Microsoft has always held the high ground, with the ability to deploy into an enterprise OS with a variety of server options, a database, a useful assortment of complementary applications, and a complete desktop. It's been an easy answer for a lot of firms and one that persists to this day as the biggest barrier to competitors trying to penetrate the enterprise space. Red Hat's recent acquisition of JBoss gives the market its first realistic glimpse of how a potential competitor is most likely to arise.

Snapping at the heels

While Microsoft has traditionally enjoyed the significant advantages of a head start and a concerted and visionary R&D effort, the increasing maturity of a growing variety of independent product offerings is allowing Oracle, Sun and Red Hat to narrow the gap via strategic acquisitions. Oracle and Red Hat in particular are benefiting from full cash coffers and a willingness to turn fiscal capital into intellectual capital. "If you can't build 'em, buy 'em."

The acquisitions path to building a comprehensive platform would never have worked even just twelve short months ago-the necessary critical mass of mature products simply was not there. Today, however, as firms like Sleepycat Software Inc., JBoss Inc. and others gain in sophistication and market acceptance, opportunities to create the type of vertical coherence that allowed Microsoft to become, well, Microsoft, exist for the players with the deep pockets.

The key to success in this area will be the ability to present to enterprise customers a viable collection of key components which sing in harmony. The magic combination of OS, server and database is the most fundamental building block and one that has been surprising hard to assemble, at least to the market's satisfaction. Microsoft has been able to present their OS, running a variety of server products and the SQL database. The .NET framework allows the Microsoft family of programming languages to run in the environment and creates a combination of resources that has been deemed sufficient for the needs of a wide variety of organizations. Red Hat now brings to the market the Linux OS, running the Apache Web server and combined with the MySQL or PostgreSQL database. Add to the mix either PHP or JBoss Java, and you have a stack of software which provides a lot of power and flexibility at a fraction of the cost of the Microsoft proprietary stack.