The Incompatibles

Bollywood or Hollywood, sounds like a perfect name for a movie. Infact I am not even sure if there is a movie by this name. I am not really a film or politics buff but if Salman Khan was to re-start dating Aishwarya or Bush and Saddam were to become friends and work for world peace it sure would make very interesting attention grabbing headlines. Something similar happened last week. Microsoft decided to date Sun.

The Microsoft Sun Romance

"Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love." So said Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Prime Minister of the gigantic British Empire.

In this age and time another giant, Microsoft redefines romance. Whether it's an offspring of fiction or fact only Microsoft and Sun can tell. The love factor, well in times like these market forces decide that. Microsoft and Sun have decided that there isn't there any love lost between them. And its official they are dating.

Sun and Microsoft have unveiled a series of measures that will help their products work together. Microsoft and Sun made a legal settlement around a year back to help each other bridge the gap between their operating systems.

The companies have now declared that they are nearing the release of the first products out of that collaboration. The latest efforts plan to allow a single Web-based sign-on between systems that use both Microsoft and Sun software.

This would help the network administrators to eliminate multiple user names for different employees of a company. The representative of the two companies claimed that the results are a proof, which shows that they are serious about working with each other and release products, which benefits the end customers.

Microsoft and Sun War

How friends and enemies change with time. Foes now friends tomorrow. Who knows, friends now foes tomorrow. As I write this column Microsoft and Sun seem to be in love with each other. But their story wasn't so rosy till a year ago. Microsoft is the world's largest software maker and Sun happens to be a giant in the network computers, servers, and software market.

Until April 2004 they were bitter enemies. McNealy once referred to Microsoft's executive team of Ballmer and Bill Gates as 'Beavis and Butthead'. Yes, that true.

Sun had also sued for alleged anticompetitive behavior after Microsoft rewrote elements of Sun's Java programming environment specific to its Windows operating system. Later, Microsoft said it would yank Java entirely from its ubiquitous software.

The wrangling ended in last spring, when Microsoft agreed to pay a massive $ 2 Billion to Sun to resolve the dispute in a 10-year technical collaboration agreement.

The lawsuit was related to the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft has quite often been charged with.

The Romance - Who Benefits?

Seduce her. Delight her. Make her wishes come true. Capture her. She is the customer. Welcome to the world of customer delight. Companies fight, companies sweat it out against one another to seduce the customer. But what happens when bitter enemies companies become friends? The customer is the loser.

In the Sun and Microsoft case only time will tell the loser and the winner? What Sun and Microsoft need to remember is that, if the market place can turn bitter enemies into friends it can do much more. Never underestimate the market place. The customer rules. Only time will tell what will happen in the Sun and Microsoft alliance.