April 16, 2003

Business Week: Small Biz Microsoft's Next Big Thing

My spin Business Week has written two recent stories on MS' SMB push - interesting...but nothing new. Can MS dominate in this market the way it has in Windows. The idea is that independent software vendors will write programs for the MS Business Framework But guess what, while much of the media thinks of Intuit vs Microsoft and now vs SAP...what about IBM's software division...a huge giant with Nike running shoes and tons of money.

News Clip: Three years ago, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) CEO Steven A. Ballmer huddled at the Renaissance Paris Hotel with then-sales chief Orlando Ayala and Group Vice-President Jeffrey S. Raikes. The goal: to come up with a big new growth market. And they aimed sky-high. Plotting into the wee hours, the trio hammered out a plan to sell run-the-business applications for small and midsize companies. With 45 million such businesses worldwide, this was perhaps the biggest untapped software market left. To unlock it, Microsoft would need to spend billions acquiring companies and hiring hundreds of new employees.(full story)

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