http://www.crn.com/Sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=27777 By Marcia Savage, CRN San Francisco 6:18 PM EST Thurs., June 28, 2001 Solution providers specializing in security were divided over Thursday's federal appeals court decision to overturn a lower court's order to break Microsoft into two companies. From a security perspective, the ruling is positive, says Joel Scambray, managing principal at Foundstone, an Irvine, Calif.-based security-services firm. "I think forcing a company to become distracted with these legal proceedings and the prospect of a breakup is never going to be good for security," he says. "Microsoft has got to do its homework on security, and taking them to court doesn't help them do that. Taking this off their docket will help them focus on what they should be doing." Dan McCall, executive vice president at Waltham, Mass.-based security-services firm Guardent, says the ruling is encouraging. "Microsoft, under Steve Lipner's group, has built a strong security arm to ensure the quality of their products and to be responsive to bugs and create patches," he says. "We were wondering how that would play out in a decentralized Microsoft. Would each business unit invest in having that type of security arm? My guess is they wouldn't." Lipner is the manager of Microsoft's Security Response Center. But Microsoft hasn't been very responsive to customers' security needs in its software, and this ruling doesn't appear to help, says Bob Geiger, information security director at Xand, a Hawthorne, N.Y.-based managed service provider. "This ruling could be damaging to the extent if a company is allowed to keep doing business the same way, then there's no incentive to become more responsive to their customers when it comes to security," he says. However, Todd Barrett, network sales manager, CPU Sales and Service, a Waltham-based solution provider that offers security products and services, says the ruling likely will have an overall positive impact in light of the economic downturn. "Given the economy and the way away the tech world is going right now, this is probably a positive," he says. "Whether we like or don't like Microsoft, at least it provides some stability in knowing where Microsoft is going. If there was going to be a breakup, there would be uncertainty, and uncertainty always hurts Wall Street." Jim Kelton, president of Software Unlimited, an IT consulting company based in Irvine, Calif., says he expected the higher court to rule in Microsoft's favor. "At the present time, I don't anticipate a change in Microsoft's marketing tactics. Microsoft will continue to focus on their .Net strategy to support the future direction of their company," Kelton says. "In the past, Microsoft's revenue was closely tied with new product releases and application upgrades," he adds. "Their new approach, .Net, will allow Microsoft to generate cash flow on a more evenly spread and predictable basis." Foundstone's Scambray says he's testing the next versions of the Windows operating system, Windows XP and Whistler Server, and is impressed by their functionality and enhanced security features. ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email isn-unsubscribeat_private
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jun 28 2001 - 22:40:15 PDT