Dell, Enderle Have Cameos As Cassandras In 'Vista Capable' E-mails

A Microsoft executive ridiculed well-known industry analyst Rob Enderle's "whacky view of the world" after Enderle warned of a media backlash over Microsoft's Windows Vista marketing plans, according to a new batch of e-mails released Thursday as part of a federal class-action lawsuit against the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.

Microsoft is being sued for allegedly misleading consumers with its "Vista Capable" logo campaign in the year prior to the Jan. 30, 2007 release of the Windows Vista operating system. Beginning on April 1, 2006, Vista Capable stickers were placed on PCs by Microsoft's OEM and retail partners -- including some PCs that lacked support for the Windows Device Driver Model (WDDM) required to run certain user interface (UI) features of Vista such as the Aero Glass graphic interface.

Microsoft on Thursday petitioned Judge Marsha Pechman to dismiss the class-action suit.

Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, exchanged a series of e-mails on Aug. 29, 2005 with Microsoft executive Barry Goffe, in which the analyst warned Goffe of Round Rock, Tex.-based Dell's lack of confidence in Microsoft's SKU plan for Vista and a potential media firestorm around Vista shortcomings. Enderle also sent his impressions of an "advisory meeting" Dell conducted with analysts and journalists directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

One of Enderle's main warnings to Goffe concerned Microsoft overplaying its hand with the Aero Glass hype, potentially disappointing customers who would wind up buying editions of Windows Vista that wouldn't support the interface:

Next: Enderle Predicts Media Backlash

Enderle also concocts some headlines for stories he thinks will run if Microsoft continues down the path of confusing the market with its Windows Vista marketing:

Ironically, Goffe also dismisses Enderle's criticism of the Windows Vista Ultimate SKU. Goffe, as director of Windows Vista Ultimate, would wind up publicly apologizing to consumers in July 2007 for a lack of "Windows Ultimate Extras" that were promised with that SKU at the January release.

Though many of his warnings would come to pass, Enderle is pilloried by Goffe in the latter's e-mails to fellow Microsoft executives relating the analyst's position on Vista. Goffe, in e-mails to Kevin Eagan, Carl Sittig, Mark Croft, Shanen Boettcher and others, describes Enderle's "whacky view of the world" and writes that the analyst is "just dug in and not willing to acknowledge reality."

Nor is Dell spared the Microsoft executive's poison pen. Goffe worries that Dell could "wage a campaign to FUD the market" for Vista and opines that the computer maker "did its damnedest to poison [Enderle's] thinking." Enderle seems to anticipate this sort of reaction in his Aug. 30 e-mail to Ballmer:

Next: Who Watched The Watcher?

Enderle emerges from the unsealed e-mail exchanges as fairly prescient, but not without some of his own potentially questionable activities exposed.

First, there is the circular chain of NDA-breaking involving Enderle, Microsoft and Dell. In short, Microsoft was upset with Dell for breaking an apparent non-disclosure agreement by informing Enderle and others about the prospective Windows Vista SKUs. Hilariously, Dell in turn was miffed at Enderle for ignoring a separate agreement not to disclose, to Microsoft as it turned out, Dell's complaints about the same Vista SKU plans the computer maker wasn't supposed to be revealing to analysts in the first place.

More troubling for Enderle, however, is the line he walks as an industry analyst offering objective opinions to the public against the role of private marketing advisor to Microsoft that he seems to take on in the unsealed e-mails. In one Aug. 29 e-mail to Goffe and Lisa Worthington of Microsoft's PR firm Waggener Edstrom, Enderle seems to offer to counter-spin negative opinions about Vista -- many of which he apparently holds himself -- as best he can:

Also revealed in Thursday's unsealed discovery: Hewlett-Packard executive Richard Walker's angry e-mail on Feb. 1, 2006 to Microsoft counterparts regarding the decision to lift the WDDM requirement for the Vista Capable campaign, as well as contact made between Ballmer and HP CEO Mark Hurd over the campaign.