This article was dead on target. The reason why Microsoft has such a dominant market position really has very little to do with the technical merits of its products. It has a great more to do with Microsoft's marketing and business practices.

A prime example, the organization which I worked for previous to my current employer, the person in charge of making purchase decisions on which products to utilize was incapable of inputting the IP settings for their own network card, They had also never heard of the OSI model. In other words, product decisions were being made on criteria that had absolutely nothing to do with technical realities. That is more common then not in corporations these days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to blanketly bash Microsoft. Microsoft does some things well and others poorly (security historically has been one of the things which they have done poorly). They make some products which are good and some which are poor.

The point is that their dominant market position is NOT based on any dominant technical superiority of their products.

Microsoft does produce "feature" rich products but most of these "features" are completely superfluous. Usually their existence has more to do with supplying new material for Microsoft's marketing departments rather then improving user productivity.

At best, they are something which are turned off or ignored by the vast majority of users.

The cost for most of these new "features" are buggy functionality, security holes, performance hits, greater system resource requirements and hours and hours of wasted time in support, troubleshooting and training. In a real cost/benefit analysis they just aren't worth it for anyone outside of Microsoft marketing.

Producing a stripped down, simplified and "feature poor" version of their core products is a good thing for corporate IT departments. It makes security a much more manageable proposition. It also provides benefits in terms of performance and reduced support costs.

Usually adding an additional feature or service is much less time intensive then troubleshooting an error caused by a bug in an unnecessary feature or service.

For the home user it might make sense to throw in the kitchen sink (Although I still think that is debatable). For corporate environments producing a core product which is streamlined, simplified and with minimal features is the way to go. Additional features can always be added by the IT department when and if they are needed. This approach is beneficial in many ways, not just security.

Chris

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/315/10150#10150