[ Thanks to BR for
this link. ]
“…This was a panel I picked to discuss what Windows95 would
mean to business users. Something else happened that morning. IBM
bought Lotus. Something else was going on, too. IBM had bought the
marketing and source code rights to an office suite named Star
Office from a German company called Star Division. IBM was demoing
it on OS/2 at the Javitts Center in NYC, home of PC Expo. Exciting
times…”
“As the panel chatted about issues and what Windows95 was and
was not, great panel, great show, Andrew said something that was an
epiphany to me and haunted the industry for the next five years.
Andrew said, “Microsoft Office *is* the operating system for most
(business) users.” BOING! On the nosey!..”
“Sun has given the industry a second chance. OK, that’s
overstating it. But let’s think about this for a moment. On the
one hand we have a “free” office suite, maybe even a “free” OS, and
probably a bunch of services expenses as you turn your computing
environment upside down. On the other hand, we have a really,
really expensive office suite, a really, really expensive OS, and
probably a bunch of services expenses as you turn your computing
environment upside down. And we haven’t even started to talk
about issues of reliability and security. But goodness knows we’ll
talk about those soon!”