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Is world domination good for security?
7 comments- IT TOPICS:Security
I was just musing to myself that I am really on a rant about Microsoft's tactics lately. I mentioned to one of my colleagues that I should lighten up because good ol' Bill is one of the world's biggest philanthropists. And my dear friend replied with, "No, we are. We gave him our money and now he is donating it for us." Ah, that's a fair statement. If it weren't for us, Bill would not be rich.
And here I go again. I read a write-up about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote address at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference this morning in Boston. Microsoft is focusing in three key areas: search and portal, unified communications, and security. You know, Microsoft just has not been that good at security. And it appears that Ballmer is asking partners to be for or against them in the pursuit of the desktop security market.
Google is the guy to beat in the search and portal market, IMHO, and IBM/Lotus Notes has the unified communications thing nailed. Security? There's good competition out there which makes for better security.
I don't want Microsoft hooks in my security software or vice versa. I don't think that's a good practice. I want to use Symantec's or Sopho's or McAfee's products (on the software side). I trust them and they all have a pretty good track record. I use Sophos in our environment and have been very happy with their products. We don't have any viruses, trojans, spyware, or malicious code on our network. They recently produced a personal firewall product that we are testing.
All that to say, gee I wish Ballmer wouldn't make it a for-or-against-us proposition. It just feels like more of the "We are Microsoft and We Will Rule the World!" attitude and that turns people off, customers off, etc. They just need to prove themselves in the security space and good fortune will follow them.
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