Gates, Ballmer Bet on Longhorn

Investing in new software will continue to yield returns to customers and thus growth for Microsoft’s business, according to Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer. Speaking at the company’s 2003 Financial Analyst Meeting, Gates, Ballmer, and other senior executives pointed to future developments that would refute the notion that existing software and open-source alternatives like Linux are “good enough,” particularly in the areas of application integration, management, and security. However, many of the executives’ hopes ride on Longhorn, a still-remote future Windows release.

Outstripping Open Source in Management, Integration

In an unusually subdued opening speech, Gates acknowledged that the “unheard of” levels of IT investment from 1998 to 2000 have ended, and companies are now focusing on cutting IT management costs and dealing with security threats. Gates acknowledged that Microsoft itself needed to do more to help, saying, for example, that “We didn’t build automatic management into the desktop and the server, and that’s made it very complex for people to keep their systems up to date.”