Found this interesting.
Peter Altschul
>
>
>
>
>interesting perspective and probably correct. How to win the legal
battle and
>lose the commercial war.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Microsoft: Forget the Appeal
>By Carl D. Howe
>
>
>Open Memo to the Microsoft board of directors:
>
>You probably weren't surprised when Judge Jackson ruled today that Microsoft
>should be broken up. You undoubtedly have plans to appeal this verdict and
>expect that Microsoft will eventually prevail.
>
>Don't do it. Instead, drop the appeal and get on with business.
>
>Why accept a breakup when you believe you are right? Because while Bill Gates
>was asking the Justice Department to define the word "compete," others were
>raising billions of dollars of venture capital to do just that. And rather
than
>Microsoft using its cash hoard to innovate ahead of that fray, it frittered
>away
>two years with unconvincing testimony and outrageous argumentation. Look what
>has happened to the infrastructure market while this case has been in court:
>
>* Open source software gained a foothold.
>Microsoft made its name delivering useful software on cheap commodity
hardware.
>But creeping featuritis has added megabytes of rarely used code to key
>Microsoft
>products -- adding complexity and reducing reliability. The result? Open
source
>Apache Web servers now outnumber those running Microsoft's Internet
Information
>Server two to one, and the svelte Linux OS is showing up inside corporate
>firewalls -- dashing Microsoft's dream of "Windows everywhere."
>
>* The Internet put new emphasis on nonstop supersized servers.
>Microsoft's success was based on rapid deployments of thousands of small
Wintel
>servers inside companies. But today, Global 2,500 eBusinesses want high-end
>servers like Sun E10000s, IBM S80s, and HP 8700s for their Internet
>infrastructures, and Forrester sees that shift accelerating. Where's
Microsoft?
>Nowhere: Microsoft's low-end focus and poor track record for reliability just
>doesn't make the grade for mission-critical apps today -- and its one high-end
>offering, Windows 2000 Data Center Edition, still isn't ready.
>
>* Internet engine rooms don't care about Microsoft.
>Dot Coms, ISPs, and managed service providers consistently tell us that only
>four infrastructure vendors matter to them: EMC, Cisco, Oracle, and Sun. Why?
>Because those vendors' solutions have proven their ability to serve
millions of
>users every day worldwide for months at a time -- without requiring the weekly
>reboot common in the Microsoft world.
>
>OK, so the world has changed. But why accept the breakup? With the world
>changing at Internet speed, Microsoft must focus on the marketplace, not the
>courtroom. Why?
>
>* Conduct remedies will cripple Microsoft's nimbleness.
>You hoped that the divestiture remedy would be replaced with a conduct
one. But
>living with an ongoing legal review of every product announcement will sap
>Microsoft's will to live -- ask the guys who were at IBM in the 1970s. You
>haven't appeared to enjoy Judge Jackson's attention to date -- do you want to
>spend the next 10 years having him review every business decision you make?
>
>* Wall Street hates uncertainty.
>The brain drain over the past two years must have scared you -- and throwing
>options at the employees who remain won't do any good if you can't keep the
>stock price moving up like you used to. Ending the ongoing litigation would
>go a
>long way toward convincing investors that Microsoft is back on the upswing.
>
>So you must choose between two alternative futures. One is represented by the
>choice that Andy Grove made when Intel resolved its antitrust suit with the
>FTC:
>Settle the matter, and move on. The other is to fight for a monolithic
>Microsoft, let your market and technology influence erode, and spend the next
>decade innovating for federal judges.
>Where do you want to go today?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Your friends at Forrester Research
>
>
>14442
>
>
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