Microsoft Sees IBM as Biggest Threat 328
Anonycat writes "Bill Gates gave an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show, claiming that IBM is the rival company Microsoft has their sights set on. From the article: 'People tend to get over focused on one of our competitors ... We've always seen that ... I'm never going to change the press' view
about what the cool company to write about is. That's Google number 1 and
Apple number 2 ... [IBM has] four times the employees that I have,
way more revenues than I have.'"
Microsoft's Biggest Threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Begging Bill's pardon, but Microsoft's attitudes and practices are their own biggest threat.
Over the years, Microsoft's biggest threats have been:
I've heard Bill talk at a CES a few years ago and between the words, you could most definitely hear him placing Microsoft as not a technology partner to consumer electronics firms, but as a direct or indirect threat to their product lines and/or ways of doing business. While he waxed enthusiastic about how Windows CE would be some great enabling force, you could almost hear people break out in a sweat wondering what "Microsoft-tax" they would encounter to hop on or compete with the Redmond bandwagon, whether it actually added anything truly positive. I'm positive more than a few show exhibitors could almost see him in a pinstripe suit with a couple gunsels behind him and a moll on his arm.
<James Cagney Voice>
"We're the new business men in town, see? And you're going to like doing business with us, see? Because when you do business with us nobody gets hurt, see? Yeah. I think you do see. That's very good. Very good for business."
</James Cagney Voice>
Bill most likely sees threats to his company because he cultivates them. Microsoft has profited at IBM's expense for the past 20 years. Why shouldn't IBM be competing with Microsoft?
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Could be true (Score:4, Insightful)
Revenue (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Bill think Everyone is a Fool ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey, look over here!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the thing. When Bill speaks at these shindigs, everyone listens. I was lucky to get a seat when I was there. I don't think people go to see what great marvels he and his people behind the curtain have rigged up (and whether or not it will fail most spectacularly at the worst moment [blame it on cell phones, nobody in a real business environment is going to have those] *snicker*) They go to hear whether or not Microsoft is going to make a move on their turf.
So look over that way. And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Yes, because the man behind the curtain has a chair and he's going to f**king kill you!
Re:Does Bill think Everyone is a Fool ? (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, why is Bill Gates still so involved? I thought he left Microsoft a long time ago.
IBM the biggest threat... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, where Microsoft's bullying business tactics don't have a way in? What think ye all?
Re:Microsoft's Biggest Threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
While that's true to an extent, I think it's open source and innovation. Google innovated with search engines, now it's a word. IPod is almost a word, a huge trend. Open Source is an ideology. You can't fight ideologies and words from dictionnary. Open Source + Microsoft's reluctance to change their business model + lack of innovation on their part will be it's ultimate undoing.
Then again, that won't change jack in the big scheme of things. Yesterday was IBM, the big Monopolistic Empire of Evil(tm), today is Microsoft, tommorow it will be (fill in the blanks).
AND IBM is a prime mover behind Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's google.... Also a Linux user/proponent.
And apple insists on using Open Source (BSD) too....
So Microsoft's top-3 opponents are Open Source friendly companies.
See a pattern there?
Bill knows all (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it annoy anyone else that as you read what Bill Gates says it tends to sound rather whiny and condescending? And what's with the waving of his hands in the air?
Why can't he just say that they have several strong competitors but they always try to do their best to create good products that will do A, B, and C?
Is there anything that Microsoft can't do, hasn't thought of, or has something in the works that is better than everyone else? Come on.
Give me a break. (Score:3, Insightful)
What if he had said something simpler but equivalent: "We have nothing to fear from Google." Would you believe that?
In other news, the Information Minister of Iraq claims that there are no Americans in Bagdad...
Re:Does Bill think Everyone is a Fool ? (Score:2, Insightful)
When you are Microsoft, everyone are your enemies, including your customers.
Re:awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Services and consulting (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM is a hardware and services company, Microsoft is a proprietary software vendor. If you want to maximize your profits from service standpoint, the best route to go is to have a non-proprietary infrastructure ( like Linux
IBM makes for a convenient top competitor (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can understand Bill being envious of the revenue stream of IBM, but the number of employees? My word he must be planning on world domination by being in every aspect of your life and to do so he's gonna need a lot larger of a workforce. I can just see Steve sitting in Bill's office with a conversation that hails from the days of the Animaniacs:
Bill: "Stevie, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Steve: "I think so Bill, but what are we going to after we Fucking Kill(TM) IBM?"
Bill: "The same thing we do every day Stevie. Try to take over the world!"
Steve: "Narf! Good one Bill."
Wrong threat model (Score:3, Insightful)
ACLs don't cut it in an age of mobile code and 10,000,000 line programs. You can't trust applications, no matter how careful you are. You shouldn't have to, either.
--Mike--
Re:Microsoft's Biggest Threat? (Score:2, Insightful)
If they TAKE OUT IBM??? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an interesting statement. Not only is it absurd to think that anyone will "take out" IBM any time soon (IBM has weathered lots of storms, and has adapted to every one of them) this mentality is very common when talking about Microsoft.
Balmer wants to kill Google. darkonc talkes about taking out IBM. This is legal business, not the mafia. Microsoft is out to go after competition and kill it in order to win all the chips. Others might think about wanting to kill their competition, but no where is this sentiment more discussed when talking about Microsoft.
Killing competition! You know... what monopolies do??
And no one currently in the justice department wants to get the giant sized clue that is constantly being handed to them.
Attention Google Fanboys (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM on the other hand, is the largest service sector company and the largest IT company. IBM's rock solid line of servers provide a much larger push for Unix-based systems (not just IBM's AIX, but really any of them) than does Google's use of FOSS in their products, or Summer of Code. Furthermore, IBM is by far the strongest presence in the HPC market, which as Bill indicated previously, is something MS wants to get into. We've also seen that IBM consistently produces great software (DB2, Business and Commerce software, OS, Application Server, and much more) as well as hardware (their hardware line includes complete server solutions, processors, storage systems, etc.) and is capable of using only its own products end-to-end.
Thus, it is appropriate to say that IBM is a bigger threat to MS than is Google.
PS: Google's market cap is not a reflection on its strength or presence so don't bring that up as a figure plz.
Re:Envy (Score:1, Insightful)
Bryan
Re:Microsoft's Biggest Threat? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is exactly the strategy of IBM, at least in the java world.
Look at the Websphere family - portal, content management, business integrator, etc. They are all supposedly standards compliant, but try to use any of them with any other standards compliant software. And have fun trying to get them to support Websphere running on any jvm besides theirs.
Re:threat to MSFT (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Size matters... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has a pair of businesses that currently yield ridiculous profit margins, Windows and MS Office. IBM has quite a few businesses, some of which are also ridiculously profitable, but most of which are merely very profitable. The most important of these businesses, in recent years anyway, is IBM's service and support business. Service and support will never generate the profit margins that Windows and MS Office provide, but it's a good business nonetheless, and it is a business with critical strategic importance. Here's an example of why IBM is truly Microsoft's biggest threat.
Let's say, for example, that you are the CIO of a really big company or a large government institution, like a U.S. State, and you are concerned about what it is going to cost to upgrade 50,000 machines from Windows 2000 and Office 2003 to Windows Vista and MS Office 12. What's more, you would really like to have one central repository for all of your documents. Something that integrates with email, has a web portal, and is easily accessible to thousands of workers at the same time. So you talk to your service and support vendor (IBM), and you ask your rep what he can do for you. Well, it turns out that IBM has this nifty new portal software called IBM Workplace and it can be used with OpenOffice.org for a fraction of the cost of upgrading to Office 12. What's more, the software is compatible with Linux thin clients and so if you have desktops that don't need a lot of bells and whistles you can replace those expensive PCs with easy to manage thin clients and save a bundle. Not only do you end up with a better system overall, but you save millions of dollars in Microsoft upgrades in the process. What's more, IBM has the resources to guarantee that you don't have to worry about whether the system will work or not. The system is going to work slick. In fact, IBM is probably going to be willing to cut you a deal on the software so that IBM reps can use your installation as a showcase.
Part of the reason that Microsoft can make such ridiculous profit margins is that Microsoft relies on its partners (like IBM) to carry the expense of actually selling and supporting Microsoft software. Microsoft made a conscious choice to stay out of the sales, service, and support businesses for its software because these low margin businesses would have lowered Microsoft's aggregate profit margins dramatically. Microsoft could have become like IBM and built its own service and support arm, but instead it concentrated on the much higher margin business of selling software licenses. That worked fine in the past, but IBM makes software as well. Now IBM has every incentive to cut Microsoft out of the picture in every single one of IBM's many service contracts. Thanks to Microsoft's ridiculous profit margins there is even plenty of fat to cut.
That's why Microsoft has been concentrating so heavily on its service, support, and sales arms. Microsoft has finally realized that its primary customers (OEMs and sales and service organizations) all would be better off if there was a little more competition in the operating system and office suite markets. So now Microsoft wants to start dealing directly with end users. Unfortunately for Microsoft it can't move too quickly because if it does it risks alienating partners that it needs very badly. If Microsoft is successful the finished Microsoft product will look a lot more like the IBM of today. If Microsoft is unsuccessful then it will probably die.
Google is really in the same boat. It currently can demand high profit margins because of the amount of traffic that it can drive. However, Google's success is predicated entirely on Microsoft not using its desktop and web browser marketshare to drive more search results its way. To compete successfully with Microsoft (and Yahoo) in the long run term Google is going to have to invest plenty more.
Of course IBM is the biggest threat ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The threat became apparent when IBM and/or Novell began asking for discovery regarding the Microsoft purchase of an "Unix" license from SCO to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
If IBM can prove that Microsoft funded the frivolous SCO lawsuits then Microsoft is in deep, deep trouble. It could easily cost them billions of dollars and some executives could see jail time.
Re:Microsoft's Biggest Threat? - Others! (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM has the "Chicklet" keyboard on the XT, which was funny if you like the Adams Gum.
DEC made the Rainbow.
Apple also made a PEAR. Not to mention the Lisa.
Coleco made the Adam.
Commodore is a naval rank... plus the Amiga is a friend. Hmm.
My cousin had an Odyssey video game system growing up.
How about Oracle?
Java?
Acrobat by Adobe?
Opera??
Oh, and bever mind the Palm Pilots!
It's hardly a one way street, IMHO....
Re:Hey, look over here!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Given IBM's use of FOSS and policies regarding OSS, if FOSS is the biggest MSFT threat, then IBM might just be their biggest competitor. People are thinking it was Google that was the threat, but they're keeping just enough of what runs Google Mail, Maps and Search private that they're not as big of a threat as a company that's not only constantly improving and adding to FOSS, but also marketing FOSS-based services and solutions to Microsoft's clients.
I think Bill may actually be speaking honestly, here. Possibly downplaying threats and competition from other companies as well, perhaps, though. I mean, think of Sony vs. Xbox ? Apple vs Urge? What business exactly is IBM stealing? Server OS licenses! Oh, I guess that's big, too. Perhaps he's being kind of truthful, but playing up what he wants the CES-centric folks ( read: real tech heads ) to think : that MSFT is focused like a laser on providing you with all of your IT datacenter needs, and that IBM is 'stealing' that market. We should ignore all the other stuff MSFT is involved in, an pretend they've focused their resources on *our* issues.
Because they need to keep selling OS server licenses to help fund their other less-profitable ventures, perhaps.
Re:Xbox (Score:4, Insightful)
Does MSFT make chips? No. Does MSFT make most of thier money from XBox? Any, even?
That brings me to another point, shouldn't IBM be suffering pretty hard now that Apple is moving to Intel for its chips? That must have been a large source of income for IBM
Not according to IBM, and it's probably true. They didn't even make all of the chips Apple uses/used... Freescale ( formerly of Motorola ) still makes the G4s that are in all Mac minis, iBooks and Powerbooks. IBM only supplied the desktop iMac and PowerMac G5 chips. IBM screwed up targets for the G5 badly enough ( remember they were supposed to be at 3 GHz *when*??? ) that they might not have been making much at all depending on what the Apple contract looked like. For whatever reason, volume or contracts, IBM by all accounts won't notice Apple is missing, at least not until Apple sells a lot more high-end desktops that might have used IBM chips.
MSFT properly sees IBM's software business as supporting it's chip business, not the other way around, and would be all too happy to see IBM shift toward the chip business... as a client of MSFT. They're not a competitor in that field. MSFT will not, however, be buying consulting services and Linux blade servers from IBM - they compete in the software and services fields. Apple needed a chip supplier motivated to create great laptop and desktop chips; buying from suppliers who are primarily invested in small devices ( like routers ) and room-warming servers ( like Power blades ) wasn't getting them what they wanted. By all accounts, IBM and Freescale lost a difficult customer and a little bit of clout, but not a lot of revenue, when Apple left ( or well, leaves, it hasn't actually happened yet ).
Re:Microsoft's Biggest Threat? - Others! (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM has the "Chicklet" keyboard on the XT, which was funny if you like the Adams Gum.
The chiclet keyboard was on the PCjr; the XT had a real keyboard. Moreover, it was a colloquial discriptive term of the time for that sort of crappy keyboard, not an official IBM moniker. See the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
Re:awesome (Score:2, Insightful)