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FEBRUARY 21, 2003 NEWSMAKER Q&A A "Perfect Marriage" for Microsoft? Redmond's Tim McDonough says Mac lovers have no need to fret over the giant's purchase of the cross-platform franchise from Connectix
While some Macheads reacted warily to the news that Microsoft (MSFT ) had taken control of a popular Mac product, it swears the deal makes good business sense and pledges to do right by Apple (AAPL ) aficionados. Alex Salkever, BusinessWeek Online's Technology editor, spoke with Tim McDonough, the director of marketing at Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, on Feb. 20 about the deal. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation: Q: Tell me about the acquisition. A: Virtual PC in various forms has been around for almost 14 years. As we look at it, it's a long-standing Mac application, just like a lot of the other businesses we're in. It's also a very popular product with Mac users. It has a little over a million active users, which is a lot in the Apple area. It's something we're excited about because, on that level, it's a really good fit with the kind of business we have in the Apple space. Q: Could you explain why this is a good fit? A: We look at ourselves as being all about compatibility and helping Mac users work well with Windows users. One of the ways we can do that is having a native Mac Office and let Apple users not even need to think about compatibility. Virtual PC creates a whole new level of compatibility for us and our customers. Q: What does this mean for the future of Virtual PC? A: I think this is the best thing that could have happened for Virtual PC. We think we have a pretty unique combination of skills. We have a lot of excellent Apple developers who also happen to be excellent Windows developers because they work here. It's the perfect marriage. What customers will see over the next three to six months is a gradual transition of Virtual PC into the Microsoft business. We're going to improve the availability of the product, and we will eventually take over all development. It will be a dedicated team working in the Mac Business Unit. We feel very confident the transition will be very smooth. Q: Some Apple users are concerned the development cycle of Virtual PC will slow down. A: It's too early for us to talk about the long-term development cycle. I can tell you we will listen to what our customers are telling us. We will also be working carefully with Apple, because they are the host operating system this product runs on. When Apple's next OS comes out, that will be important to our scheduling considerations. We will also look at what Windows is doing because, although Apple is the host OS, the guest OS is also important, so we need to coordinate between them. Q: I guess that came out of growing concerns the Microsoft is not updating its other Apple software products very quickly. A: We were [the first] major apps vendor to support OS X. We built on a 10-month cycle time. That's the fastest we have ever done an Office platform. We're already working on Office 11, and we will release it on the standard 18- to 24-month development cycle [which means sometime in the winter of 2003]. Between looking at Office 10 and Office 11, we have made some pretty significant releases of Apple software, such as IE 5.2, the MSN client, and Microsoft Messenger for Mac, and this summer, Microsoft Exchange compatibility. We have been doing something for every single MacWorld. Q: Some Mac users feel a rift is growing between Microsoft and Apple, in part due to slow sales of the new version of Office. What's your view? A: Our business is very healthy right now. OS X adoption is increasing. That's important for us. The second thing that's working very well is our relationship with Apple. We now have pretty deep sales and marketing relationships across the companies. Q: Would you ever not support Virtual PC? I ask this because most of the Microsoft executives who commented on this deal focused on Connectix's PC-based Virtual Server products. A: We acquired this part of their business...because it was an important thing for our customers. We also bought it because its a good business. Those things line up to indicate there's a great long-term future for the product.  Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | FEBRUARY |
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