Hailstorm case?
"They're going to leverage this, and connect that and bundle things together. It's pretty blatant on its face," Black said. "This behavior is an egregious continuation of Microsoft's anti-competitive strategy."At the same time, loyal Microsoft IT shops said the company is changing for the better and giving them what they need. For a long time, Massimo Villinger, CTO (chief technology officer) at Lockheed Martin Information Systems pushed Microsoft to allow its software to interoperate with other platforms. But his pleas fell largely on deaf ears.
Lockheed Martin, which runs Windows on more than 100,000 desktops and across all its servers, is one of Microsoft's most loyal and long-term corporate customers. It was one of the first companies to roll out Microsoft Exchange more than five years ago and was an early adopter of the Windows 2000 platform.
As such, Villinger had the ear of the decision makers in Redmond. They finally seem to be listening, and changes over the past year have been enthusiastically welcomed by Villinger and other customers.
"As a multiplatform organization, interoperability is critical for us, so it's most gratifying to hear of Microsoft's readiness to abide by industry standards, embrace XML [Extensible Markup Language], SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol] and participate in the standards bodies," Villinger said.
Too much to lose
Microsoft's partners concede that customer demand and market factors are forcing Microsoft to work toward cross-platform interoperability and to embrace standards and accessâ€"rather than an altruistic desire to do so.
"Customers need, and are demanding, cross-platform interoperability, and Microsoft is looking to build some horizontal standards based on Web-based standards," said Pat Gel sing er, vice president and CTO of Intel's Architec ture group. To the degree that Microsoft attempts to close those horizontal interfaces, it will lose its fundamental value proposition vs. competitors, Gelsinger said.
Microsoft is aware of just how much it stands to lose if it does not adapt. Villinger said he will be "most disappointed" if Microsoft breaks its interoperability promises, as it did with Java. Lockheed would "not tolerate" such behavior, as it would be "very negative for us and the entire industry to have different versions of XML," Villinger said.
But the CCIA's Black is skeptical about the promises. "What you have here are a lot of products and tools that are giving access to, and use of, the Web with a Mi cro soft-only flavor," he said. "Put these pieces together and throw in the new HailStorm stuff, and you have more Microsoft tools to force more people into a total homogeneous environment."
