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Forrester Research analyst Rob Enderle said he believes Sun's shares have reached levels at which a takeover is a distinct possibility, since the company's technology is still highly regarded in the industry. He speculated that only three firms, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell, would be in a financial position to make such a move. Sun's market cap is about $11.8 billion.

"Dell has clearly been the biggest beneficiary of this merger," Forrester analyst Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times. Still, he added, the merged HP appears to be doing better than expected, with recent service contract wins a clear outgrowth of the two companies' union. ...

Patience might be a virtue in other ways, too. Forrester analyst Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times that even though the core of Windows Server 2003 has been better tested than previous Microsoft operating systems, companies would do well to wait until the first service pack is released. By doing so, IT decision makers will appear to be prudent buyers...

Forrester analyst Rob Enderle agreed, calling Windows 2003 Server a sharply improved offering that many likely will see as the company's first truly scalable server product "If it weren't for the economy, this thing would likely set sales records," he told the E-Commerce Times...

Forrester analyst Rob Enderle said Microsoft has taken the easy road in several recent legal matters, indicating a desire to put the antitrust issue to rest. "It can only be a distraction from the real goal, which is to continue to be innovative and drive new products to mark...

Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times thatalthough Microsoft has continued to drive sales of software in an otherwise bleak tech spending environment and has seen tablet PCs start to take root, the software giant now may be starting to question whether sales of personal computers to consumers will recover anytime this year or early in 2004...

"If you look at how PCs are sold today, it's all about the listening and viewing experience," Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times. Although it has made serious inroads into the entertainment PC market only in recent quarters, Microsoft has mad...

Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times that Microsoft's security suffers largely because of the company's success. "I'm not sure any other software firms have figured out security any more than Microsoft, but they don't get targeted the same way ...

Publisher 2003: A new design application for creating marketingcommunications FrontPage and InfoPath combine what Microsoft describes as "the world'sfirst" graphical XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformations)editor. XSLT acts a bridge between an XML database on the back end anduser-input features on the front end. Hitting the Right Note Much of the analyst buzz surrounding Microsoft Office System is focused onOneNote. Though it might seem like a small add-on, rather like Notepad isattached to Windows, this program points to a new paradigm of front-endcomputing. "OneNote has been developed to address tablet computing," Rob Enderle,research fellow at Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce Times. "It fits thetablet metaphor and enables users to categorize, search for and find theirthoughts better than with pen and paper." Unchanging Market Share Meanwhile, although Sun's announcement coincided with Microsoft's, Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio said Microsoft's key competitor is not StarOffice. "StarOffice will have appeal for the SOHO [small office and home office] market, but the overall market share won't change appreciably," she told the E-Commerce Times. Microsoft's marketshare of the office productivity field is at least 90 percent. "Microsoft's biggest competitor is itself," DiDio added. "With the economicdownturn and the quality of Microsoft's earlier products, the challenge willbe to get customers, even those who would absolutely love to migrate, up andrunning. Customers simply might not have the cash." DiDio predicted a 15 to 20 percent adoption rate during the first year, andshe emphasized that the fate of Windows Server 2003 will play a part in Office System's penetration curve. Enterprises still using Windows NT 4 on the back endmight see Server 2003 as a compelling upgrade opportunity, and they could scoopup Office System at the same time to realize the full potential of a more unified system. New Paradigms While the commercial fate of Office System remains to be determined, thereis universal agreement that Microsoft is aiming high with this product. "This is a pretty important and substantial release," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times, "because it really changes the file structure and the ability of files to be shared. Given the wide adoption of XML in this product, Microsoft has given its software developers the opportunity to use Office applications as front ends in a way they didn't have access to before." Giga's Enderle noted that Office System is the first version of Office thathas gone through the advanced security testing adopted by Microsoft nearlytwo years ago. "Substantial work has been done on Outlook," he said. "It is more reliable and less susceptible to network problems." Backward Compatibility However, though network integration and streamlined information flow are positive developments, a question of compatibility exists. Microsoft is including server elements in its Office System beta 2 distribution -- but those elements will not be included in the final product, and enterprises will have to purchase them separately if they want a full upgrade of the front and back ends. Microsoft Office System is backwardcompatible with previous servers, however. "The server upgrades are required to achieve the system's full potential,but [Office System] is, by itself, a vastly improved product," Enderle noted.

But Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times that there is now an inherent contradiction in Sun's position. By thwarting Microsoft's ability to distribute Java in the first case, then complaining that Microsoft is not using Java enough in the second case, Sun is on untenable ground, according to Enderle. "Microsoft is in a stronger position," he said...

Whatever happens, the CCIA's charge has set an unusual, and perhaps unique, precedent intrans-oceanic antitrust relations. No eyebrows would be raised if a U.S. alliance were tackling a European company. And the European Union's investigation of a U.S. company is not odd. But Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times, "This is an unprecedented instance in which U.S. vendors are going after another U.S. vendor in Europe."

And even though he has his share of detractors, Microsoft's Bill Gates is also a visionary who brings an important strategy to the table: a slow and steady march forward, no matter what, according to Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle. "Microsoft never stops innovatin...

Indeed, Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle said Microsoft would like to use the U.S. settlement to put the European case to rest as well. "They're going to want the decks cleared before they release their next family of software in a year or so," he told the E-Commerce Times. "The distraction factor will be ratcheted up the longer it drags out."

But confusion about .NET's message may lie at the root of the glacial pace of progress, according to Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle. "I think if [Microsoft] could start over, there might be an effort to refine the message a bit further," Enderle told the E-Commerc...

"They've done a good job of staying focused on the future, but it has to get easier every time another obstacle is set aside," Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times. "The fact that you see Microsoft behaving aggressively to gain market share in new areas points out that they still are in a battle."

According to Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle, the big players in the SAN space right now are EMC, Hitachi and IBM. However, because a SAN is so complex and involves so many different components, Aberdeen Group analyst David Hill told the E-Commerce Times that even those three giants may purchase some of the components required to build their systems from such companies as switch manufacturer Brocade Communications Systems and McData, a maker of data traffic directors...

"When you have a recession, large-ticket items tend to fall on the backburner. It's not that [consumers] don't purchase, but they still want the pleasure of buying something new," Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle said. "They just can't afford something expensive."

"In the past, people had to build their own Web pages, and the billing systems were horrid," Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times. "Now you can use a service like PayPal for billing and collection." ...

As it turns out, charging customers for access to content or services seems not to be such a bad move after all. Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle told the E-Commerce Times that although no company can be called a true success at collecting Internet fees, some firms have paved the way...

For one thing, said Giga Information Group research fellow Rob Enderle, many Internet companies depend on the lack of sales tax to offset shipping costs. Adding a tax poses a risk not only to sales at mom-and-pop e-tailers, but also to the fiscal health of major shipping firms like UPS and Federal Express...