MS move is 'good business decision'

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 22 Feb 2008

Microsoft's decision to increase the openness of its products has been hailed as "a good business decision".

"It's fantastic and, from a Microsoft perspective, another good business move," says Steve Lauter, head of new business development for The IQ Business Group's software engineering operation. "It is very clever of them."

Lauter says he expects the move to have a substantial impact on the local software development market. "So much of the world is already Microsoft-centric," he says," but opening the source code to developers and allowing easier integration will further promote the brand.

"This is potentially a big 'wake-up' for the Java and Oracle guys," he adds.

Microsoft yesterday announced "broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices" to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

"This represents an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

"For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today's announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency," Ballmer added in a statement released in the US.

"Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."

He added: "Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products." These are:

* Ensuring open connections;

* Promoting data portability;

* Enhancing support for industry standards; and

* Fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie was quoted as saying the company's announcement reflected the significance that individuals and businesses placed upon the ease of information-sharing. "As heterogeneity is the norm within enterprise architectures, interoperability across applications and services has become a key requirement," he said.

The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reports overnight that the European Union, which is investigating Microsoft on anti-trust allegations, has responded with scepticism, saying it "would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability". But it noted that the company's announcement "follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability".

Others, the paper says, said the move shows Microsoft "is becoming a different and more open company than the bare-knuckles fighter that battled competitors and anti-trust regulators for so many years".