Microsoft UK head: We've grown up

The last few weeks have been pretty rough for Microsoft. After being knocked around by the European Commission and fined around €497.2m for abusing its position, the Redmond giant announced a record legal settlement with Sun Microsystems last week worth $2bn.

If that wasn't enough, it has also emerged that the company's chairman Bill Gates may have lost his esteemed 'richest man in the world' title to the founder of Ikea.

To get a handle on these issues and the challenges of representing Microsoft's interests in this country, ZDNet UK's news editor Michael Parsons spoke to the company's new UK general manager, Alistair Baker.

What did you think of Microsoft's settlement with Sun?
Sun and Microsoft compete aggressively, but when you get into the area where the business premise isn't right for the customer, then nobody wins. We welcome the settlement because it will help customers. Around the EU decision, we're clearly disappointed that we couldn't do the settlement.

The settlement with Sun looks as though Microsoft is growing up and moving closer to the accepted norms of corporate behaviour. Is that fair?
That's true of the whole IT market in today's environment. I look back on to the nineties, go back to the dot-com-dot-gone boom, the corporate aggression, the whole ethos -- and it has changed. There's a new focus on corporate responsibility and ethics, the consumer is far more aware, partly because of the Internet, and has a greater understanding a broad set of issues. Microsoft has had to be involved in those changes; we took a very key decision a few years ago about becoming a responsible leader. I think it will make the company a lot stronger.

What role does the UK business play in relation to its US parent?
The US market is huge but corporate functions as a global business. Traditionally the UK we have very deep relationships with corporate. For the interview process in this job I saw Steve Ballmer and Kevin Johnson, and my mentor is a senior VP. The thing that comes across is that we are very fortunate because of the language issue. The UK operation is noted for our ability to innovate. A lot of people in the US came up through the UK business.