>>>I think this will probably effect alot of us in the long run. I was wondering what others thought about this.
>>>
>>>
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0%2C4586%2C2667396%2C00.html>>
>>Rip,
>>
>>Wow..
>>
>>Great Plains is a huge VB & SQL user.
>
>But more importantly how about all the people out there like me who work for HR application providers? What happens to the folks on this forum that work for Abra or PeopleClick (Della Martin) when those companies cannot compete with MS for HR sales?
>
>Let's imagine for a minute that you own a fairly new company, less than 5 years old, and now you have between 50 - 100 employees. It's time for you to start thinking switching from that excell spreadsheet to a full blown HRIS solution. Do you go with Abra,Peopleclick,PeoeplTrack,!Trak-IT (just to name a few), or do you go with MS. Let's see, I think I'll take..... MS!!!!
>
>IMO, there should be alot of scared companies out there today.
Yes, and no...
When you're chosing a spreadsheet, word processor, browser, and/or email client, it's hard to go wrong if you "buy MS," "don't buy MS," or do an exhaustive comparison and choose one. They're all mature products, with more or less the same features, and work similarly (you type, it adds/formats, you print). For 80% of the users, I don't think it matters WHICH one, as they all talk to each other.
When you get up into the more vertical markets, I'm not sure that MS will always have the toe-hold. I've worked for a number of companies that assume that,
for vertical market packages, the vendor of everything (MS, CA, IBM come to mind) will give you average software -- it'll work, but it does 80% of the job. The other vendors need feature-rich, rock-solid software designed by people with the expertise in the vertical market to make it, as opposed to the product sold by its name alone. While the companies I've worked for have been quick to use the MS solutions for the OS and for Office applications, and for Visual Studio (a vertical market where MS has the expertise), I think they'll cast a VERY critical eye on MS's non-language vertical solutions, and instead, look towards other vendors first.
It may not be a bad thing...
- della
