The unethical business practices of Microsoft

B.K.Khaitan

Microsoft Corp through its destructive marketing policy has been able to successfully wipe out competition from some of it’s serious contenders. For example, Netscape navigator, a very good search engine and widely used in the last decade, was unfortunately not a freeware.

Microsoft as a counter move released Internet explorer and started giving it free along with Windows operating system. This strategy killed the market for Netscape although Netscape was a better search engine than Internet explorer.

Hotmail, of our own Sabeer Bhatia, was gaining popularity as freeware email and was posing a serious challenge to Microsoft. To overcome this, Microsoft purchased the rights of Hotmail. Sabeer Bhatia settled with millions of dollars from Microsoft and surrendered the rights of Hotmail to Microsoft.

Macintosh had an operating system, which was very user friendly, but due to non-aggressive marketing policy of the company, the product was somehow not popular. Microsoft seized this opportunity, developed it’s own brand of operating system WIN-95 based entirely on Macintosh operating system and successfully marketed it across the globe.

Lotus 123 developed by Lotus Corp was extremely popular as electronic spreadsheet. Microsoft developed MS-Excel in a new avatar and killed Lotus 123 in the process. Microsoft has systematically killed all competitors over a period of time and is currently ruling the international market.

Finding itself unchallenged in the market, Microsoft is dictating the price of it’s products. Since there is virtually no competition, individuals and companies have no other option but to pay very high price as licensing cost for using Microsoft products.

High cost of licensing is encouraging piracy in a country like India, China where the income level of the people in general is not high. Linux, of late has emerged as a serious contender of Microsoft. It is a freeware open source software and extremely versatile. Total cost of ownership of Linux OS and star office suite of products is much lower than Microsoft.

Besides the cost, Linux is far superior to Windows-OS in terms of speed and ease of use and requires less hardware resources. The transition from Microsoft to Linux will reduce operating cost and give more value proposition. The savings arising out of switching over from windows to Linux will far outweigh the cost of migration and any potential downtime

Unfortunately, we are still sticking to Microsoft products, not willing to take any risk to migrate to Linux. Our biggest fear is our lack of familiarity of Linux as an operating system. Migrating to linux is not a cakewalk either.

Some introspection is required as to how the linux is going to impact the existing hardwares (including all peripherals and components), networking protocols, application software, people etc.

Besides the compatibility issue, we have to address the training needs of different layers of IT people in the organization. For those with Unix background, the training required is bare minimum as Linux being an offshoot of Unix, it uses many of the same commands found in most of the offerings from the major Unix vendors.

Similarly for those with Windows background, training required is more as the Windows environment is very different from Linux. Server administrators in general will need more training than database administrators. Developers do not need as much training.

As far as end users are concerned, migration will have no impact whatsoever and therefore end users don’t require any training. Cost of migration from windows to linux will mainly include cost of hardware upgrades, cost of software upgrades and cost of training.

The cost of migration should be weighed against the savings resulting out of use of linux over a period of time and ROI should be worked out to justify the investment.

There are many websites that are useful for linux users. Web sites include www.linux.com for general questions, www.linuxsecurity.com for security issues, www.linuxhq.com for information on downloads and patches and www.everythinglinux.org for kernel programming

Microsoft is releasing new versions of Windows—OS and MS-office suite of products almost every year and charging existing users exorbitant as upgradation cost. New releases of Microsoft products are resource hungry. There was a time when we thought 16MB RAM is good enough memory to store Win-OS but after release of win- 98 and now Win- 2000 our perception has changed.

Today, we find that even 32MB RAM is insufficient to run windows 2000. With every new release of Windows operating system and MS-Office suite of products, we are forced to upgrade our hardwares again and again resulting in more and more investment. Who stands to gain in this game? Microsoft or IBM or Compaq?

In a monopolistic situation like this, exploitation of the customer is bound to happen. I think, all CIO’s have to give a serious thought to this dangerous trend and find alternatives. To begin with, all Linux users can form a consortium and start sharing experiences of using Linux as an operating system in a forum like CIOL. This will alleviate most of the concerns of CIOs and encourage them to switch over from Microsoft to Linux.

At the end, I will summarize by saying that sooner we migrate from Windows to Linux, the better. However, If we continue to use Microsoft products, we will find ourselves paying more and more to microfossil every year in terms of technology upgradation cost for which nobody else but we ourselves will be held responsible.

(The views expressed here are those of the author's and CIOL doesn't necessarily subscribe to the same)