"Microsoft began a $500 million marketing campaign yesterday to stir enthusiasm among corporate customers for its new products and grab business from I.B.M., its biggest rival in the business technology market," reports The New York Times, referring to yesterdays talk by Steve Ballmer, among other things.
Microsoft's marketing drive and its strategic assault on I.B.M. comes as it prepares to roll out a series of new products in the second half of this year, led by Windows Vista and Office 2007. The company is positioning the new desktop offerings as a kind of dashboard for managing businesses, especially when linked to other new Microsoft programs for worker communications and collaboration, searching company databases, business intelligence and customer relationship management.
This is a reference to products like Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, Sharepoint Portal Server, Team Foundation Server and SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence, which are far too frightening to mention in a newspaper. Later, the story says:
The campaign began yesterday with eight-page advertisements in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other newspapers. The $500 million to be spent over the next year will include ads on television, newspapers, magazines and online, and for Microsoft-sponsored events.
