[Am-info] Gates' Small-Business Gamble

[Paul Rickard]

========== On 2002.05.20 10:44 AM, Fred A. Miller typed: ============

>Microsoft wants to make it easier for smaller companies to buy
>ready-to-assemble ERP, supply-chain, financial, and other such
>apps. In an interview with InformationWeek, Microsoft chairman
>Bill Gates says these businesses should snap up the new apps the
>same way they did Microsoft's do-it-all desktop suite. "That
>naturally should happen if you have a breakthrough product in
>this space," he says. "But nobody has done it, so right or wrong,
>we're going after that."

      This is a good idea, actually... Small businesses (especially small 
professional groups like doctors' and lawyers' offices) need those types 
of things to improve their operations. But Microsoft isn't the one to 
provide it, and Gates is wrong about nobody doing it - the companies he 
just bought were doing it.

>As Gates envisions things, desktop and business apps will be
>woven together via Web services to let IT departments mix and
>match applications across networks with less middleware, custom
>integration, and consulting.

      Microsoft's OEM partners who have built their entire businesses on 
consulting (particularly IBM and HPQ) will NOT like this one.


======== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign =======
--------------------------------[ Http://www.msboycott.com ]-----------

  "Microsoft is like this intellectual roach motel: big brains go in
   and you don't see anything come out."
       -Paul Saffo, Institute for the Future