Robert Mahowald Quotations

I think what's really pushing this is Microsoft's ability to see that it's long been playing cat and mouse with AIM and ICQ (another AOL instant messaging service). Microsoft needs to stake its presence in a big way.

Real-time collaboration is the hot button of the future. It's being built into sales force automation tools, (customer relationship management and) accounting.

Microsoft products have not heretofore had much in the way of services. He can help bring coherence for customers who want to look at Microsoft products in a way they can pay?for example, on a per-user basis.

Up until now, AOL has been able to pick and choose its partners, command the royalties it wants. They've moved to develop this market at their own pace. This forces them to take a more aggressive stance.

Contextual collaboration is where we are going with this. It is about how you can embed an IM module in a Seibel workflow application, for example. If you have IM and presence awareness embedded in the user interface, your world is looking a whole lot better. You don't have to swap between interfaces, everything syncs up, and you have a smart, archived message store.

They are saying we have this network that works very well and we should add more to it.

The chances are good for AOL to succeed here because its definition of success won't be the same as it is for Microsoft or even Yahoo. What AOL wants is wide use of business clients connected to its worldwide user base, and to make money off that.