At a time when banks are shedding IT roles by the dozen, it seems counter-intuitive that 83 per cent of the nation’s chief information officers should report they are confident about the future of their business to the extent that 45 per cent expect to hire IT staff in the first six months of the year. The question remains – is this a dead cat bounce?
Microsoft has listed companies such as Red Hat and Canonical, both sellers of GNU/Linux, among the reasons for the 17 percent fall in revenue for the fourth quarter, year on year.
And it has acknowledged that as free and open source software continues to gain acceptance, its earnings may decline further.
Microsoft saw revenue fall to $US13.10 billion. This is the second straight quarter for which sales graphs have showed a downward trend.
While profits fell across its business, the biggest drop was in its client division - 33 percent.
The software giant made mention of GNU/Linux - what CEO Steve Ballmer once referred to as a cancer - as one of the factors in its 10-K filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
"The Linux operating system, which is also derived from Unix and is available without payment under a General Public License, has gained some acceptance, especially in emerging markets, as competitive pressures lead OEMs to reduce costs and new, lower-price PC form-factors gain adoption," the filing says.
"Partners such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been actively working with alternative Linux-based operating systems."
Google also merited some mention. "Competitors such as Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Opera Software Company offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of Windows products, the filing said.
"User and usage volumes on mobile devices are increasing around the world relative to the PC. OEMs have been working to make the Google Android mobile operating system more compatible with small form-factor PCs or netbooks."
The licensing terms for free and open source software was cited as a risk factor.
"Certain 'open source' software business models challenge our license-based software model. Open source commonly refers to software whose source code is subject to a license allowing it to be modified, combined with other software and redistributed, subject to restrictions set forth in the license," according to the filing.
"A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products.
"These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives.
"To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue, and operating margins may decline."
Michelle Thomas
| Smelly Black Dog Internet is proud to announce that the company has signed up for Simtronic Technologies new wholesale broadband service as an…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
LATEST HEADLINES FROM YOUR IT
