VARBusiness: Ballmer: Linux Changed Our Game

“Since the arrival of Linux, Microsoft has been forced to
abandon its traditional value proposition of being the lower-cost
solution in the IT industry and embrace a message that focuses more
on the overall value of its solutions, says its president and CEO
Steve Ballmer.

“Ballmer, speaking Monday at Microsoft’s Fusion 2002 partner
conference in Los Angeles, saidin this new competitive landscape,
the software giant relies even more heavily on the expertise,
contacts and value-added-services of its business partners to
compete effectively against the Linux threat.

“‘We have prided ourselves on always being the cheapest guy on
the block–we were going to be higher volume and lower priced than
anybody else out there, whether it was Novell, Lotus or anybody
else,’ said Ballmer, during a keynote that closed the event. ‘One
issue we have now, a unique competitor, is Linux. We haven’t
figured out how to be lower priced than Linux. For us as a company,
we’re going through a whole new world of thinking…’

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