Ballmer identified strategies for taking on the major competition, known
informally around Redmond by the acronym N.O.I.S.E.: Netscape, Oracle, IBM,
Sun,
and everyone else.
"There's no competition we find ourselves in today where we not only feel
challenged but are poised to make progress," said Ballmer. "We have the
product
line in each and every case to turn on the competitive pressure."
Ballmer said the company has four major competitive goals in the coming year:
1)Increase its Internet Explorer market share to 70 to 80 percent of the
browser market; 2)Defend its position against the network computer, which
could
cannibalize PC growth; 3)Defend itself against Java, which Ballmer called
"Sun's middleware OS;" 4)Build developer interest in DCOM, Microsoft's
component architecture.
--- Rohit Khare /// MCI Internet Architecture (BOS) /// khare@mci.net Voice+Pager: (617) 960-5131 VNet: 370-5131 Fax: (617) 960-1009