[Microsoft has] built loyalty at the end-user level, including upper management, ... That works for a while in the early stages of a product, but after a couple of years the blush fades from the rose. It's reality versus marketing.

Your loyalty is more naturally to your teammates and coaches. If you've been around a few years like me, you develop a bond with the city and the whole concept of a franchise. But that's hard for a lot of guys to do these days.

A lot of things were happening with our customers. Our business, performance management, becomes a customer loyalty issue.

Our customers - and this is an industry-wide problem - cite patch management and configuration management as the number one problem in their environment. This acquisition will give our customers a better experience in managing and operating their data-centre environment, to be able to do things like roll back patches and simulate patch applications.

It will be hard for our management team to select a starting eleven,

Everything in the electronics industry is getting more complicated, and the data management problems are truly enormous. What's needed are tools that provide a framework to facilitate the internal custom development of products for a variety of design and manufacturing processes, throughout a product's life cycle.