2007 -- A Big Year Coming up for Microsoft

As we wander around the infrastructure world, we seem to be repeating this simple observation -- "2007 is going to be a really huge year for Microsoft," and, in turn, a year which will cause big changes across infrastructure market sectors.  We're not trying to be Microsoft evangelists nor their apologists.  But a lot of the infrastructure world as we know it today has been built around dealing with incomplete and insecure Microsoft offerings.  In 2007, this landscape is about to change.  Just look at what's in store for 2007 --  Vista, Office 2007 (a new version of Office), Exchange 2007, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (unified communications including SIP based platform), Office Communicator 2997 (SIP client-side stuff), Longhorn, new SharePoint 2007 and new IW releases.  And the single biggest marketing launch budget item, Vista, is likely to have "security" as a strong element of the initial value proposition.  MSFT's goal is to have 400 million PCs to be running Vista within 24 months of the launch.  It's not that Microsoft is going to solve all the infrastructure and security problems, our point is that they are going to catalyze a major change in the value of what the rest of the infrastructure ecosystem provides.  We're in for a multi-year transition - what used to be the problems will diminish while a whole new set of issues will rise.  Now is probably as good of a time as any to take a look at the impact of Microsoft's efforts on your business plans