Gates Is at the Ready; How Bout vs .Net?

Bill Gates isnt nimble just on the dance floor.

El Gato heard that while Chairman Bill spoke at his companys TechEd conference last week in Atlanta, Microsoft officials were securing studio space at CNN, directly across the street. Thats because U.S. Court of Appeals dockets are rolled out Tuesday and Friday mornings.

According to Tabby tattlers, the Redmondians were taking precautions in case the courts antitrust ruling was handed down. Gates, looking bleary-eyed at his 9 a.m. keynote, would have certainly been a sight for sore eyes had he had to use the studio to explain a negative judgment, the Kitty thought. “Funny, I always assumed the government would check with Bill before it announced any ruling,” the Mouser mused.

Earlier at the conference, Paul Flessner, the senior vice president of Microsofts .Net Enterprise Server division, caused confusion among the faithful. Flessner announced during his keynote that the final release of Visual Studio.Net will probably not happen until early next year. This went over like a lead balloon with developers, who had been led to believe it would be released later this year.

Given the essential role that VS .Net plays in Microsofts .Net and Web services vision, a public announcement of a possible delay surprised His Hirsuteness. Flessner later told a friend of the Furball that the information he had received from the VS executive team placed any possible release between October and March 2002.

Evidently, the powers that be in Redmond were so annoyed by the miscommunication that Bill G. used his keynote the next day to clarify matters. Bill told the crowd that the company was committed to ensuring that the final product ships “this calendar year.”

The Furry One later caught up with members of the VS .Net team, who told the Kitty that while the product will be released to manufacturing this year, it may still not find itself in retail stores until early next year.

Since some 50 percent of VS sales come from the retail channel, the Puss pondered what effect such a delay might have on the mighty Microsoft revenue machine.

The Tawny Titan felt like he was watching Abbott & Costello do their “Whos On First” routine as he followed the rivalry between PeopleSoft and Siebel recently. First, PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway told the financial press that PeopleSoft will soon announce three customer wins in excess of $10 million. Conway claimed that PeopleSoft had beaten Siebel on all three upcoming deals. Siebel responded by announcing that Gateway, known to be a large customer of PeopleSofts Vantive CRM tool, had just “standardized” on Siebels CRM applications. A bubble-bursting Gateway spokesman later said Gateway hasnt quite “standardized” on Siebel, and it will continue to use Vantive as well as Siebel apps.

Now, it seems, Conway has reneged on his claims. During PeopleSofts Leadership Conference in Las Vegas a week ago, the CEO claimed that it was too close to the end of the quarter to be making such major disclosures.

“It just makes you wonder what wont happen next,” the Lynx laughed.