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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Re: Interesting quote
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"What rarely rarely works is #3: people and product. That company succeeded because of their unique development environment and personalities. Now that environment is gone and they are forced to develop the Microsoft Way. They've been blue bagded. And slowly the greatness that was their product has the life drained out of it and it becomes less and less relevant (e.g., Great Plains). These acquisitions are where we should have been spending money to have great partnerships and not blow a bunch of cash and fritter away a product just to feel we have a market segment covered." -
I don't think this is an MS specific problem. Look at the rapid invisibility of Rational's product line, for instance. When larger entities buy smaller ones, they tend to smother them - the corporate culture of the buyer quite often doesn't 'fit' very well on top of the people who ran the product at the smaller outfit. I recall reading an article in Business Week (a long time ago now) about how many mergers just don't work out - and it's for reasons like this.
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