Why Is Microsoft Killing Its Partners?

As you may or may not know, developing tools for the Microsoft environment is fraught with risk. Why? Let me put it bluntly. You're in bed with an 800-pound gorilla: if the gorilla turns you get squashed. Redmond has done this numerous times in the past: including things in MS-products that used to be third party tools. A good example in our admin space is disk quotas.

Redmond uses third party vendors initially when they cannot provide the functionality themselves right away. Often though, the moment that it's possible, they include it in their own products and sooner or later the third party developer is dead or bought up in a fire sale. History is strewn with failed third party MS-developers.

Of course they have the right to do this, MS is known to be a ferocious competitor. They have lawsuits going all the time, alleging they violated patents, anti-trust laws and the like. But MS also realizes that having healthy developer relations is crucial. Even Redmond cannot provide everything to everybody. So, why are they threatening to kill an additional several dozen third party developers?

You may ask yourself, what's the issue this time? Easy answer: Spam. MS's so called Intelligent Messaging Filter [IMF] will be released later this month, likely at the TechEd conference in San Diego. This is per Edward Wu, a product manager for Exchange Server. Wu apparently suffers from a case of so called "history-revisionitis". In contradiction to Redmond's clear statements about who gets the IMF (only companies on software assurance, see the press release here:} http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040517ED-Press

Wu said Redmond is "still reviewing" whether IMF will be offered only to customers with Software Assurance (SA), or whether it will be made available to all customers.
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040517ED-Reviewing

A decision is expected at TechEd, he said. You start wondering though, are there competitive pressures, like Lotus Notes adding a spam filter? No. Providing a free spam filter in Exchange 2003 is anti-competitive and could cause not just one, but a whole bunch of "Netscapes". I wonder if Microsoft's legal beagles are aware of Wu's plans, I can see an alliance of messaging vendors band together and add significantly to Redmond's existing legal case load. What's this new 'Anti-Trust Watchdog Committee' doing over there anyway?

Another thing to consider is that tons of MS-customers have bought into third-party vendor solutions based on MS's statement that only SA-customers get IMF. So now MS might pull the rug from underneath its own customers as well. They have justified their twisting with bland politically correct statements like: "It is our position to encourage our customers to use layers of protection against spam and viruses. Our customers tell us that the best solutions are often a combination of both MS and partner capabilities. Many partners provide value-added features that complement the functionality delivered in the first release of IMF. The IMF is a basic filter and there is significant opportunity for partners to add additional value with their own filters."

Well, I say: BULL. Looking at it from a system admin perspective, you might want to spend expensive server CPU cycles to double or triple-filter viruses because of their damaging payloads, but doing the same for spam? I don't think so.

You can see how important this is. Will the gorilla turn again and squash a bunch of its partners and at the same time make a whole bunch of customers unhappy about having spent money, or will they honor their initial promise that the IMF is only for large customers that participate in the Software Assurance program? You can only ask yourself how come these kinds of decisions are made, is it arrogance, stupidity, shortsightedness or all of the above? We'll see at Tech.Ed how Redmond will treat its third party software ecosystem. As for me, I understand more and more why people start running Linux. Redmond simply can't be trusted to keep its word it seems.

As a MS-customer, you should care, because Microsoft's behavior creates a de-motivating atmosphere for MS developers, and more and more will want to jump ship to go to another platform. So in the end, you'll have fewer and fewer developers for MS platforms if Redmond continues to make it so risky to develop for their platform.

If Wu's plans are approved by Redmond Top Management, the IMF acronym will take a new ugly meaning for its partners: I Am F-----. So, Bill & Steve, are you listening?

SunPoll: Storage

Now over to something else. Storage! Here is the new SunPoll: "Are software-only based Storage Area Networks a thing of the future?"

• Naah. I'm sticking with direct attached storage
• Maybe. Might save me some hardware
• We already run SANs and I'm interested
• That seems technically very interesting!
• GIMME, GIMME!

Vote here: rightmost column:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040517ED-SunPoll

Quotes Of The Week:

• "Exactitude in some small matters is the very soul of discipline"
  -- Joseph Conrad
• "I love a dog, he does nothing for political reasons." -- Will Rogers

UNDO Dept: The correct quote is - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." and it was by George Santayana, (1863 - 1952). It may be that Truman "paraphrased" Santayana when he said: "Those who do not read and understand history are doomed to repeat it.



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Warm regards,
Stu
(email me with feedback: [email protected])

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