As perhaps the biggest commercial influencer in helping to bring the PC to the masses, Microsoft has been wandering the realm of computerdom with a giant target on its back for decades. Every time it expands into a new market — browsers, databases, CRM, online collaboration, and more — target practice just seems all the more appealing to a new crop of competitors. From Netscape in the 1990s to Google to IBM, plenty of companies have been gunning for the title of king of the hill ever since Microsoft rose to dominate the technology market. And Microsoft has shown it’s not afraid to defend itself and retaliate when its territory is threatened. After all, where is Netscape today? After making it clear that its plan was to beat Microsoft in the browser wars, Microsoft pulled out all the stops to go to battle and ultimately vanquished its smaller competitor in the browser market. The fact is, Microsoft has perhaps the most enemies (and even frienemies) in the entirety of the IT vendor landscape. The following are tops on the list.
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Apple
From the old "look and feel" lawsuit over Apple's Lisa to the battle between the iPod and the Zune, Microsoft and Apple have going at it for about as long as the two companies have existed. Apple lovers may bask in the snarky superiority of their 'Mac vs. PC commercials' but Microsoft at least clings to the fact that Apple's computer market share is nearly equal to a rounding error compared to Microsoft's share.
VMWare
According to IDC, Microsoft managed to grow sales of its Hyper-V by 2009 by 215 percent year-over-year in the last quarter of 2009. With its Hyper-V platform and Azure framework, Microsoft is pinning a lot of its future success on virtualization and cloud development. In the process, it is taking VMWare head-on.
Open Source Community
Never mind the recent throat-clearings from Microsoft execs who claim the company is looking to dip its toes into open source development. Microsoft has long sparred with the open source community—a history of friction that can't be dissipated without a lot of effort.
Google
Google has only been around for a fraction of the time Microsoft has, but in that time it has managed to poach some of Redmond's best and brightest employees, completely bury Microsoft's search engine business, contribute to the demise of Microsoft's mobile business and generally usurp Microsoft's position as computing's hottest commodity.
Oracle
Oracle's landmark purchase of Sun only serves to further enflame its rivalry with Microsoft—a match-up that's highlighted by Oracle versus SQL Server but plays out in other categories like ERP, business intelligence and even virtualization.
IBM
Not since the Windows and OS/2 competition of the 1980s has Microsoft gone toe-to-toe with IBM in the way it plans to do over cloud infrastructure. The launch of Azure was a clear shot over IBM's bow and a sign that the two companies will square off in the very near future.
Adobe
Microsoft has long coveted Adobe's dominance in the rich media marketplace, but has had a hard time getting a toe-hold in for meaningful competition. The Redmond bosses are hoping that's going to change at least a little with the growing head of steam that Silverlight is achieving.
Itself
In a lot of cases Microsoft has been its own worst enemy. It has developed a reputation strong-arming customers and partners and faces the huge task of softening its image as an endless stream of competitors continue to erode its share across the vast array of industry niches it seeks to dominate.
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