So, last week at a conference with the theme of innovation in enterprise software, Steve Ballmer mostly talked about MS Office. Is that the best "innovation" MS can offer the enterprise?
The last innovation MS offered to the enterprise - Vista - has most CIOs saying "over my dead body" when asked about upgrading any time soon.
A CIO recently told me he pushed through 7 million (not a typo) MS patches on his company's PCs in 2006. His story is all too common.
And now, Microsoft wants to collect tolls on open source software, which for the most part has seen enterprise IT, not business user or consumer, adoption.
Somehow in all its focus on advertising and games and Apple, Google, Nintendo and Yahoo! Microsoft has neglected to observe its most loyal and profitable customer - the enterprise CIO - is just a bit miffed....
Update, May 18 : to put an accent on my point, Microsoft goes out and pays $ 6 billion for aQuantine, an Internet advertising platform. That's 40X forecast EBITDA! All in cash - much of it paid by CIOs.
