In Brief

Excerpted below are comments from Doug Burgum, senior VP, Microsoft Business Solutions—Microsoft's enterprise applications business unit—during a Microsoft Convergence presentation, which took place March 22-24 in Orlando: "IBM says it's not in the applications business. But IBM is Linux, and if you advocate free software, then you do compete with the ISVs [independent software vendors]. Microsoft, on the other hand, is now a provider of enterprise business applications. But Microsoft is first and foremost a platform, and as such we support our ISVs. Some ERP [enterprise resources planning] vendors say they will OEM our customer management solution. But some may choose just to compete [as opposed to cooperate and compete], and they may in consequence choose to be in the IBM camp."

For more on Microsoft convergence, see Views from the front, page 10 of this issue.

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