US CIOs appear to believe the US government is doing the right thing in pursuing Microsoft Corp for antitrust practices and want to see the government prevail, according Merrill Lynch & Co’s latest survey of corporate buyers. 70% of CIOs approved of government actions, while 66% said they think the government will win the case. Interestingly, the brokerage’s clipboards also record that these opinions don’t appear to have affected buying habits. 58% of the 50 have standardized on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, versus 24% on Netscape and 18% on both. The survey suggests that CIOs are more likely to buy Netscape software following its acquisition by America Online and its development deal with Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun was the most recognized internet computing vendor among the 50 and that was before the company began its current series of ‘dot com-ing’ advertisements. Only 34% of the 50 had heard of IBM Corp’s agreement with Santa Cruz Operation and Sequent Computer Systems for creating a new version of AIX (Monterey64) for Intel processors. 16% said it would make them more likely to buy IBM AIX systems; 72% said it made no difference to their plans. The CIOs also said they will increase their use of Java if Sun moves towards the open source model.
