Gates Courts Small-Business Owners

the

The audience was a roomful of mostly small-business owners, many of them women, and all members of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. Many seemed quite pleased to have cornered some quality time with the software chieftain at Microsoft's local offices. Among other things, an optimistic Gates assured them that Microsoft is not slowing down its commitment to product innovation, and he touted the doubling of the company's already-monstrous R&D budget. He fielded questions about whether he thinks technology is in its "infancy, teen or elderly" years (answer: infancy). And he recounted some computing history, starting with development of the microprocessor and working up to describe the current software pixie dust, XML Web services.

But perhaps most important to those assembled, Gates emphasized how advancements in technology coupled with dramatically lower prices are going to enable small businesses to play in the big leagues. And, of course, Microsoft is the ace on their team, he says, given its Small Business Server and Office products.

"A lot of the trend here is taking the domain of a few and making it available to anyone, to businesses of all sizes, to kids in schools," said Gates, who added that there is no turning back today's business model of high volume/low cost for software, PCs and servers. "People are going away from [high-end] expensive Unix systems because lower-cost Intel servers can be very, very powerful now."

Gates blamed the dot-com crash in part on the fact that companies then were trying to achieve things before the enabling software was truly ready; for example, B2B and B2C commerce and supply-chain integration solutions. Now is a better time to fulfill those dreams, Gates says, because acceptance of XML Web services finally will facilitate data exchange and software-to-software communication over the Web -- simply. "By the end of this decade, we will take having software connected and automated online for granted, much like we do for Web browsing today," he said.

Of course, Redmond's chief software architect couldn't miss an opportunity to further promote Office System, that multifaceted new version of the Office suite and other applications whose functionality is targeted primarily at the enterprise and ISVs. There is a version of the product for small business, called Office Small Business Edition 2003, which eschews the higher-end server and XML functionality to stick to upgrades of the productivity apps, including the new version of Outlook and Business Contact Manager. Improving the e-mail client was a high priority, Gates said, noting Outlook's new spam filter.

"The interchangeability of productivity applications like Word, Excel and the new e-mail client, Outlook, is what's key," he says. "This is one tool that makes people more effective."