Dig, nice metaphor. I posted the other day that I was concerned about MSFT from a competitive standpoint. I still am because if hardware security truely becomes price of doing business then I maintain that MSFT will want a piece of the management business or in some way subsume functions such that they become an integral part of the products they sell. Alea (as usual) had some very good points about MSFT not wanting necessarily to be in this sort of business and that they would make their money in other ways. This also may very well be true. And if I read his responses, I believe he was also saying what you noted about wrapping the TPM functionality. This of course isn't direct competition, but if they dumb it down and make it so easy to leverage a TPM that my grandmother could do it then Wave's many year lead quickly becomes about 6 months and one of name/brand recognition. Perhaps this is enough and I strongly believe that they will be among the first to enjoy the "new" hardware-based security requirements. As to how long this will last and how long Sprague-Co. will fend off seasoned business veterans [trappers :)] remains to be seen. What do you think the end game is for Wave? Buyout, organic growth until they're one of the big boys, or something less stellar than either of those?
AI
