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

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (50023)	9/26/2000 4:33:10 PM
From: alydar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

"Draconian" MS reimaging sting will cost business $11bn - Gartner By: Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco Posted: 25/09/2000 at 18:46 GMT The Gartner Group issued a scalding advisory this morning claiming that Microsoft's amended policy on reimaging Windows CDs will net Redmond an extra $11billion in revenue. Gartner says that despite further amendments relieving its biggest enterprise customers of the burden since it first raised the issue in August, the new imaging policy hits smaller and medium sized Microsoft customers hard. "Gartner clients are incredulous that Microsoft is now charging a fee for a practice that is considered a basic necessity for deploying and supporting Windows desktops in any organization," observes analyst Neil MacDonald in the advisory. As we noted last month, it's a subtle shift that involves a tangle of new obligations spread across a range of licenses. But what it boils down to very simple. Microsoft is introducing a fee for cloning internal Windows CDs by blocking off customers' legitimate alternatives. Remember these folks have already paid for their right to use Windows - it's what they do with it next that Microsoft doesn't like, so its effectively an extension of the Windows license into new territory: how you use it. And therein lies a treasure trove of new revenue opportunities. The first legal barrier is that customers can no longer overwrite the OEM's Windows image with one of their own. That used to be a free option, one widely used to customise a corporate desktop and invaluable to support engineers. But now businesses have to buy the right in the form of one of four "imaging" licenses that range between $117 and $151 per desktop. Ignoring this will now also nullify the OEM support contract. Gartner notes that Select or Enterprise customers are exempt from reimaging licenses, a concession that Gartner reckons has saved these customers up to $2.3 billion. But the draconian new restrictions still apply to Open (aka MOLP) customers. "Microsoft's position is counterproductive in that reimaging enables new versions of Windows to be adopted more quickly," notes MacDonald. The move has already proved unpopular enough to cause a revolt amongst the larger customers, but will it be unpopular enough to oblige Microsoft to change the unfortunate heading on this page, we wonder? And we can only hazard a guess at how Microsoft's corporate sales team in China - where Linux distros are freely distributable and modifiable within the terms of very flexible licenses - will sell this one. ®

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (50023)	9/26/2000 4:59:02 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Microsoft Welcomes New Vice President to Mobility Group Juha Christensen Will Drive Marketing and Sales in Support of Wireless Strategy LONDON, Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) today announced that Juha Christensen has joined the company as a vice president of sales and marketing in the Mobility Group, based out of London, England. Christensen, previously an executive vice president at Symbian Ltd., will report to Paul Gross, senior vice president for the Mobility Group, to help drive Microsoft's wireless sales and marketing efforts. ``I am pleased to welcome Juha to Microsoft, where he will join Paul and his team to deliver on our vision of software that empowers people any time, any place and on any device,'' said Steve Ballmer, president and CEO of Microsoft. ``An executive with Juha's experience and expertise could have gone anywhere. His decision to join Microsoft is testament to the great work we are doing across the company and, in particular, within the Mobility Group.'' ``We are making substantial investments in our end-to-end mobility initiatives to enable mobile users to access rich data services and expect Juha to make significant and immediate contributions at Microsoft,'' Gross said. ``I look forward to combining his talent with the rest of the mobility team's to ultimately provide value to consumers, knowledge workers and carriers with Microsoft's new mobility vision.'' Most recently, Christensen was an executive vice president of marketing and sales at Symbian Ltd., where he was responsible for global marketing, sales, product management and supplier relationships. Christensen was also responsible for the company's operations in the United States and the Far East. Before taking on those duties for Symbian, he was vice president of licensing for Psion Software PLC, where he had global responsibility for commercial licensing strategy. ``I am thrilled to join Microsoft in its efforts to turn the mobile Internet into a mainstream industry,'' Christensen said. ``One of the reasons I chose to come to Microsoft is that I see tremendous opportunity in delivering rich software-based solutions to wireless operators, Web portals, content providers and businesses of all sizes to help them create unique value for their customers.'' One of Christensen's first initiatives will be to engage mobile operators and develop relationships with regional partners at Microsoft's global Mobility Solution Centers. Christensen will have overall responsibility for Microsoft's mobile offering, including business development, joint marketing, solutions development and implementation. Microsoft's goal is to provide software and services that enable people to access their information any time, any place from any device they choose. Through its broad range of devices, air-link independent wireless data services, and personalized services such as MSN® Mobile, Microsoft is enabling wireless network operators to offer their corporate and consumer customers a range of secure mobile Internet services.