Business Strategy
There exist strategies that competitors could use in order to effectively compete with computer companies using proprietary operating system. To start with, computer companies that use open source operating system such as Unix can provide a platform that is more open and allows the users make choices on what to do with their software and when to do it. The major appeal of open software is that they do not lock the customer, thereby giving the buyer the freedom to choose from a variety of software to use (Valdani & Arbore, 2012). This gives open software vendors a competitive advantage over proprietary operating systems.
Open source operating system can also use cost-sharing as a competitive strategy. Even though it would be difficult for or even impossible for any lone web server seller to get in a position to completely offset the advantages offered by Microsoft’s desktop monopoly market, open source providers such as Apache allows corporate to participate in the project that offer products and services that are both superior technically to Microsoft’s IIS and reaffirms customers with a majority market share at an outstanding lower cost. This in turn improves the market position and the cost of production for value-added electronic commerce products such as IBM’s WebSphere. It is evident that shared infrastructure gives the involved parties a competitive advantage.
The pricing strategies that would be most effective include offering ownership of products and services at lower cost as compared to companies using proprietary operating system. This will make more customers go for open source operating systems since the initial cost of acquiring such platforms is lower as compared to proprietary operating system (Cantrell, 2009). Computer companies competing with proprietary operating software vendors can also provide their basic infrastructure freely then provide other supplementary products at a cost that is relatively cheaper that than that offered by other software vendors.
References:
Cantrell, R. (2009). Outpacing the competition: patent-based business strategy. New York: John Wiley & Sons
Valdani, E. & Arbore, A. (2012). Competitive Strategies: Managing the Present and Planning the Future. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
