Finally.

It's great when a company finally admits that a killer rival IS a competitor.

That's what Cisco CEO John Chambers apparently did at this week's partner confab in Vegas.

It was clear to many early on that Cisco, the networking leader now with strong VoIP presence, was on a collision course with Microsoft, the leader in nearly everything else.

Both companies had clearly marked out key comms segments as their own: Web conferencing? Check. Check. VoIP? Check. Check. Instant Messaging? Check. Check.

But both companies continued to play footsie, claiming that the market was big, big, big enough for both. Microsoft would attack from software layer, Cisco from the network layer. Plenty of room for everyone, blah blah blah.

Two words: "Yeah, right."

Three more words: WordPerfect, Lotus, Netscape.

Old pal Jeff Matthews, always good for the pithy quote, summed it up years ago. He said something like: "Yeah, Microsoft has validated a lot of companies right out of business."

More words: Software Publishing, Stac Electronics. Sybase.

Wake up fellas!

As of earlier this week, Chambers has acknowledged that Cisco and Microsoft will be at loggerheads, if they aren't already:

Said he:

"Microsoft has given us a three-year lead. And we've never lost a game when we've had a three-year lead It's a battle we fully intend to win."

Hardly a total throw down, but still, an acknowledgement of conflict. That conflict grew hotter with the near-simultaneous buyout by Cisco of Webex and of Tellme Networks by Microsoft.

Quick! A scorecard!

It's just nice to have the conflict out in the open.

These tech companies love the namby-pamby, phony-baloney double talk mandated by PR and marketing. The whole "Microsoft isn't going to kill us with its new [insert technology name here.] They're merely validating our strategy."

Co-opetition is good, etc. etc. etc.

What they don't say is that co-opetition, or any sort of cooperation, has never been Microsoft's forte. The company is rife with a monopolist mentality. .One onlooker who is very close to the company and has been for years, says the company is psychically incapable of entering a market without needing to completely dominate it. They don't care about getting into an area where they could, say, make an interesting contribution. They want to own it, this anonymous observer maintained.

Directions on Microsoft analyst Paul DeGroot puts it a little more gently: "Microsoft's culture has been shaped by its tremendous success with Windows and Office, which generate monopoly-type revenues and completely dominate their markets. That's how it wants to do business."