[Am-info] Re: query about MS "Innovations"

[Mitch Stone]

The relevant definition of a "suite" is not selling a variety of business 
applications, but bundling them together in one box and selling them for a 
price significantly lower than the price of the individual applications 
individually; in fact for not much more than the price of any one 
application. Microsoft was able to subsidize the Office suite with their 
vast OS cash flow -- something their competitors at Novell, WordPerfect 
and Borland could not. According to James Wallace, Microsoft's aggressive 
applications bundling took their competitors by surprise and forced a 
series mergers and consolidation among them. The better part of a chapter 
in Wallace's book "Overdrive" is devoted to these events.

We should not need to engage in historical revisionism to make our case.

On Sunday, March 31, 2002, at 09:01 AM, Gene Gaines wrote:

> Dan Strychalski ask me to pass this on to the AM-INFO list.
>
> In my opinion, Dan's information is correct.
>
[snip]


   Mitch Stone
   mitch@accidentalexpert.com