[AccessD] OT: Microsoft threatens its Most Valuable Professional

Jim Lawrence accessd at shaw.ca
Thu Jun 7 14:30:40 CDT 2007


Hi Ken:

<rant mode on>
Well said. 

It would appear that some over zealous Microsoft fanatics are trying to run
the show and they will have to be reined in or they will definitely damage
MS beyond repair. 

MS should just stick to producing great products at good prices and they
will have nothing to worry about. Where Microsoft is really losing ground is
at the university and college level where many students are too poor to even
buy special rated student MS products. It sometimes is a debate whether to
buy enough Marconi & Cheese (and beer) to the end of the month or purchase
that much needed student edition of MS Office suite. 

With competition, like Java, PHP, Perl, Ruby, MySQL and Linux it is no
wonder many (stat Canada, 71% in Victoria, alone) new computer companies are
demanding skills in the above products. As these are only new companies,
feed by the new school graduates, the impact in the market place will not be
felt immediately but in 10 years, watch out.

Interesting enough, the company Oracle has managed to hold their market
share. They continue the process of allowing all of their products to be
downloaded, full-featured with no time-out. They now hold most of major
database positions, in the city, even though they charge up to 3 times the
price of MS SQL. I have never won a government competition (RFP) when
recommending MS SQL against Oracle, especially as it is no problem to
dramatically uncut the ORACLE price and that says it all.       
</rant mode off>  

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Ken Ismert
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 10:13 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT: Microsoft threatens its Most Valuable
Professional


Few capitalists would define true competition as 'giant company A suing 
minuscule company B out of existence'. In a free market sense, this is 
anti-competitive, because it denies the market the chance to make its 
unencumbered choice on the merits of the products.

OK, so giant company A says minuscule company B stole its cookies. But, 
company A _gave_ company B the cookies, in A's free box of goodies, 
albeit in a cookie jar with a clear plastic seal on top that said 'do 
not eat'. Company A can get its feelings hurt, but had they removed the 
cookies from the goody box in the first place, they wouldn't be in this 
position.

Can company B successfully use its free cookies to make a deluxe goody 
basket that it can charge money for, and supplant company A's own 
super-deluxe, expensive basket? That depends on the value proposition of 
the products. If company A really packed a lot of good, quality stuff in 
its super-deluxe basket, then what B would have to charge to duplicate 
it, even with its 'unfair advantage', should equal or exceed the price 
for A's product. But if A is using its market dominance to charge an 
inflated price for its basket, then B should be able to deliver similar 
value for less. B still has the burden of proving its product really has 
value.

As customers, we should always demand competition in this situation, 
barring some unnatural affection for one side or the other. That is in 
*our* best self-interest.

(Michael Maddison)
 > Hardly an example of big bad MS though.
That example would be MS blacklisting Richard Grimes for rightly 
pointing out that the emperor has no clothes in his article (first 
pointed out by Shamil):
"Welcome to the 4% Operating System"
http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/dotnet/vistaAndDotnet.htm

-Ken

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