Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy

[David Kastrup]

"amicus_curious" <ACDC@sti.net> writes:

> "Robert Heller" <heller@deepsoft.com> wrote in message
>
>> Microsoft recently announced that it is laying off people...  I take
>> that as a concreet sign that 'Microsoft is already hurting'.
>> Probably not a *serious* hurt though (except for the 5,000 or so
>> soon-to-be jobless Microsoft employees).
>
> Don't look now, but a lot of other companies are laying off people,
> too. Can you attribute that to the triumph of Linux in the market?

Computer use is expanding wildly, so a company with a quasi-monopoly in
that area should have a field day.

Microsoft definitely is hurting, but if you take a look at the
deployment numbers, they don't manage to seriously push Vista in the
field because business is using XP rather than Vista.  So it would
appear that Microsoft managed to shoot itself in the foot quite without
the help of Open Source.

If there is an influence of Open Source on the bottom line of Microsoft,
it is currently more in people fantasizing about alternatives (and using
those fantasies for justifying a postponement of "upgrading" from
Microsoft to Microsoft) rather than actually moving towards them.

So it is more like a hint that they can't go on shooting themselves in
the foot indefinitely without needing to worry.

The layoff is a bad sign for them since it carries the message "we don't
know how we could channel more manpower into improving our offerings".
And if Microsoft has one thing to go in its advantage is that they are
free to throw lots of basically anonymous manpower at problems that can
be tackled in that manner.  If they are running out of such problems,
their cash and company resources stop being the essential advantage they
have proven to be up to now.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum