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

To: profit_guy who wrote (15665)	2/8/1999 12:25:00 AM
From: Islander	Respond to of 74651

Sunday February 7 2:54 PM ET Reutuers version of the Seattle Times article: Microsoft Plans Realignment To Focus On Customers SEATTLE (Reuters) - In one of his first major moves to put a stamp on the software giant, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) President Steve Ballmer is planning to reorganize the company to focus more closely on customers, a spokeswoman said Sunday. ''As usual, the company is looking at the organization to ensure that it is mapping to the most important customer opportunities,'' said the spokeswoman, Marianne Allison. She declined to comment on details, but said an announcement could be made in the next several weeks. The reorganization is expected to include the return of executive Brad Silverberg, who led development of the hugely successful Windows 95 operating system but has been on an extended leave of absence from the company since June 1997. Allison said the company ''has been seeking the right opportunity'' for Silverberg. According to a report in The Seattle Times, Microsoft would be reorganized broadly into four new divisions: consumer, enterprise, developers and knowledge workers. The consumer division, which might be headed by Silverberg, would take responsibility for the some versions of Windows as well as Microsoft's MSN.com and other Internet-related activities. That would be an expanded version of the job relinquished in December by Pete Higgins, who stepped down as head of the company's Interactive Media Group to take a personal leave. The enterprise group, which could be headed by Jim Allchin, would take over development of Windows 2000, the forthcoming version of the high-end Windows NT operating system, which is expected to be launched this year, far behind schedule. Allison cautioned that many details of the pending reorganization have yet to be hammered out. Microsoft realigns its corporate organization every year or two, with the most recent shift announced in February 1998, when developers who work on Internet Explorer browsing technology were brought into the same group as those who work on the Windows operating system. Since being named president in July, Ballmer has been taking a comprehensive look at the company's goals and structure.

To: profit_guy who wrote (15665)	2/8/1999 2:33:00 AM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Last Paragraph of that story: Perhaps the biggest change, though, will hit Windows 2000, a product the company has said would unite its consumer and corporate businesses. Ballmer has recognized that the oft-delayed operating system, now expected to launch in February 2000, won't work for both segments. Instead, Microsoft will offer separate versions of Windows 2000 for each market. In early 98, I predicted on this board that Windows NT 5 wouldn't come out before the end of 1999. With further delays and an increase in code size, I moved my prediction to 2000, and then to 2001, unless Microsoft released a version with much less functionality than promised. Considering that just the name change from Windows NT 5 to Windows 2000 added several weeks to their schedule, what will be the effect on their schedule of a major internal reorganization and splitting Windows 2000 into two products? Now consider the story that supposedly only 60% of Windows NT software runs on the latest Beta release. For a Beta 3, that number should be somewhere above 99%. 60% is Alpha, not Beta. If it's taken them all these years to get to Alpha, it will take them more than a year from here to get to Beta. Here's the right way to interpret this: The promise of Windows NT 5 as espoused by Microsoft over a year ago is dead. I'm not making any predictions about the release of Windows 2000 because there will be no release of Windows 2000. Some far more limited OS may be released in a year or so called Windows 2000, but it will bear little resemblence to the OS Nirvana promised so long ago. Fact: they can't get the code base to run Windows NT software. Fact: they are talking about future Windows 98 upgrades. That means that they can't get Windows 2000 to run Windows 95/DOS software on older machines. Fact: they are talking about splitting the code up. That means that they don't expect to solve their problems for the home users---they're going to have to focus all their energies on the already late business version and market Win 98 upgrades. My guess is that they're going to have to throw out major portions of their code.