Corporations have unlimited life and unlimited memory; and today it comes back to bite Microsoft in the butt. Dell, often on the edge of Microsoft friend or foe, launched an Idea Storm site last week and got the justification to start rolling out Linux on laptops and desktops.

The lesson here is that if you don’t treat your partners right and leave them in the dark they will turn against you in a blink of an eye. Partnership loyalty in business is hard to achieve but it benefits everyone. The second partners start looking out for their best interests the payback is difficult – Dell is hitting Microsoft back on the verge of a luckluster product launch, rising acceptance of emerging Apple and Linux distributions, and heading into the last quarter of the year during which MSFT struggled.

How loyal are you to your partners, vendors and customers?

P.S. I bet you’re wondering where this one came out of — Businessweek February 26, 2007 – Page 128: Michael Dell: “We are likely to do more internationally. We are looking at the next billion PC users [in emerging markets]”; anotherwords, modernization of the third world. You think those guys are gonna pay for Bitlocker or an iPod? If they worked together they would have found the way, but greed got in a way and it’s going to be harder and harder for me to face that Microsoft stock certificate on my bookshelf with each passing day.

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