Uncertainty in the landmark Microsoft case shifted last week from the courtrooms of Washington to the computer rooms of corporate America.
Until now the 2-year-old case had been white noise for many IT executives taxed by running their own networks. But now that the ruling is in, they must consider more seriously how a Microsoft breakup would affect their networks, planning cycles, product decisions and corporate mandates.
"Now is the time for IT to start paying attention," says Mike Ward, PC/LAN/server technology manager for Boise Cascade Office Products in Itasca, Ill. "Everything else was merely talk. Now it's going to get serious."
So serious that some executives are already evaluating their plans in regard to Microsoft.
"We are absolutely talking about the implications," says Jeff Allred, manager of network services for the Duke University Cancer Center in Durham, N.C. "Do we shorten our decision cycles to two years? How far out do I buy hardware? Do I hold back to see where things are going? Some IT guys will fry over bad decisions they make now in regard to this case."
Others are hoping the decisions they've already made will hold them until the case is completed, letting them start again with a clean slate.
"Hopefully, we'll have a good full life cycle on Windows 2000 before we'll have to make a decision about staying with Microsoft," says Lyn McDermid, chief information officer for Dominion Resources, the holding company of several mid-Atlantic region utilities. The Richmond, Va., company will complete its rollout of Win 2000 desktops this year.
"We license all our products at the corporate level and are very concerned that if the breakup occurs it will affect how our licenses will be treated," McDermid says.
McDermid is also bracing for the ripple effect across the industry. "This case really does have significant implications."
Significant enough to some that they are bailing out now.
"What I see coming is [Bill] Gates using companies like mine to justify his stance that enterprises benefit from his product integration," says Rick Ollerman, chief information officer for Enginehouse Internet Media Buyers, a large advertising firm in Troy, Ala.
"If Microsoft says on appeal that customers will suffer because of a breakup, I don't buy it," Ollerman says. "I am voting with my dollars. We are getting off the Microsoft merry-go-round and moving to Oracle, Unix and Linux."
Others are expecting a humbler Microsoft and will gauge their decisions based on the software giant's reaction.
"Microsoft will have to come and talk to us and not just assume we will continue to buy from them," says Gary Rohs, data communications manager for Sappi Fine Paper in Boston. Rohs remembers that at the height of IBM's dominance, Big Blue often sent product reps to his company who didn't see the big picture.
"With this ruling, those things come to mind," Rohs says. "It makes me leery. I don't know how Microsoft will be structured or how separate Microsofts will work with each other."
Those are burning issues for almost every IT executive.
"Now [the decision] is something we have to consider in a long-range way: How will we partner with Microsoft in the future," says Jeff Scott, chief technology officer with Thomson Financial in Boston, which delivers information services over the Web and dial-up connections. "Over time we are going to have to consider the impact of the breakup with regard to our infrastructure and the way we serve clients."
The impact on corporate infrastructure may come if the breakup stings Microsoft's development efforts.
"Nothing I've seen from the government gives me much confidence, so I'm concerned how this affects Microsoft product development," says Greg Scott, IS manager at Oregon State University College of Business in Corvallis, Ore. "The government talks about the desktop and Office, but the real action is the server OS and the back-end applications like Exchange and SQL Server. We are leveraged to the nth-degree on Microsoft interoperability and I want to make sure I have those integration choices."
Lanny Udey, associate dean for learning and information technology at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., says the fate of Microsoft's research group concerns him. What happens to that group "could have more of an impact on Microsoft than anything else because they would be splitting that pool of research people that are common to both the operating system and the applications areas," he says
Regardless, Udey favors the breakup. He hopes it will make it easier to get rival operating systems pre-installed on systems from major manufacturers such as Compaq.
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