MS promotes Linux from threat to 'the' threat

Linux is the long-term threat against our core business. Never forget that!" Microsoft Windows Division Veep Brian Valentine exclaims in a confidential memo to his Sales Brownshirts obtained by The Register. (our emphasis)

The core outrage from Valentine's perspective is all these Sun and IBM shops migrating in droves to the cheaper Intel platform, and observing along the way that Linux is a good deal easier to deal with if you're already acquainted with UNIX. Funny that. Kinda the key idea behind Linux, but we digress.

"I need you to make sure that as many of these customers as possible continue to migrate off of UNIX, but on to Windows 2000 on Intel," Valentine says. "You should be smothering your accounts from every angle, and if you see Linux and/or IBM in there with it, then get all over it. Don't lose a single win to Linux."

Valentine's hard-sell hall monitors will be marching through a data center near you, we gather, searching for open-source contaminants and anything else that breathes in the marketplace and consumes their air.

"If you haven't done it at your customer sites -- then do a walk-thru of their datacenters and take inventory of where you see Sun machines, IBM, etc and ask them what they running on those machines. Learn about what they do with those systems, keep that inventory in your back pocket -- hell -- tattoo it on your butt if you have to -- and go after them. Knock them out one machine, one application, one department at a time. I cannot stress how important this is!"

It's no secret that MS has long regarded Linux as a threat, at least not since Eric Raymond broke the news two years ago with the infamous Halloween Documents. But it's lovely to see it becoming the threat, apparently because it empowers people to operate computers and networks without buying into the nebulous Microsoft .NET vision, which, as you'll see below, the company thinks of as something to be 'positioned' by its products.

We just love the way salesmen talk. Especially frightened ones. ®

The text
From: Brian Valentine
Sent: Sat 11/10/2001 12:01 PM
To: WW Sales, Marketing & Services Group
Cc:
Subject: Hello again - long time no talk to...

Linux Wins & Update

I'd like to share with you are some great Linux wins we've had recently. But before I do, I need to highlight a trend that we're seeing with many of our customers. They're fed up with expensive UNIX/RISC solutions from Sun, HP, and IBM. They're looking to move and they want to migrate to the Intel platform. Unfortunately, because Linux is very similar to UNIX, and porting applications from UNIX to Linux isn't that hard, we're starting to see customers move their UNIX applications to Linux on Intel platforms. I need you to make sure that as many of these customers as possible continue to migrate off of UNIX, but on to Windows 2000 on Intel.

There are many other things that you need to watch out for with Linux and the Linux Compete Team has been busy creating some great collateral to help you win. One thing you have to always keep in mind here -- Linux is the long term threat against our core business. Never forget that! You should be smothering your accounts from every angle and if you see Linux and/or IBM in there with it, then get all over it. Don't lose a single win to Linux.

If you have not done it, you should inventory all of your accounts to know exactly where Unix (in any flavor, Sun, HP, IBM, etc) is and get engaged with them on how to convert them to the PC economics model and when doing that move to the best developer, application and OS platform in Windows. If you haven't done it at your customer sites -- then do a walk-thru of their datacenters and take inventory of where you see Sun machines, IBM, etc and ask them what they running on those machines. Learn about what they do with those systems, keep that inventory in your back pocket -- hell -- tattoo it on your butt if you have to -- and go after them. Knock them out one machine, one application, one department at a time. I cannot stress how important this is!

Now, on to the wins.

Let's hear it for Mandy Samuelson and her account team in Melbourne, Australia. They were competing head to head with IBM (who was proposing a Linux solution) at JB Were Holding, a worldwide stock brokering firm. In this time of economic downturn, IBM almost had the customer convinced that Linux was the low cost platform of choice for 126 servers. Mandy's team stepped in and fought tooth and nail for the business, displacing the IBM Linux threat for a platform win worth over $400,000 US. How did they do it? By selling the advantages of our platform and the new volume licensing program. The customer saw the value in the changes and believed in the Microsoft platform and decided to take advantage of the savings. Thank you team -- that's one less tattoo Mandy and crew will need to get.

Speaking of fights, Brett Cocking and team from the SLG vertical just don't know when to quit! Not only did they displace RedHat for a 40+ web server deal at Broward County in Florida, they're also going straight after one of the Linux community's key wins at the City of Largo (dubbed the City of Progress). "If they're the city of progress, why are they running Linux?", Brett jokes. "We're going in there to show them how much value exists in the Microsoft platform and take this win away from Linux!" Key in both accounts is the way Brett's team positions Microsoft's future .NET vision as well as providing great products like Windows 2000 to start building on that vision today. Thank you team! I know Brett digs tattoos, but this is one less he is going to have also.

Finally, there's the Ameritrade team. Lloyd Arrow and team lost initially to Linux in the design phases by getting vetoed by the CIO, even after winning on all other merits. After several months of schedule slips trying to implement Linux, the Ameritrade CIO resigned. The account team was back at it with the new CIO and within a month were ready to deploy Ameritrade's most strategic apps, their Stream Quotes Servers, on Windows 2000. This is a key win and will expand from 5 servers to 100's of servers as the service is rolled out to all of Ameritrade's customers. The win demonstrated our business agility and shorter time to market over Linux. Great work team! Lloyd now has more body surface area saved to get that Windows tattoo he has always wanted!

If any of you have additional wins against Linux, along with your strategies & tactics for winning, let me know for future e-mails!

just look at the Apple OS vs Windows 3.1. No contest whatsoever at to which one was better. And yet, somehow MS managed to get a virtual lock on the OS industry.

Now you have got to be sh!tting me. You can't really stand there and tell me you dig Apple harder than MS...

In the first place, you can't get the damn disk out manually!

And now, I've become so emotionally overwrought about this, I must go outside and have a quick puff to compose myself...

Until Linux supporters learn how to do this, Linux will probably prosper about as well as Java has.

Gee, those of use who have looked at the evidence presented in court realize that Microsoft's 'win' was largely due to illegal contracts with distributors.

And if Linux does as well as Java, then Windows is in big trouble. I'm guessing you don't realize that Java is now without a doubt the industry leader in new software development. Just do a job search for the various kinds of developers. There are far more Java jobs than C++ or VB, and the Java jobs pay more.

"If you haven't done it at your customer sites -- then do a walk-thru of their datacenters and take inventory of where you see Sun machines, IBM, etc and ask them what they running on those machines. Learn about what they do with those systems, keep that inventory in your back pocket -- hell -- tattoo it on your butt if you have to -- and go after them. Knock them out one machine, one application, one department at a time. I cannot stress how important this is!"

This is precisely why my company forbids access to any MS employees or venders. They want our business, they meet with us off-site.

Mandy's team stepped in and fought tooth and nail for the business, displacing the IBM Linux threat for a platform win worth over $400,000 US. How did they do it? By selling the advantages of our platform and the new volume licensing program.

Bwahaahaahaahaahaaahaahaa.

The superiority of our platform? The advantages of our licensing program?

Stop it, your killing me. Windows is superior to Linux if you prefer slow performance and lots of crashes. Beating them on licensing, when Linux is free?

Hello?

Gee, those of use who have looked at the evidence presented in court realize that Microsoft's 'win' was largely due to illegal contracts with distributors.

Yeah, something that somehow every other OS manufacturer had failed to do. Call it illegal, unethical, evil or whatever you like, it obviously worked.

You had me going up until you said there were more Java jobs out there then C++. I have a seriously difficulty accepting this one.

From what I've seen for myself, there is a problem with Java and speed. I've seen at least one web basd app written in Java that couldn't cut it in terms of speed. I have also heard anecdotal stories regarding Java suggesting the same thing. And I don't think you can blame MS for that one.

Which is too bad, since I rather like Java. I think it's a better language then VB, and much less frustrating then C++.

just look at the Apple OS vs Windows 3.1. No contest whatsoever at to which one was better. And yet, somehow MS managed to get a virtual lock on the OS industry.

Now you have got to be sh!tting me. You can't really stand there and tell me you dig Apple harder than MS...

Um no, that's not what I said at all. I said

just look at the Apple OS vs Windows 3.1. No contest whatsoever at to which one was better.

Windows 3.1 came nowhere near Apple's ease of use and lack o' crashes. And yet, somehow MS dominated the market. Mostly by realising that OS's trumped machines and by wisely getting manufacturers to put the Windows OS on their machines before they realised what kind of dominance that would give Microsoft. Sneaky tactic, but it sure worked.

Which brings me back to my original point. MS does not dominate the market through the sheer brilliance and power of its' products. It does it by being more bastardly then anybody else.

MS does not dominate the market

The market this article talks about dominated by MS. It is dominated by Unix box makers like HP and Sun. Those are the companies that are getting hurt the most by companies switching to Linux.

MS's main worry is that as companies get used to using Linux on the backend, they may start experimenting with using Linux on the desktop. That is where MS could be hurt. That is why MS is trying to kill Linux in the server market.

Yeah, something that somehow every other OS manufacturer had failed to do.

Because they chose to obey the law. MS broke the law with illegal conracts, signed a consent agreement back in 95 to stop, then broke that consent agreement.

This is about criminal wrongdoing. A mountain of evidence convicted them, and the conviction was upheld by friendly Supreme Court and Appeals Courts.

You had me going up until you said there were more Java jobs out there then C++. I have a seriously difficulty accepting this one.

Please, don't take my word for it. Check Monster.com, or any of them. I wouldn't ever ask you to take *my* word for it.

From what I've seen for myself, there is a problem with Java and speed.

Again, I won't ask you to take my word for it.

Microsoft Themselves Uses Java applets for their online offerings.

Tens of thousands use Java applets all day every day, and don't find them slow. Go there and play 'Spades', 'Chess', 'Hearts', or a few dozen others.

Yahoo's chat program 'Messenger' is another fine example.

Or one of these thousands of applets might be a better example.

Please do not take my word for it. Evaluate it for yourself.

Java is 'slow' like a Ford Taurus is 'slow'. Java isn't the fastest language around. It is only capable of around a million calculations a second. It is not ready to make hard-core 3d games, or any software that has to number crunch something millions of times.

But it's perfect for all home software uses. And it is the dominant choice for new development, by far. And besides -- the power in todays machines pretty much makes speed of execution moot. If today's Java is slow, it's still faster on today's machines than C++ was on a Pentium I. Why wasn't that 'too slow'?

It's the hottest thing in corporate IT, but it needs a high-speed connection to really come into it's own. So consumers won't see what we're using in corps until high-speed internet access penetrates the market.

But tis only a matter of time.

First off: I do like Java. I like the language. I just don't like the fact that it can be slow at times. That, and I get annoyed when people ignore problems with Java because they hope that somehow Java will someday be able to slay the beast that is Microsoft.

Tens of thousands use Java applets all day every day, and don't find them slow. Go there and play 'Spades', 'Chess', 'Hearts', or a few dozen others.

Oh, don't get me started on Yahoo's Chess applet. I have used that one, and I've lost track of how many times I've lost games because the applet crashed.

As for Java applets in general, I don't really think that applets is where Java wants to be heading for the future. If Java wants to do well as a language, it has got to be capable of taking some of the market that C++ and VB currently have.

And as far as evaluating some Java applets myself, I have. I am currently evaluating some applets used for web report generation.

It is, to put it mildly, pretty useless. Takes far, far too long to do simple queries that even MS Access (ACCESS!!!!) can handle in a few seconds. And as far as I can knew, it's not because of the way it was written.

I'm not the only guy who's saying this. And I find it odd that Linux supporters who constantly bash MS for going on the attack for any slight against their product, no matter so small, can't accept a little criticism when it comes to Java.

Sorry, I forgot to make a comment on this one in my last post.

Saying that it just needs faster machines to work properly isn't what I'd call a selling point. The point is, similar apps written in C++ will run more quickly on current machines with current connection speeds then will Java. Hell, even ones written in VB will.

From what I understand, a large part of the problem stems from the fact that Java is an interpreted language and not a compiled one. If it were, it'd be faster and we wouldn't be arguing over Java's relative merits.

Oh, don't get me started on Yahoo's Chess applet. I have used that one, and I've lost track of how many times I've lost games because the applet crashed.

Now I wonder about you . . . I play Yahoo's Chess applet about 6 or 8 games a week, and have for about 2 years. It's never *once* crashed on me. I asked around on the chat part there this morning, and no one else has *ever* had any crash problems.

That is, in fact, one of the biggest plusses in Java -- things that are run time errors in other languages are compiler errors in Java. The 'exception handling' is almost foolproof.

Now I have to wonder about the veracity of your claims.

I'm not the only guy who's saying this.

You'd be the only person outside the 'Microsoft only' world to say this. Slower than Access?

Either you've got a *very* poorly written tool, or else you're not being honest. Your above claims about Yahoo Chess make me wonder, since a Java applet almost *can't* crash unless sheer stupidity on the developers part. And, as I said, there has been *no* such reported problem as what you claim.

Java *is already* beating VB and C++ at their own game. You should check a few of those links I just posted, and evaluate some of those. Start with the Microsoft Zone, if you wish to stay within the confines of MS.

From what I understand, a large part of the problem stems from the fact that Java is an interpreted language and not a compiled one.

You're mistaken. For 90% of all programming tasks, Java runs just as fast as C++.

Java 'Just In Time' VMs actually compile the Java code into native binaries and then execute them. There is no difference in how they execute. The *only* difference is that Java isn't set up to handle serious number crunching and massive amounts of I/O, because we've found that 90% of all software doesn't need to calculate more than 1,000,000 times a second.

You clearly are going on what you were told about Java, and have not looked at it, I'm afraid.

I think *that* may be why you get so much push back on your Java criticism. If you're just uninformed . . .

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