Lotsa laughs

[Dave Winer]

No doubt, No One Ever Got Fired for Choosing Microsoft.

I'm telling a different story. Here's how it goes. To assume that Microsoft 
will come up with something that works just because they're a big company 
is to ignore the lessons of history. IBM gave us TopView. Everyone said 
that's it, it's all over. It wasn't. Never is.

Dave

At 09:55 PM 5/24/99 , you wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: Dave Winer <dave at userland.com>
>To: <xml-dev at ic.ac.uk>
>Sent: 25/05/1999 10:35
>Subject: Re: Lotsa laughs
>
>
> > >>Like it or not it seems this is something anyone working in e-commerce
> > is going to have to take seriously given it has the support of Microsoft,
> > SAP, Baan and Peoplesoft.
> >
> > Famous last words! That's exactly the kind of stuff people said about
> > various mail APIs that were floating around just around the time that the
> > Internet rewrote all the rules in the software business. No, the size of
> > the company doesn't determine the viability of the ideas, not even in the
> > corporate world. Gotta learn this one over and over and over and over.
> >
> > Dave
>
>Last year I was working in a large Government Department that all other
>Government Departments had to exchange data with.  The IT strategy of the
>Department I was working at was Microsoft.  They will willingly implement
>whatever Microsoft throws their way so I can see in the not too distant
>future that all Government Departments in the state where I reside will be
>using Biztalk whether they like it or not.
>
>Microsoft have captured the hearts and minds of many people who do not want
>to hear anything bad about Microsoft and these people don't care about open
>standards.  To paraphrase one Microsoftian I was talking to "I just want
>products that work together".  A lot of people have been burned by
>incompatibilities between products using alleged "Internet" standards and
>are now moving back to a one vendor solution.
>
>I'm afraid I disagree with you on the size of the company issue.  I find it
>incredibly hard to sell someone on a product from a company they have never
>heard of regardless of how great the product is.  If its a product from
>Microsoft or Oracle its a different story.  Maybe this is just an Australian
>phenomenon?
>
>I don't want anyone to think I'm advocating Biztalk but I think
>realistically it is going to get a significant share of the e-commerce
>market and therefore can't be ignored.  I'll be very happy if I'm proven
>wrong though.
>
>Steve Oldmeadow
>
>
>
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