You also hear companies talking about utility computing, the idea of outsourcing your systems altogether but also getting more out of the systems that you have. What's Microsoft's feeling on that?
We support cost-effective management of your enterprise. And if there are low-value or lower-value systems that you believe are in a commodity state -- I use payroll as an example -- sure, manage them the way that you need to manage them. But to say that if you're in the distribution business, there's no competitive advantage for your distribution system, I guarantee you that companies where their core competency is located won't be outsourcing those systems. So if anything I'm providing a tone of balance to the message. IT doesn't matter: What the heck is that? That's absolutely bull. You know, IBM's quote "We're in the post-technology era" -- what is that? I don't even understand what it means. It means you're a services business -- that's what it means. And if IBM wants to be a services company, that's OK with me. But don't put the rap on the IT guy; that's just the wrong thing to do. You said that Microsoft has something to answer for the complexity that people have and you talked about the Systems Center initiative of integrated management products in 2006. Can you tell me how that will come together?
Initially, there's no real product integration. We're just going to bundle (management products) -- kind of like Office was in the early days; we'll just bundle two products and make them available at a discounted price or something along those lines. But we wanted to signal hard to the market that we're going to a different place. What specifically do you think is wrong with the status quo?
I think the entire systems management operations management area is a bit at a stale place in its overall life cycle. There doesn't appear to be the necessary leadership and vision... As an industry, we don't know how to manage an application today. Can I take this transaction offline and not affect that system? If I want to version change this module, is it going to goof up any other module? There's just so much about an app that we don't understand. What will be Microsoft's response?
It will be a significant management push. Other management vendors will be able to plug into the operating system services that provide this information and tools. It won't be something that will be closed just to Microsoft. Jumping to your Jupiter line of server applications (due in 2005). It seems bundling and integration is the key theme there as well.
Bundling is the step toward integration. Integration is about taking cost of ownership out. The customer shouldn't have to be the systems integrator. We're not IBM. IBM loves WebSphere (Java-based server software) because it's big and cumbersome and difficult to integrate and they put 140,000 services people on the street to integrate. I don't have that. I have to take the integration out of the hands of the customer and the service supplier and put it back into Redmond. And get it right so the customer has an easy deploy and setup. And they can deploy their developers and systems integrators on higher levels of business value, not on integration. I think it puts us in a stronger position against IBM. And overall, it's certainly a big customer-satisfaction thing. What about hosted services?
Well, we want to serve all sectors of the market. We talked a lot about hosted services during the Internet boom and didn't know where it was headed and had all kinds of thoughts about it. There's a good business there and an important business, and I think we're talking about other management types and management PC initiatives we can offer. The small medium-sized business sector still can be served well through some sort of hosting services. I think the Business Solutions group (that sells packaged applications to small and medium-size businesses) has a plan there. You'll see it where it makes sense.