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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Moonray who wrote (13643)	3/11/1998 11:00:00 AM
From: Jeffery E. Forrest	Respond to of 22053

IT Came From Rancho Mirage by Dan Woods March 10, 1998 A low-profile, highly exclusive gathering took place in Rancho Mirage, Calif., last week. Attendance was strictly by invitation, and invitations were sent only to an extremely select group of top computer industry executives. It happens every year, and it's called the Crossroads Conference. Never heard of it? You're not alone. Here's a hint: These guys are smart, they spend $280 billion every year, and they really don't like Microsoft. You'd expect this kind of attitude from a bunch of pony-tailed Unix geeks, or fee-hungry antitrust plaintiff attorneys, but the 225 people who attended Crossroads are a considerably more formidable group: they are the information technology elite, representing most of the technology buying power of corporate America, and they don't take kindly to being bullied. Until now they've merely looked on with mild annoyance while Microsoft leveraged its position in operating systems to become the dominant power in application software. Now, with Windows NT, Microsoft is trying to extend its reach to include the very servers that run America's companies. Not so fast. A quickie interactive poll at Crossroads showed that 63 percent of the IT executives present felt that Microsoft would never provide adequate systems for the lucrative high-end server market. What's more, they showed no qualms about embracing Java, the biggest existing threat to the dominance of Windows and Intel. The same poll had 70 percent believing that Java is a technology worthy of scalable, high-performance applications. Needless to say, this kind of talk is heresy in Redmond. How can these IT executives, the ones who do the actual buying and spending, take such a radical stance in the face of Microsoft's relentless march -- a march in which they have been at least to some extent complicit? How dare they? One good reason is history: These people lived through the rise and fall of IBM. Ten years ago almost nobody questioned the old adage "You can't get fired for buying IBM." Today only 60 percent of the Crossroads attendees would say the same of Microsoft. Furthermore, from their point of view, it's just good business: The Crossroads executives prefer the world of open systems, in which products are based on universal standards that allow hundreds of companies to compete, thereby driving down prices. "What we want is to continue the internal competition for all of these vendors; we want them to compete with each other for our business," said Sherman Woo, Director of Global Village Labs at US West in Denver. "We would never get in bed with just one of them." The Year 2000 Problem, or Y2K, makes Microsoft's position even more uncertain. Because date calculations in many programs don't work properly for the years starting with 2000, a lot of companies are replacing their old systems and buying into new server technologies on a large scale. Because the IT executives don't believe that Microsoft can handle the high-end servers, they're not buying into Microsoft technology. That's a lot of money Microsoft isn't making. Microsoft has outflanked and overrun rebellious customers in the past, but the IT executives at Crossroads were fully aware of the power they wield. "This group is the intelligentsia of the IT business. They are the new boys' network," said Nina Lytton, president of Open Systems Advisors, the organizer of the conference. "They are powerful because they have considerable buying power, and they have real alternatives. Unlike the desktop buyers."

To: Moonray who wrote (13643)	3/11/1998 11:07:00 AM
From: Scrapps	Respond to of 22053

Such compassion and understanding. LOL. Scrapps

To: Moonray who wrote (13643)	3/11/1998 12:33:00 PM
From: David Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

>>I'm sure you agree that Haiku goes way beyond our charter to limit postings to "w/ other STUFF". Indeed. I have deferred to the masses (narrowminded though they be), and accepted that haiku is not the STUFF of which this thread is made. (sniffle)