president, said his company will set up all kinds of exchanges, including those in which it gets no transaction revenue. Oracle's database software is widely regarded as the industry's best, though Microsoft's version of the software -- which is used to file reams of records and transactions -- has been making gains. The two companies are long and bitter rivals: Mr. Fitzgerald, for example, portrayed Oracle's products as too expensive and unwieldy for small companies. He also said Boeing had been an Oracle customer, but joined the Microsoft camp because the Seattle aerospace company had become disenchanted with Oracle's approach. Oracle's Mr. Lane replied that Microsoft's software is not reliable enough for big companies, and said Microsoft must use its cash to get people to try it. Mr. Lane said his company had indeed lost Boeing as a business-to-business customer, not because of dissatisfaction with Oracle technology, but because Oracle's chairman, Larry Ellison, said in December that Boeing would be using Oracle's products -- before Boeing had actually decided to do so. "Since then, we haven't been able to get the time of day from them," Mr. Lane said. Boeing officials would not discuss details of their Oracle relationship. Neil J. Herman, an analyst with Salomon Smith Barney, said that details aside, both Microsoft and Oracle were fighting to assume the role of the "trusted adviser" that traditional companies often turn to as they establish themselves on the Internet. Antitrust experts say Microsoft's interest in the business-to-business world is likely to get the attention of federal regulators, who are expected to watch whether Microsoft is unfairly trying to use its dominant position in Windows software to enter a new market -- one of the core charges in the current antitrust proceedings in Washington. But no one is suggesting -- yet -- that Microsoft is doing that. And some say the company's moves may actually be pro-competitive. "You want Microsoft to be able to go into new markets as long as they don't anticompetitively distort them," said Dana Hayter, a former Justice Department attorney now in private practice at Fenwick & West in San Francisco. Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com and Jeff Cole