News and Analysis to 13th October 2005

Google and Sun to shadow Microsoft?

‘Going places’ Google has teamed up with once ‘going places’ Sun Microsystems to promote each other’s wares. There is compelling logic in using Google’s pervasiveness to promote Sun’s cheaper alternative and Microsoft clone, OpenOffice.  The latter could be quite threatening to Microsoft. Possibly Google has it in mind to offer a virtual desktop delivered via a browser. This would hurt Microsoft from both an operating systems and applications revenue stream perspective. Maybe Google might promote Sun’s now open source operating system Solaris. This would enable Sun to get on with what its does well, engineering, and relieve Sun of what it does badly, marketing.

Infosys tells it as IT will be

Culturally India, and Indian IT companies have, despite their success, taken a somewhat modest and graceful approach to their good fortune. It must be difficult to resist the urge to gloat when for example Tata doubled its net profits for the last quarter, whilst those of Infosys jumped 36%. But the latter’s CEO has been unable to contain himself and came over all bullish by announcing that Indian IT services providers will replace western rivals as industry leaders. He is probably right, and definitely not smart. This sort of provocation will have a galvanising effect on western rivals, and plays into the hands of protectionist governments.

$$Pod

Apple’s net income has gone asymptotic with iPod shipments reaching almost 6.5 million for the quarter. Surprisingly Apple is playing down the new impossibly small iPod Nano. There appears to be a special edition, probably called the Nano Urban, which comes with a realistic broken window display. Only 10% of the Nano shipments offer this feature, though retailers are unable to ascertain which 10% are special edition, as the feature generally manifests itself a day or two into usage.

Microsoft muscling in on security

Microsoft is making big inroads into the desktop security market. Over the last few years the software giant has acquired anti-virus firm GeCAD Software, anti-spyware firm Sybari Software and FrontBridge Technologies for hosted email security. This has not gone unnoticed by anti-virus vendor Symantec, and Microsoft’s legal sparring partner the European Commission. Symantec claims that the European Commission has approached it in respect of Microsoft’s recent moves into this space. Symantec maintains that it intends to avoid taking the legal route to handling the ‘new kid on the block’. Though this new kid is quite impressive. Being much bigger than all the other kids, it has formed a gang, which goes by the name of SecureIT, made up of mainly young and impressionable youths. How long will it be before the gang approaches your business offering protection services?

MyGoodness!

Whichever way you split the IT market, Microsoft’s interests generally sit neatly on one side. An emerging dynamic is the tension between the open source community and Microsoft. The former is ostensibly a bunch of altruistic techies, but in reality a pawn in IBM’s chess game with Microsoft. Mirroring that is SCO Group’s assault on the open source community in respect of Linux, with IBM feeling the brunt. So it is with great surprise that open source database vendor MySQL has partnered up with sue-crazy SCO Group. Might this have something to do with Oracle purchasing open database vendor Innobase? And where does Microsoft fit in to these landscape changing events?

Real gets Microsoft

The long running dispute between Microsoft and RealNetworks has concluded with the former giving the latter over three quarters of a billion dollars. RealNetworks will in turn drop its anti-trust lawsuit and withdraw from legal battles in Europe and South Korea. The dispute related to the fact that Microsoft was using its ownership of Windows to push its rival product off the desktop. Maybe both realise they have taken their eye off the ball and need to team up to face the multimedia might of consumer darling Apple.