On Tue, 2005-01-25 at 04:04, Christian Einfeldt wrote: > Hi, > > The thing that I found most amazing about this article is that MS is > talking openly about giving away...FREE SOFTWARE...to drive revenue > to other software. The next time that someone asks you, how can > open source companies make money from free software, you can cite > both Internet Explorer and Elixir as examples of the market leader > giving away free software.
Just to be pedantic they are giving away software for free, not giving away free software. Their software is anything but free as in freedom. > It's also an example of the fact that not all free software is open > source. Be a bit careful here as this is confusing the freedom and free beer aspects. The *main* value proposition of free software is the freedom bit. > Also, this announcement is an example of MS continuing its flight up > market, a path which historically has not proven successful in the > long run as a way to continue large scale revenue growth, and > instead tends to lead to the former market leader (Apple) becoming > a niche player: > > "The more Microsoft can get companies to integrate Office technology > into the fabric of their businesses, the less of a commodity Office > becomes and the harder it is for companies to replace it with > something like OpenOffice.org," said Gartner analyst Michael > Silver. > > The important word there is "perennial". Office was "good enough" > with 97, and most of the improvements since then have probably been > overshooting most of the market's ability to use those featuers. The only really valuable improvements would be to make the software more efficient so it ran quicker and probably to improve the ergonomics of the interface. The latter would cause uproar in the established user base who are used to the current interface and the former has never been on MS radar because it would affect sales of Windows. So no where to go except adding yet more features most people don't need or want. > > An effort, code-named Project Elixir, will take shape later this > > year as a way to promote Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and contact > > program, with some additional fields, as a tool for viewing > > customer relationship data. Eventually, the plan could help the > > software giant elbow its way further into the customer > > relationship management market, where Siebel Systems, Oracle and > > SAP dominate." > > In other words, Microsoft is moving into a more narrow market (CRM) > smaller in volume, but with larger gross margins in the long run, > after OOo is done decimating MSO's lower tier customers. But that in turn will decimate the margins in CRM. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
