“If there’s one thing an effective empire builder needs, it’s a good map. Microsoft’s map for reshaping and reviving the world of business software can be found on floor two of Building Four on the company’s campus, in the office of a technology strategist named Norm Judah. The map itself doesn’t look like much. If anything, it resembles a microchip design or possibly an org chart gone mad. But this poster-sized piece of cardboard is nothing less than a schematic of how business works. Not how Microsoft works. How business works.” Read the article at Fortune.
Here’s the Plan for Software
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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That prediction may smack of a quintessentially Microsoft combination of hubris and utopianism.
This has been going on in Redmond for the past fifteen years, and they normally end up being behind the power curve. Most of Microsoft’s great ideas have fallen short, rendered irrelevant by other advances, or ignored in favor of something else. One that comes immediately to mind that promised to do all the stuff they’re talking about (app interoperability), which never delivered what it was supposed to is OLE2. It works, sorta. But it’s never gotten to be the wonderful tool it was supposed to be. Imbedding a spreadsheet in a word doc still doesn’t work right. Now you’re going to imbed something an e-mail in Lookout!? It’ll get to the other end, and maybe it works if the person receiving it is running the same version of Lookout!, XML won’t fix those problems.
To me, the only way this interoperability ever works is when the traditional PC gets jettisoned, and Sun’s vision of the terminal re-emerges. The only way that I can see this working is when you’ve got well-maintained machines run by BOsFH, and clients that won’t break things. It’s not going to happen with hundreds of thousands of machines running XP, administered by MSCEs.
So, Microsoft has gone and hired themselves some genius whose job it is to overcome the problems caused by incompatible proprietary file formats (such as the ones produced by different versions of M$ Office).
Sheesh.
And they claim that piracy is the reason software prices keep going up.
Microsoft is planning to dominate every aspect of business software. And has the map to show what they are doing.
What does Sun have?
Some stupid poster showing all the kinds of coffee beans.
RP
This may be a great idea! So they will develop 3 to 4 thousand little apps that work for all sorts of businesses that just interoperate at some level. If this turns out good, by the time they are done, they will discover there is already 3-5 OSS projects done for that exact same purpose, maybe all written by ESR once be breaks out his Python; he may even have finished a book about it, including a clever title.
This looks like most of these things are just going to be scripts that keep track of certain things, and will include aweful administration tools.
To be fair, it has a chance of turning out good for MS. It could be their first “innovation” in several years.
“Microsoft is planning to dominate every aspect of business software. And has the map to show what they are doing.
What does Sun have?
Some stupid poster showing all the kinds of coffee beans.”
Hmm, well, perhaps compare Java use today to the use of .NET.
Sun gets the job done in one way or another, M$ spreads propaganda, then tries to rip off the competition if someone actually does come up with whatever they’ve tried to develop.
The only reason .NET even exists is because of what other companies, namely Sun, are doing. Do you really think M$ would open themselves up to J2EE willingly? They’re doing it because Sun beat them to it and they have no choice.
Nothing every changes at M$, this article is a long-winded farce. No doubt paid for and planted by M$ in the first place.
Microsoft lanched a new division in Septeber. It’s called Microsoft Business Solutions and incorperates their Great Plains and Navision purchases. Both Companies are heavily into SMB and Mid-Market Financial/Accounting systems and their reach is huge. Great Plains was aquired in Aug. 2001 and Navision in Spring 2002.
Both are highly modular solutions that customize to the business, say, Manufacturing, Distribution, HR, Health Care, etc.
SAP, PeopleSoft, Seibel, KPMG, Oracle and Onyx are all trying to move down into that playing field as well. Sage/Best is well entrenched there already and is actually kicking MS’s butt with their MAS 90/200/500 products (they own PeachTree accounting as well).
Microsoft is hoping to leverage their SQL to dominate the SMB/Mid-market in the same way they did Windows to dominate the sesktop. Is there any wonder why SQL is becoming part of the Windows OS?
We’ll all get our first taste of MSBS soon when they drop their CRM product on the market. It’s their first fully .NET product and integrates heavily into Exchange server and Outlook.
Vic
‘Hmm, well, perhaps compare Java use today to the use of .NET’
Well considering .NET has only been in the general public hands for about 2 years…this not a suprise…you can’t compare it this way because java has been used for far longer then .net…..duh
Also I know plenty of Java gurus that are making the switch to C# and the .Net framework. Just wait a for years to see which is the leader.
“Do you really think M$ would open themselves up to J2EE willingly? They’re doing it because Sun beat them to it and they have no choice.”
Actually, they are doing it because they were ordered to put Java support back into Windows by a judge.
How clever, you spelled MS with a dollar sign because Microsoft has a money. Wow, that’s damn original. I haven’t seen that before.
Suggestion: don’t spell MS M$. People will take you a lot more seriously.
I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use my accustomed screen name on this board. People will get confused as to who is who and who is saying what.
If it was an honest mistake, no problem – please choose another handle. I was “Gil Bates” first, ages ago. Thank you.