[geeks] The best things in the world

[james]

> I think I agree with that point, but to think that Linux
> "innovations" are the tail wagging the MS Server dog as
> the author contends is, well, absurd.


Well, in my work as a consulting engineer I work primarily
with corporations that have annual revenue in excess of 100
billion US$. When you walk into the datacenters of such
clients you find all kinds of worthy things, but you don't
find much Microsoft. There is a definite distaste for
Microsoft products in the Enterprise.

I have a friend that is high in the MS food chain with
responsibility for pushing MS products to Enterprise
customers. His work goes directly back into product
management. He clues me into what MS is doing to make
themselves more attractive to the Enterprise. Meeting Linux
and other *nix in the features department is goal #1. They
also try to make it look like they match the reliability
challenge of *nix, but that's mostly hype and they know it.

So, yes, Linux is wagging Microsoft in a huge way. They know
they've gone as far as they can with the Desktop and Office,
there is too much entrenched competition in the big
enterprise apps like financials and erp, so the only way to
move forward is in the infrastructure/datacenter world.