Microsoft
And Not Linux
Microsoft
does not have a Linux Strategy.
Or, rather, Microsoft has no Linux products and denies that
it has any plans to have Linux products in the future.
(Analysts
love to speculate that hidden somewhere on the vast Microsoft
Redmond campus there is a Linux skunkworks where a small band of
Microsoft developers have already moved all of Microsoft's major
products to the Linux platform, just in case a change in strategy
might ever require such products.
We can't help noting, for example, that the Macintosh OS X
version of Microsoft Office is a UNIX product and that it is a
very short port away from running on Linux.
But that's analysts having fun late at night, after a few
drinks.)
Nevertheless,
Microsoft maintained its non-presence-presence at LinuxWorld in
New York. It was
there, in a good-sized booth, talking to customers about how it
could live side-by-side with Linux.
We'd
guess it might also have been (a) doing some market research,
asking customers why they were interested in Linux and/or (b)
doing some anti-Linux marketing. Given that we spent more than 30
minutes n their booth, talking to Microsoft's Peter Houston about
Microsoft's interest in the Linux market, and didn't see unhappy
customers fleeing, we'd guess there wasn't much (c) going on.
Microsoft
will have to eventually decide what to do about Linux.
We've gotten past the "it's going to go away"
stage and corporate customers (to say nothing of academics and
governments) are expressing an increasing interest.
That means Microsoft will need to continue to track Linux,
deciding just how and when they might choose to intersect this
disruptive market.
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