News.com has a great interview with Microsoft's current CEO Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer tackles questions regarding Xbox, Office 12, IBM, and a lot more. It's definitely worth checking out.
Although much has been made of the challenges Microsoft faces in readying the next version of Windows, CEO Steve Ballmer said that "big bets" like Longhorn are not a reason for concern.
Rather, Ballmer said the time the alarm bells should go off is when Microsoft starts saying such technological leaps are not worth the risk. "I think the day we say that to you, you ought to worry," Ballmer told thousands of partners gathered for the Worldwide Partner Conference here. In an interview with CNET News.com after his speech on Tuesday, Ballmer addressed the benefits and consequences of such bets, the effect that security issues have had on the company's image, and various other topics.
Q: The maturing Microsoft has been a recurring theme recently. That was a lot of the reaction, for example, to the recent memo you sent to employees. One person wrote last week that, "Having vanquished IBM, Microsoft now faces the risk of becoming IBM." I'm curious, A: what you make of that and B: others might look at IBM and say that's a success story for a company that has been many things in its history and has simply found a new way.
A: Let me say a couple of things. First of all, we haven't vanquished IBM. They still have a $12 (billion) to $13 billion software business. Every dollar they derive is still a dollar over time that is available to us, pretty much. I think we've done a good job where we compete, and we still have a great opportunity in front of us relative to IBM and the competition there.
News source: C|Net News.com
1 Comment - Add comment