Up to now, SITFO has been happy to recommend that its clients establish strategic partnerships with Microsoft. In support of our own partnership with Microsoft, I have spoken at numerous Microsoft events around the world, enunciating a shared strategic vision with their government team. Additionally, we’ve worked with major organisations across Europe to take that same shared strategic vision to the private sector.
So, it would be grossly negligent of us not to pass on information that calls into question Microsoft’s suitability as a trusted partner to those same audiences. It saddens me to report that, despite extensive efforts on our part, we can no longer advise clients with innovative ideas to engage with Microsoft in any kind of development or strategic partnership where intellectual property rights could be an issue.
A report detailing Microsoft Corporation’s fundamental breaches of trust with respect to the TADAG (Trusted Authenticated Domains and Gateways) concept can be found at www.tadag.com. TADAG is owned by our own parent company RamTec. The report makes sobering reading. Particularly, the recently updated Addendum, in which Microsoft lawyers demonstrate their company’s complete ‘inability’ to manage NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements), and Microsoft’s contempt for the basic principle of trust upon which business relationships are formed.
Fortunately, we disclosed only 25% of the TADAG concept to Microsoft in 2004. Even so, they quickly jetted-in experts from all over the world to prod and poke at an architecture that represents a paradigm shift for IT security. Despite multiple NDAs being in place, we caught them with their corporate fingers in the till, working on ‘their’ new concept at Redmond, just a few months after intensive initial discussions had gone cold. Three weeks after our formal complaint, an exact replica of the small component of the TADAG architecture that we had revealed was filed for patent, eventually being badged as OpenID. Despite their claims of having conducted a thorough internal investigation, by February 2007, Bill Gates was on a podium announcing Microsoft’s sponsorship of OpenID, which derives its fundamental principles from TADAG.
At no stage have Microsoft’s lawyers disputed the chronology contained within the report, nor that it began covert development of the TADAG concept, nor that it sponsored a third party for its continued development. Microsoft’s ‘Trade Secret Practice’ lawyer has admitted that there is no formal record of the 2005 ‘investigation’ that followed the original complaint, and that there are “obvious flaws in their IPR complaints procedures”. Their senior copyright lawyer has admitted that there is no procedure in place to manage NDA records. A formal complaint has already been logged with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) but, for so long as the DoJ turn a blind eye to companies that effectively act as an aggressive arm of US foreign policy, it’s not only Microsoft’s credibility that suffers in the global market place.
You can add the TADAG debacle to increasing evidence of Microsoft’s factionalised approach to business, with numerous Microsoft product teams openly competing against each other, in ways that work directly against the best interests of their clients. In many instances, this myopic view of IT strategy is being compounded by Microsoft partners who are being encouraged by Microsoft to deliver solutions in a way that locks-in the customer to a dependent relationship with their supplier.
Part of this lack of coherence and governance inside Microsoft is caused by the fact that there are many inside Microsoft who stand to gain significantly from any split-up of the corporation. So, don’t expect too much of an attempt from inside Microsoft to deliver strategic coherence across its product set, especially when sales targets are in view.
So, what to do? Don’t, under any circumstances, share intellectual property with Microsoft. The company has comprehensively demonstrated that it cannot to be trusted, and a weak Department of Justice just dodges the issue. At board level, organisations need to have applied sufficient governance and accountability around IT to ensure that their strategy can withstand attempts by business managers to window-dress their c.v.s with Microsoft delivered point solutions. It’s easy to see how a strategic partnership with Microsoft could end up with an organisation having its intellectual property plundered, in return for an impressive, expensive, dead-end, non-strategic solution. Unravelling that conundrum is SITFO’s core business.
David Gale – September 2008
So you have finally realised for yourself how Microsoft got its other nickname of “3E Corporation” (like the well known 3M Corp.)
3E – E)mbrace, E)xtend, E)xtinguish
This has happened to a lot of people where they say that their ideas have been copied, changed and then used to push them out of business or diminish their market. Stac Technologies is perhaps the best known example.
You are known a 3E partner. Maybe not one for adding to the accreditations on the company stationery?
Fair comment, although more difficult to swallow when I have huge respect for many Microsoft employees with whom I spent years building a trusted relationship. I hadn’t counted on them having a CIA insider as senior executive strategist or on having to deal with the sad excuse that is their ethical standards oversight. The phrase “ethical standards do not apply in matters relating to IPR” still rings in my ears.
As for the DoJ’s response, well, they have zero credibility. It’s difficult to fight against US foreign / economic policy when they use a corporation’s trusted relationships to front it. This doesn’t just taint Microsoft’s image, it’s had many of our customers questioning the viability of a relationship with any US corporate.
The larger part of TADAG remains parked, denying Microsoft access to the glue that could deliver leverage for their entire integrated product stack. The lack of interest from senior executives doesn’t just indicate an inability to work strategically but also demonstrates that there are still those inside Microsoft who are solely focussed on preparation for a ‘split-up and sell-off’ assett strip of their own company.
What Microsoft hadn’t counted on was a number of our government customers being kept in the loop right from the earliest contact that we made with Microsoft on TADAG, so they absolutely understand the level of Microsoft’s deception. Our own embarrassment is small beer compared to the value of putting this information out there. To date, this has cost Microsoft hundreds of milllion dollars’ worth of business and their reputation with our key government customers is in tatters.