Hi Carl,

I think that the primary issue of concern here is MS's vision and interpretation of "Enterprise Development". What probably started out as an assault strategy on the domain of IBM, Oracle, etc. has expanded to include small and medium sized businesses. They are actually trying to sell 3-tiered solutions to ALL enterprises no matter the size or situation. I'm not making this up - there is currently an article on the MSDN site (the NT 5.0 article) which says it clear.

Maybe I'm crazy (or just plain stupid), but MS's DNA is not applicable in many situations. In the long run, MS could "shoot themselves in the foot" after these types of organizations begin to suffer from costly, over budgeted, or failed projects. Then agian, if MS takes the approach of IBM, Oracle, and SAP, they will send their armies of consultants to the rescue - what a nightmare!!!

MS could wind-up throwing away small enterprise development marketshare to the competition. Then again, maybe thay don't care about it anymore.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. I'm sure there will be a Harvard case study about it.