Before we're comforted by Papa Ballmer, however, let's see Microsoft make good on its promise to foster interoperability with Sun systems, and then establish some semblance of peaceful coexistence with the Linux community; shore up security in all its enterprise-software products instead of streamlining patch management; and dip into more of its $53 billion cash hoard to settle the remaining patent suits that stand in the way of its focus on Longhorn, the next version of Windows, whose release date is slipping past 2006.
After averaging revenue growth of well more than 30 percent a year through the 1990s, Microsoft is now moving at less than half that pace. If it can't find a way to reignite customer passion, in part by subverting its instincts to conquer and divide, maturing will just mean getting old and slowing down.
Rob Preston is editorial director of NETWORK COMPUTING. Write to him at [email protected].
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