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Could Open Source Fuel the Next Bubble

Wink]. They could go big and acquire publicly held

for their security offerings. With the recent addition of ClamAV to

their portfolio maybe Microsoft could pre-install open source virus

software on Windows servers. I bet Symantec and McAfee would love that.

  • Advertising and Web Marketing – Well they just gobbled up Atlas Solutions maybe they should look at buying someone in open source who’s early stage and can run on Micrsoft serverr, Loopfuse (Marketing and Sales Automation) or web ad server maker OpenAds .

  • Other ideas–Here’s some other creative ideas:
    • They could stick it to Google on the search front and acquire Appscio

      (formerly Avidence) for their video search technology unless they are

      shedding their open source ambitions with their old name.

    • Alfresco for document management makes sense, and it runs on Windows. I also doubt there is too much anti-windows sentiment in their user base.

    • Maybe take CleverSafe’s p2p storage technology and incorporate their technology with Sharepoint somehow.

    Maybe they should just create an open source incubator and start

    funding open source start-ups centered around promising open source

    projects. Maybe They could seed them in Microsoft’s Codeplex and bring them them up under the rainbow colored Microsoft Windows umbrella.

    I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

    For more Mark Hinkle, visit his EncoreOpus blog.

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