Training Toolkit

Can IT directors love Microsoft?

Peter Judge ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 20 Nov 2002 15:10 GMT

Microsoft really, really wants to be loved by corporate IT. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. Not just for its desktops, its productivity tools, or the ubiquity of Exchange-on-2000. It wants to be part of the infrastructure.

Consider the presence of the senior vice president for Windows, Brian Valentine, at IT Forum, the company's European enterprise event -- even during Comdex week. Consider that event itself. European IT managers get a whole pile of attention from Microsoft and its partners, all aimed at proving it has just as much place in the datacentre as IBM or Sun.

Product announcements include .Net Server and Titanium, next year's Exchange server. Between them these aim to do things from making it easier to build Active Directory structures that reflect the corporate map, to dealing with the issues of server consolidation.

"If you run fewer servers, applications will have to coexist on the same server," said Joseph Reger, chief technical officer of Fujitsu Siemens. "We see Microsoft putting a lot of effort there."

Visitors I spoke to agreed that Microsoft is addressing the right questions -- mostly those visitors are IT staff, not directors, but their opinions will count.

But the big issue Microsoft faces is the clash of cultures. "Datacentre people still see Microsoft as a PC maker," said one delegate from Barcelona. "It could take ten years to change that perception."

But it is more than perception. Microsoft has a different business model. In the datacentre, software comes as a service. Vendors or their partners install it for you, maintain it and take an annual service charge. Some parts may be free -- either open source, or bundled in to promote hardware sales.

Microsoft does almost the exact opposite. It ships a product, takes a licence fee and leaves you to it. Support is in the form of education and training, not people who do the job for you.

Microsoft Consultancy Services exists, and does real work, but many people think it is just a loss-leader.