This is a great article comparing Microsoft to the old IBM, and how Microsoft is starting to lose its shine. It is producing buggy applications filled with security holes and it is trying to integrate everything together. Companies are starting to see that and they don’t want to be connected to only one company. They want choices. They want open standards (not necessarily open source — two different things). They want security. Does Microsoft give them that? I don’t think so. I’ve always said that competition is the best thing for innovation. Microsoft, with its monopolistic tacticts doesn’t have that. And that’s starting to hurt. Anyway, those are my views, but you should read what Espen Andersen has to say about IBM and Microsoft in the latest Ubiquity issue.
Here are two excerpts from the article:
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It seems to me that Microsoft’s main problem is running out of new markets to enter. There are many markets available that are too small for it, at least too small for a pure product strategy. These markets require knowledge of how to solve the customers’ problems, and choosing which products to use after the problem is understood. Microsoft is product-focused rather than solution-focused, and as such will always be enslaved to their main markets, their main users, and their history.