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

To: t2 who wrote (20523)	4/14/1999 1:32:00 PM
From: RTev	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Microsoft is one of the featured companies in the Fortune 500 issue. The article considers many of the challenges facing the company in the next few years. The author sees the most recent reorganization as more significant than do some of us here who've seen Microsoft reorg with regularity. Microsoft Gets Ready to Play a New Game cgi.pathfinder.com Highlights: ...While Microsoft is growing like a strapping adolescent (1998 sales rose $3 billion, nearly 30%), it is showing the high-tech equivalent of premature gray: slow response to changes in the market, stubborn resistance to new ways of thinking, deafness to customer needs. For Ballmer and Gates, that added up to an imperative for change.... ...Ballmer is focusing on cracks in the foundation--some obvious, some subtle. On the obvious side is the threat of punishment or dismemberment at the hands of Uncle Sam (for more on the antitrust suit, see Techno File). On the subtle side are difficulties Microsoft has had trying to reach beyond the desktop and keep pace with the Internet age. Early versions of [Windows 2000] have already begun to sell strongly in the so-called server market, for computers that power intranets and handle other business tasks, and in the corporate desktop market. Those markets alone will be worth billions in sales and profits. Where NT is falling short of Microsoft's ambitions is in so-called enterprise computing: the high-end systems that corporations depend on to manage vast databases and handle vital tasks. Microsoft has made few inroads against entrenched players like IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle, which are improving their products fast. ... Gates and Ballmer make no bones about the need for Microsoft to grow up and temper its PC zealotry. They've even changed its official mission. For as long as anyone at Microsoft can remember, the company's grail has been: "A computer on every desk and in every home." Now the objective is much broader. ... Making such changes throughout the company will be tough. Even if Ballmer succeeds, Microsoft is unlikely ever to replicate the lock it has on the desktop. No company is likely to. In the Internet world, the rules of the game have changed to favor a diversity of products, services, and even standards. ...Maybe in driving the stock to an all-time high, the market is betting on the ability of Microsoft to adapt.