Microsoft Goes Head-to-Head With IBM 274
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Microsoft's latest announcements that it is going after large-business computing, a realm that IBM currently has a stronghold on." From the article: "In both cases, the company has fashioned 'enterprise' versions of the products with additional security and collaboration-enabling features for sale to large businesses. Microsoft has spent $20 billion over the past three years on these upgrades, and Ballmer says it will spend $500 million over the next year marketing them to corporations. 'We're unlocking the next wave of growth for Microsoft,' Ballmer predicted during a press conference after his speech." We've previously discussed Microsoft's plans for IBM.
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's strategy has never been to be the best, or even to "not suck". They fight for hearts and minds.
Remember the line from Pirates of Silicon Valley?
Jobs: "We have better stuff!"
Gates: "It doesn't matter."
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:2)
No, windows would make it go from suck to blow.
When Microsoft Goes Head-to-Head With IBM, (Score:2, Funny)
Johnny Come Lately (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, they threw $20 billion at it and will throw another $500 million at it. But what it is is a mature market, wherein customers have grown weary of the old business model of turning over buckets of money for software and support. Many big buyers are moving along on old, unsupported versions of Office, which they are loathe to upgrade for no reason other than to buy a pile of features they're not convinced they need. Usually the push for upgrades comes from some brash executive who thinks by the seat of his/her pants that it's about time they got into the 21st century (whatever the hell that is really supposed to mean) just before they, themselves pack it in and move along to their next rung up the ladder (with a new line for their resumee: Modernized infrastructure)
While I was a bit of an IBM hater, back in the 80's, for the attitude their sales people conveyed, I do believe IBM is now a far better company, much wiser and behind the winning hand -- Open Source. Their time in the trenches will serve them well as a the cocky crew from Redmond attempt to strut in like they own the house.
Considering Microsoft's track record, particularly in the press with all the vulnerabilites, I think they've got a tough sell. Some will be low-hanging fruit, easy to pluck, but others will be much harder to reach. It will be interesting to see how much further.
Personally, I'm already advising our shop to dump Microsoft. We simply can't afford them anymore.
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:2)
That was close to my thoughts, as well. The other point that I was thinking about was that it seems that MS does not tend to do too well with trying to break into other markets. I know it's a cliche, but it seems that unless a market is tied directly to Windows or Office, they have a very hard time doing much in it. The only market I've heard about them being noticed in, other than those mentioned, is with the XBox
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:2)
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:3, Insightful)
As the grandparent poster noted, the exceptions are where the market is directly related to Windows. MS owned/owns the desktop. It was inevitable that they would become the ones running the file servers.
- the web browsing market with IE, eventually displacing Netscape
Again, tied directly to the desktop. They own the desktop. Whatever they include with the OS will inevitably dominate.
the database market with SQL Server, gaining market share on IBM and Oracl
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:2)
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:2)
For extreme loads, add another chunk of hardware.
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:2)
There is a point where it is more cost-effective to switch to a high end commercial database from Postgres instead of throwing more hardware at the problem. Very few companies will ever reach it, but it does exist.
Re:Johnny Come Lately (Score:3, Informative)
Now, maybe one day MS will be a solutions supplier, but right now all they do is a bit of software. Someone else does the hardware, someone else does the integration, someone else does the process. Let me repeat that. M
Giant Heads (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Giant Heads (Score:2)
Microsoft happened to score big with Outlook and Exchange because they bolted a calendar and an email program together at the right time. They know that this is a big lock-in point for them. Unfortunately for Microsoft, end-to-end support for integration of the most popular groupware features (email, address book, calendar, tasks, and notes) are rapidly coming together [groupdav.org] in open source offerings [citadel.org], so they've been trying to crea
Re:Giant Heads (Score:2)
I like Open-Xchange [open-xchange.org], because it is feature-complete (though still somewhat buggy), supports open *DAV interfaces (a
Re:Giant Heads (Score:2, Interesting)
What the DOJ did in 2001 is protect a free market by agreeing with a D.C. court of appeals. The court of appeals saw written and verbal testimony by hundreds of economists, that concluded that breaking up Microsoft would not protect consumers, and is counter productive to a free market economy.
What has been gained from the break up of the big bell? We had over a decade of artificially inflated prices due to "connection fees" th
Re:Giant Heads (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Giant Heads (Score:5, Informative)
Novell's NetWare was the #1 and #3 "PC Network OS", in two different versions, when Microsoft's late-1990s NT onslaught targeted it. IT media routinely compared the marketshare of either one or the other Novell versions to the combined marketshare of all Microsoft OS products, including DOS. Just one example of how IT buyers were sold lies to make the monopoly look like the only choice. While NetWare was a superior product, even more interoperable among MS OS products than the MS products were with each other.
Earlier, IBM's OS/2 suffered even more serious dirty tricks, bound by their "partnership" with MS in OS/2. No one serious believed that Windows was superior technology to OS/2.
Netscape was defeated by Microsoft's monopoly abuse, just as proven in the monopoly case against Microsoft. A travesty of a defense that should have seen Gates and his lying execs do jailtime for perjury, evidence tampering, and contempt of court. But despite being declared an abusive monopoly, in violation of their bundling consent agreement with the court, Microsoft has continued to bundle products with its monopoly package anticompetitively. They still get in some trouble, even today, for such practices. But once Bush took over the White House and Justice Department from Clinton, his Republican government let go of the solution to that problem. A clear case of political favoritism. No wonder, because the Republican Party is the Monopoly Party.
All of these facts are clear history. It is you who is denying them with your false revisions and fantasy world. And it is you, a consumer in the market, who is hurt by them. Unless you're a Microsoft employee or shareholder, in which case you're shortsighted in addition to amnesiac.
Re:Giant Heads (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Giant Heads (Score:2)
Re:Giant Heads (Score:2)
The political take on this is that Microsoft were convicted of monopoly abuse in a court of law under a Democratic administration and were set to take a huge hit, the administration changed to a Republican one, and the pursuit of Microsoft was quietly settled with what amounted to little more than a slap on the w
Not Quite Yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not Quite Yet (Score:5, Insightful)
What they need to compete is the high level of handholding, the extensive uptimes, and the absolute reliability and throughput of those IBM OSes. Microsoft will probably make inroads into the small-business market, and the edges of the corporation, but it's going to take more than just new software to displace IBM from the truly big-iron apps. Personally, I think that Sun, HP, and RedHat should be more concerned, as this will threaten the midrange server market.
Re:Not Quite Yet (Score:3, Interesting)
z/OS UNIX System Services is UNIX95, XPG4, and XOpen compliant. What's neat about it is that you get the reliability of a mainframe with the flexibility of a UNIX system. You can have your legacy mainframe applications talk to your modern POSIX-based applications.
Disclaimer - I work for IBM, specifically within the USS product. That doesn't stop me from thinking it's a nifty product though
Re:Not Quite Yet (Score:2)
Why not just buy some flavor of Unix that already has it perfected? A 20 year head-start is difficult to overcome.
Re:Not Quite Yet (Score:3, Insightful)
They are quite alike. They both tend to trumpet absolutely cretinous marketing claims and beat themselves in the chest senseless screaming repeatedly utterly stupid ideas. Just like a bunch of communists at a party conference. This is where they are similar.
The difference is in the way they perform a 180 degree turn when the party line changes.
When the great Cisco Marketing Bubba declares that it is time to admit that WFQ is worthless without having a clasfu
Re:Not Quite Yet (Score:2)
Maybe, but then they'll still be an uncooperative, vendor-lock-in, embrace-and-extend, non-standards-compliant, only-compatible-with-their-own-stuff, expensive-as-hell technology company. With a bad track record for security and stability and a reputation for draconian licensing practices (there's more, but you get the picture).
Trust 'em? No way.
They tried this a few years ago with Unisys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They tried this a few years ago with Unisys? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.unisys.com/products/es7000__servers/ha
Re:They tried this a few years ago with Unisys? (Score:2)
Re:They tried this a few years ago with Unisys? (Score:2)
I work in huge datacenters for cities and state & fed goverment, and have never seen one of these beasts. anyone out there know of places that use 'em?
IIRC that's because they never sold a single one.
I think they gave one to Abbey National (now just Abbey) on evaluation.
Re:They tried this a few years ago with Unisys? (Score:2)
Re:They tried this a few years ago with Unisys? (Score:2)
I've seen one. Interestingly enough, however, it never got rolled into production. It's basically a known fact that these beasts sold very very poorly. In fact, they sold so poorly that you can now get UNISYS support for Linux on them as well.
Massive "mainframe-style" machine simply aren't the way that the market is going right, especially for those folks that are using Windows. Heck, Microsoft points to the UNISYS machines when it wants to show that Windows can scale straight to the mainframe, but th
GWB should hire Microsoft ... (Score:5, Funny)
They have a Google killer.
They have a Java killer.
They have an IBM killer.
Microsoft has a killer for everything!
Dubya should hire Microsoft to develop a terrorist killer! War on Terror would be victorious!
Re:GWB should hire Microsoft ... (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Any sympathy I might have had towards IBM in this confrontation vanished upon reaching the word "Lotus". Save me, Microsoft!!!
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
They want have have wanted the AS400 type which will never happen.
Those boxes just work and Microsoft does not have that kind of track record.
On a side note, I've supported Notes and Exchange and during the Nimda through Spyware years, Notes server was much easier to maintain.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's Result (Score:5, Funny)
Please wait for your airline reservation while critical update download completes.
Speaking as an IBMer... (Score:2, Informative)
What, Windows doesn't run on mainframes? So sorry, let's talk again when you have at least one heavy-duty operating sytem (like z/OS or Linux). Not to mention the applications to run on it.
Speaking as an IBM competitor... (Score:2, Interesting)
You do realize that in some spaces, such as application servers, IBM can't even win in a fair fight until they start *giving away free consulting* from IBM Global Services in order to push the adoption of their software, right?
As for mainframes... I don't know who is investing in new
Re:Speaking as an IBM competitor... (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as an IBM competitor... (Score:3, Informative)
"We're gonna fuckin' kill IBM!" (Score:2, Funny)
And I'll even sell it to you for only $100 Million.
(That's less than your current yearly office furniture budget...)
Re:"We're gonna fuckin' kill IBM!" (Score:2)
With Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
Innovation (Score:5, Funny)
Oooh, they implemented OLE in Outlook! How 1995 of them.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
When I want to work with some file that I nominally deal with using a given application, I want to work in the familiar interface of that application. I don't want to screw around with some embedded-editing crap, especially when I need to have the full application installed anyway.
Likewise, being able to 'edit' files in an email is a horrible misfeature, because it encourages very lazy thinking about where data is stored. Where's the lastest copy of my presentation -- in an email? Is it the copy in my home directory? What about the copy on my keychain drive?
And, of course, none of this will be 'industry standard', so it will follow Microsoft's usual practice of nearly mandating an all-Microsoft shop...
Re:Innovation (Score:2)
Where did it go? Turns out she double clicked it in webmail in IE. It downloaded, opened with Word, she worked on it, saved it, no problem, right? Uh, except it got saved somewhere in no man's
Unlikely (Score:4, Informative)
If it's development, we run Solaris, if it's serving, we run Linux, if it's graphics, we run Mac, and if its the sales guy's laptop, we run Windows."
These old-school guys love their unix. I cant see this happening any time soon.
Interesting contrast ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that MS is taking a completely different approach from IBM. MS espouses off-the-shelf software products (theirs of course) glued together by the customer's own employees. IBM espouses an army of consultants armed with a collection of applications and CDs packed full of open source, writing your company's custom business software.
Now which approach do you think will win? What does history tell us? Personally, I think things in computerdom always trend towards off-the-shelf standardization. the reasons for this are obvious. There is someone to call when there's a problem. The cost typically drops as volumes are high. And the learning curve is lower because people already are familiar with the building blocks. I can't think of any examples where customization is a longterm solution to a problem. This is why I think MS has a good chance of success here.
Key point you missed (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft argues that by integrating those user-oriented software packages thoroughly with back-end programs for data storage, communications, and business-process management, it puts companies' ordinary employees, rather than the geeks, at the center of the computing world. "Our innovations facilitate the power of people" in businesses, he said.
Microsoft has to sell software to those geeks in the back office. If the sales pitch is to take the effort o
Re:Interesting contrast ... (Score:2)
Aren't these off-the-shelf products being customized? And isn't the Open Source software IBM has just as off-the-shelf... if not more so?
Oh my.... (Score:2, Funny)
Even better virtualisation! (Score:2)
20 billion. 3 years. Pity they didn't catch that WMF thingy. So what exactly was the money spend on? I am old enough to know that in IT it is very easy to both spend time and money yet accomplish nothing.
Now it is just possible that WMF was the one last bug in Windows that MS overlooked and that Vista will indeed be the bee knees when it comes to security.
Anyone willing to bet any money on it? No, didn't think so.
Will MS sell some in the b
Ballmer's Homer (Score:2, Funny)
The only difference was that a chair was thrown towards the center of the press conference.
The Akira model (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft getting bigger? I only have one word for that:
Tetsuooooooooo!
Re:The Akira model (Score:2)
Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Could this just be a $500M ploy to make people think they aren't paying attention?
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
You had me up to that last point. Apple have something like 4% market share [hitslink.com]. That isn't competition, that's an insignificant niche market (at best).
you may be right tho - this may be a publicity stunt to try to make out that they aren't a total monopoly without any real competition
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
Firefox had a 0% market share a while ago, now it's at what, 19%? And growing.
Meanwhile MS market share in both PCs and web browsers is shrinking.
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
With changes in the market share as they are, I don't exepct any major change in OS's any time soon. Apple have had their chance, and have continuelly failed to impact in any significant way
Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it (Score:2)
Perhaps there won't be a switch in who has the most market share, but all the companies the original poster mentioned are legitimate competitors to Microsoft. Competitors it should take care to compete with.
Blah blah blah, heard it all before (Score:5, Funny)
Look out, IBM! (Score:2)
You know your latest enterprise-class Operating System, OS/3? Well ... it's been "liberated" and will henceforth be known as Microsoft Windows Vista.
(I wish there was a +1, Sardonic tag...)
This is how Rome fell... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Roman Empire was done in not by an equal country, but by small bands of invading hordes. And perhaps the rules of political empires apply to technology empires, too.
Re:Rome lasted over 1000 years before it fell (Score:2)
The current situation is completely different. Now Microsoft is attempting to challenge Sony on hardware, Apple and Google on web services, IBM on big business, Linux on small business servers, etc... IBM is actually doing quite well on their consulting. They are using Linux for an OS and have sold much of their hardware divisio
Not the same game: Will MS play by the new rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that I am against Microsoft entering the market, competition is usually good. What I am saying is that I think Microsoft will have to learn a lesson or two in order to actually compete. They won't be able to get away with delivering a product out of the box and then providing only a minimal level of support for it. Microsoft will have to play ball like the other big boys and learn to accept some of their rules. I expect that there will be some resistance to this from their end but, they will end up between a rock and a hardplace on the this because their enterprise level customers will simply demand it or look elsewhere.
Re:Not the same game: Will MS play by the new rule (Score:2)
Not gonna work (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft thinks they understand the "business enterprise" computer market, but it's just the bottom, low-end stuff compared to IBM.
And don't even bother comparing Microsoft customer "service" to IBM customer service, there's just no comparison.
This isn't all about technology ... (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing to remember when thinking about what Microsoft does is how important their stock price is to them. (Think of all the compensation in the form of options or stock grants.) It's important to them to keep the perception that Microsoft is a "growth" company. Here's why.
The price/earnings (P/E) ratio for a common stock is a measure of the earnings growth expected by the market: other things equal, a higher P/E corresponds to higher expected growth. At this writing, Microsoft stock (MSFT) is trading at $27.58, which is a P/E ratio of 22.8x the latest 12 months' earnings. IBM is trading at $83.12, which is 17.1x trailing 12-month earnings. If MSFT were to trade at the same P/E as IBM (meaning that it was expected to grow about as fast as IBM), its stock price would be $20.68, a decline of almost 25%. I think that might result in a few unhappy campers in Redmond.
Microsoft's practice of consistently announcing fabulous new products that generally turn up later and with less capability than they were touted with is entirely consistent with their need to keep the stock price up.
CEO: That's the 3rd reboot this week ... (Score:2, Funny)
IT Guy: Because that's how you fix most Windows problems! You wouldn't want me to reinstall or rebuild, would you?
Doghouses (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how I still view Microsoft. They know how to build a Desktop OS, so is their Enterprise system going to be 10,000 Desktops?
UNFAIR!! Bill's head's WAY bigger'n ANYbody @ IBM (Score:2)
What should be the biggest story on Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has had, for over ten years, a monopoly on the desktop. A generation has grown up thinking that Microsoft is synonymous with computing. Microsoft also has billions and billions of dollars to spend on research and advertising. With all of its name recognition and money, Microsoft has not been able to build a serious name for itself in the server market.
This is the type of statement that will generate a lot of comments on both sides: Unix people who say that any version of Windows couldn't be considered seriously at all for a server, and Windows people who will point out XP and Windows Server are now stable and secure enough for mainstream usage.
But the fact still remains, that if you check out netcraft, Microsoft products seem to place a far third behind commercial Unixes and Linux. For a company with Microsoft's name recognition and research resources to not be a dominant player in the server market after 30 years of business and over ten years of market dominance is a staggering fact in itself.
Re:What should be the biggest story on Microsoft (Score:2)
How Do You Measure a Server? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the majority of *websites* are served by Linux/Unix machines. No doubt there.
But if you're talking about typical business servers (ie: print servers, file servers, application servers, email/calendaring servers, collaboration servers, intranet servers, etc) I think you would find most of them are running Microsoft.
This is especially true if you look at the small/mi
Never get involved in a land war in Asia (Score:3, Funny)
No one every got fired for buying IBM (Score:2)
When it comes to mid-range, mainframes, and databases, IBM still rules.
This will just come down to the battle between... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think IBM will win on that front.
Security (Score:3, Insightful)
And all this talk of integration makes me nervous. Now we have a set of pipes from Outlook to Office to SQL Server to AD to IIS etc.? Not my idea of a good time trying to secure all the possible attack vectors.
In related news ... (Score:4, Funny)
"When I woke up this morning and saw my kid's pony's severed head in bed next to me, I just knew it was Balmer. When I went down for breakfast and found all my coffee dumped on the floor, I knew he meant business."
At least he didn't threaten with chairs and profanity.
Seriously, after IBM exited the desktop PC hardware business, any usefulness they had to Microsoft vanished, and they became just another competitor -- one with considerable corporate influence and a bigger source of Java legitimacy in the corporate world than Sun (who is on a short leash to Microsoft in any event), AND the biggest legitimizer of Linux for corporate use around.
The miracle is that Balmer wasn't throwing chairs and spewing profanities during the interview.
20 year old dupe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:5, Insightful)
$20 Billion... (Score:2)
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:4, Funny)
Is that the sequel to Million Dollar Baby?
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:5, Funny)
But yes, with your keen eye to detail you should have gone into advertising. Not so much an emphasis on things like 'facts' in that industry.
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:2)
- Andrew
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:2)
Re:I should have gone into advertising... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Refighting Apple's War (Score:2)
Didn't Ballmer get the memo? Microsoft is 'The Man' these days, not IBM.
SCO (Score:2, Interesting)
Though, of course, the same could already be said of Microsoft's generous donations to SCO at the time SCO's frivolous lawsuit began against IBM..
Which leads me to something interesting. Microsoft quietly gives a large deal of money to a group who seems to have completely devoted their entire business 100% to legally punishing IBM for making Linux part of their business strategy-- a group which seems to be violating at least the Lan
Re:This is nothing but (Score:2)
Re:End is near for IBM (Score:2)
I especially liked the part of joke where you proclaim "Microsoft has the best tools. The best Network OS (Win2K3)". Good one, indeed:)