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While a quarter-page ad on the editorial page of the Boston Globe doubtless costs far less than a $30 million in-kind software donation, it's a good bet that the ad titled "Working Together Better by Design" that appeared in yesterday's Globe has something to do with last week's generous contribution.
If so, then by the transitive property of mathematics (which, as you will remember from middle school, teaches that "if a = b, and b = c, then a = c"), there's a connection between that $30 million donation and the ODF policy of the Commwonwealth's Information Technology Division (ITD).
We all know that Microsoft's overall goal is to retain its current share of the office productivity software market. But what's the near-term tactical goal in Massachusetts behind all of this expense? Reverse the ODF decision? Gain an early adoption of Open XML by Massachusetts? Or something else entirely?
"Since expenditures to date must exceed potential MS Office licensing revenues from the Bay State for some time to come, the importance of achieving adoption under the ITD's Enterprise Technical Reference Model on a parity with ODF must seem high indeed to Steve Ballmer. "
It is important to Microsoft to keep people within that MS Office cage. If enough escape, the escapees may let others know that life is good outside the monopoly. That could start a stampede which could, in turn, eat into those billions coming in from MS Office licenses every year.
I'm not sure about this "for some time" thing. Doesn't the writer know that Office Vista (or whatever it will actually be called) with its xML file format, will consign the present Microsoft software and file formats to oblivion? Upgrading will be hyped, and within a year. The software donations are set to pay back much faster than this writer seems to assume.
My ancestors came from Massachusetts and they were a stubborn lot. I'm sure these Microsoft "tactics" will backfire -- Yankees don't like to be told what to do. I don't!
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"Since expenditures to date must exceed potential MS Office licensing revenues from the Bay State for some time to come, the importance of achieving adoption under the ITD's Enterprise Technical Reference Model on a parity with ODF must seem high indeed to Steve Ballmer. "
It is important to Microsoft to keep people within that MS Office cage. If enough escape, the escapees may let others know that life is good outside the monopoly. That could start a stampede which could, in turn, eat into those billions coming in from MS Office licenses every year.