MS Office on Linux 14812

Lin¿nut

"The server market expanded 7.3% in Q1 2004 to $11.5 bln as business buying pushed the market to its fourth consecutive quarter of growth, according to IDC. Shipments climbed a strong 22.4% from a year ago... Servers running Windows software from Microsoft advanced 16.4% to $3.8 bln in the quarter, with shipments rising 26.5%. "

So Microsoft grew 16% while the market itself grew 7%. This is the highly touted IDC survey for 2004 that shows the big gains for linux as well. Both are growing, meaning the rest are suffering, and unix is part of the rest, as is Netware.

Why do you think they would pay for biased results? Just to make you linux fans feel bad? That's kind of silly and not very good business. Microsoft is good at business, so everyone says, so there must be another reason.

Having gone to b-school, I can say that a common wisdom kind of reason would be that Microsoft wants to establish some specific criterion as a standard of comparison so that customers are led into using the same considerations for their own calculations. The way this works is if you are strong in some area, the sales tactic to use is to sell the generic principles of the area you are strong in. This doesn't look like an in your face kind of sales pitch, but when the customer evaluates products using this "neutral" criteria, you win the evaluation because your products are being seen in their best light. Microsoft's TCO arguments are just that, selling the same standard of comparison that they have based their pricing and functional matrix decisions on. Naturally they end up on top.

To work against this, you have to examine the premises and show where they do not apply to some specific situation and other factors, that you supply that are favorable to your product should be used instead.

The problem that Microsoft's compebreastors face is that the Microsoft criteria is indeed applicable to a lot of customers and for those situations, their claims are real. That forces compebreastors into a lot of niches that are not so profitable as the main ones that Microsoft has carved out for themselves. Still, it is a start.

You are looking at the situation from the wrong end of the timeline, nut. Look at it from when Microsoft didn't exist. There were many companies, for example Apple, Radio Shack, Digital Research, and others in the "home computer" market. Then along came IBM and with them, Microsoft. Many companies competed for a number of years and the final result was the Microsoft dominance of today. That was the result of the market comparing one offer to the next and selecting the one that was the best for them. This happened over a long period of time and resulted in what is considered a mature product market. Google around for "Boston Consulting Group" and "Product life cycle" and follow the links. It isn't computer science, but it is applicable to what happens in a product market. Computers are not so unique that they don't follow the rules of market dynamics.