News and Analysis to 9^th September 2004

Microosooft

Microsoft wants to eat Google’s lunch, and it will if CEO Steve Ballmer has his way. When Microsoft’s infrared beam warms your forehead it’s generally a good time to rethink your strategy. Whether Microsoft ‘pacman’s’ Google or simply ‘runs it off the road’ remains to be seen. Google’s founders might want to invite Oracle, Sun and IBM around for lunch sometime soon.

Return to sender id

Microsoft has pledged to rid the world of spam and phishers (those that masquerade as people from genuine companies, and who rarely have the recipient’s best interests at heart) and to that end is promoting its ‘sender id’ technology, which reveals the true source of the sender. As a solution it’s a start, but more work is required. However the Internet Engineering Task Force has rejected it because it is a proprietary solution, which if accepted would give Microsoft part ownership of the Internet.

(Open) source of concern for Microsoft

Microsoft recently announced to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it expects to be hit hard by growing competition from open source operating system Linux. This could cause it to cut prices (heaven forbid!). A recent study of governments globally found that 129 national and 57 local governments had open source initiatives. It is important to remember that there is a cost to migrating to Linux and it is not low. Microsoft will most likely put pay to open source simply by reducing its price to the point where it wins the TCO (total cost of ownership) argument. Once Linux is starved of oxygen, Microsoft will no doubt return to very profitable form.

Disastrous planning

A recent survey by AT&T and the Partnership for Public Warning has highlighted the fact that only 25% of businesses polled in New York and Washington have a disaster recovery plan. Though across the US, 60% of companies have redundant servers or a backup site. 35% of those with a plan outsource their plan to a specialist and this looks likely to increase in the government and financial services sectors in particular. So surprisingly 3 years after 9/11 business continuity is still a growth market.

HP’s storage business in a spin

HP seems to have taken its eye off the ball(s). First its server sales slumped and now, according to Gartner and IDC, its storage division’s market share is sliding despite the growing market. HP has a dilemma. Does it split up the business into logical chunks, eg. enterprise and consumer, or does it hold out in the hope of being the next IBM? I suspect juggler-in-chief Carly Fiorina is determined to steer the latter course (the pay’s better), despite some market analysts urging it to dismantle.

Avanade  - dotbusy

Accenture-Microsoft secret love child Avanade is maturing into a dotnet hothouse. It currently employs 3,000 staff worldwide and plans to get this to 5,000. If you know 100 people that have dotnet skills, Avanade will take them today.

Does IT deliver value?

First the good news, according to a survey of 300 general business managers and IT executives within large US-based companies, 84% of respondents indicated that their increased productivity could be attributed to IT. However 47% of business managers and 51% of IT executives said their companies did not know how to make their IT departments accountable for delivering real business value. The survey conducted by Accenture is a wake up call to CIOs. If you can’t demonstrate value, your department will eventually be replaced by an organisation that can.

Longhorn to become Shorthorn

Microsoft’s much talked about next generation desk top operating system, code named Longhorn is to be stripped of it new bells and whistles, including its much needed single-view filing system in order to make the 2006 release deadline. Apparently these fancy features have been suspended so that resources can be diverted to the issues of reliability and security. Somebody must have forgotten to add them to the original Longhorn specification. Would the growth of Linux have anything to do with this change of direction? Vive la competition!