| Two industry titans painted vastly different world views of the future of technology recently. Microsoft president and CEO Steve Ballmer called a contention by rival Sun Microsystems chairman and CEO Scott McNealy that software is merely a feature of hardware “the most absurd thing I’ve heard in my life.”
“Software is the future,” Ballmer said.
At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held in lake Buena Vista, Fla., McNealy predicted the demise of the standalone software world, saying software is merely a feature of hardware devices, from handheld appliances to big servers.
“Software is a feature, not an industry,” he said.
“That, my friends, is why you ought to steer clear of Sun,” Ballmer responded the next morning. |
