End Runs Around Vista is a good article, but Business Week left out more critical information than it covered and had little space for comments. I am continuing my response in the BlockTax QuickBooks Blog, to cover End Runs Around Vista, the Intuit Microsoft War and QuickBooks Linux is the Future.
End Runs About Vista mentions only a few Intuit Microsoft War participants. However, Intuit, HP and Dell are not taking on Microsoft alone. The Intuit Microsoft War really involves Adobe, Apple, Dell, Google, HP, IBM, Intuit, Sun, Yahoo and other Linux companies vs Microsoft. It largely relates to Intuit Chair Bill Campbell. Noted industry veteran and venture capitalist John Doerr says Campbell “is the single best mentor and coach of CEOs, teams, and talent” (The CTO Forum). The Best Story About Google Yet (Silicon Beat) covers, "The heroic role played by Bill Campbell ... Doerr would say Bill Campbell saved Google ... God bless that man ... I don't know where the company would be without him." The Secret Coach (Fortune Magazine) covers many such Campbell jobs.
QuickBooks Linux is the Future partly due to Google long sharing a parking lot with Intuit and now having the biggest Linux server farm. Intuit revolutionized accounting, while its usability tests revolutionized software development. Intuit is the expert in creating drop-dead-simple programs, which it can use for Linux. The Intuit focus on customer driven innovation gives it the highest NetPromoter rating of software publishers. The excellent Inside Intuit book, subtitled How the Makers of Quicken Beat Microsoft and Revolutionized an Entire Industry, shows how Intuit keeps killing Microsoft when they compete. How to Face Off Against Microsoft (Business Week, 2005) says, "Intuit has repelled the software giant six times." It also says Intuit began to fight the ($2 billion dollar) Microsoft QuickBooks-killer when QuickBooks had 74% of small business accounting software at retail. It now has an incredible 94% share and Microsoft is not even #2. Microsoft also recently dropped retail sales of Microsoft Money, after Quicken got an 84% market share.
Intuit founder Scott Cook wrote me long ago that Jefferson, Lincoln and Torvalds (the inventor of Linux) were three of our greatest minds. Four years ago Intuit chose Sybase, a cross platform database with excellent Linux benchmarks. It is now making QuickBooks browser independent. Bill Gates initially paid Intuit to use Internet Explorer, but Cook testified against Microsoft in the anti-trust case. Intuit only used a four man team to do a Mac port, and Macs run Linux and a Linux variant. Top-of the line QuickBooks Enterprise has long used a Linux database manager to run 10% - 25% faster, more reliably and with less memory. A new Intuit website already said, "Linux is the future."
Intuit had big problems with Vista and a bad .Net Framework upgrade. This was either bad Microsoft product testing or a modern version of "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run." The 2005 Business week aricle mentions Brad Smith, the amazing (ex-West Point) Intuit CEO. It sounded like Brad was ready for a new take-no-prisoners war. Before it ends, a simple convertible Linux should be on QuickBooks and Quicken install disks, along with Google-Sun Star Office. This will save many users $500 on Microsoft Vista and Office. It also will save lots of time and money spent on virus and spyware programs and checking.
One good thing about blog articles like this is that updates can make sure that the best is yet to come.
Please contact Mike Block, QuickBooks CPA at
http://BlockTax.com/ http://QuickBooks-add-ons.com/
