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By Ben King, 29 June 2001 15:11

NEWS The news that the appeal judge has overturned the Microsoft verdict has thrown the IT industry and Nasdaq watchers into paroxysms of excitement, but at the real IT coalface the response has been far more muted. The general reaction among IT managers in a silicon.com straw poll was 'Oh really?' closely followed by 'So what?' Only one of the IT managers silicon.com called had even heard the news before we told them. Most feel that if the judgment does have any consequences for front-line IT managers, they will be minor, and their impact won't be felt for several years. Frank Coyle, IT Director of John Menzies, was the only IT manager contacted by silicon.com who had heard the news. He said: "[For my business] it makes no difference whatsoever. And the original ruling makes no difference whatsoever either. If Microsoft was broken up into separate companies, the poor end user wouldn't notice a blind bit of difference." He added: "What it's done is substantially delay any penalty, and that has been interpreted by Microsoft getting off scot-free. And that is very bad news. To avoid large corporations flouting the law they should be moving damn fast to impose a penalty. Jon Wight, head of IT at Ginsters, reflected a widely felt cynicism when he said: "I think that the breaking up of Microsoft is something that the lawyers primarily will benefit from. It's not something that will benefit IT directors." However, one IT departmental manager was prepared to speak up for the Redmond behemoth, though he chose to remain anonymous. "I am personally glad that Microsoft is not being broken up. As a current user of their products for both desktop and servers, having a single company determining the development path for both ranges has to be an advantage. It's a single point of contact for support, and single company to ensure client/server interoperability," he said.