“Two years ago, I pointed out that Microsoft was fighting wars
on too many fronts. Napoleon and Hitler both lost their empires
through this mistake, and Bill Gates, while no slouch when it comes
to battlefield tactics, is fighting on many more fronts than either
of the aforementioned megalomaniacs.”
“The result: an inability to win anywhere. Windows 2000 is
shipping way late and to unprecedented apathy for a Microsoft
release. It fails to replace Windows 9x as planned, nor does anyone
seem to care about the next version of this lineage. The Macintosh,
left for dead not long ago, is gaining ground in both market share
and mind share as a desirable desktop OS. Windows CE is in such bad
shape that Microsoft has dropped the CE name altogether — the new
brand is “Windows-powered,” which will only tick off the handful of
people who buy the silly things. Even Psion has more PDA mind
share.”
“Meanwhile, Microsoft’s most important leading indicators are
dismal. The critical Active Directory isn’t getting much ink, for
example. Failure to generate press coverage would have been
unthinkable this close to any previous Microsoft release date.
Worse, much of the coverage Active Directory does get compares it
unfavorably to Novell’s far superior and more mature NDS.”
“Then there’s Linux. Nothing about Linux should have led to
corporate success. Despite its low price and technical excellence,
Linux’s open-source business model was baffling to corporate IS
decision-makers, and bemusement doesn’t lead to sales. Only
Windows NT’s chronic instability could have achieved success for
Linux. Now Pandora’s Box, in the form of a Linux-led dissipation of
corporate IS’s longstanding fear of Unix, is wide open.“