Microsoft has hired former IBMer Cliff Reeves as VP, marketing of the "Windows.NET Server Product Management Group." We're not entirely sure what the blazes that is either, but according to the man himself he'll be delivering "enhanced business solutions to our customers and partners, through the Windows.NET Server family," and given Reeves' vintage it's surely a pretty senior post.

Because that's a one-company, 30-year vintage, Microsoft could hardly avoid mentioning Big Blue more than a little in its trumpeting of his appointment. It does largely avoid the O-word, and is entirely successful in not mentioning the war. Cliff however was one of the more senior figures in that unpleasant business of the mid-90s when IBM was trying to overthrow the Windows Empire.

He spent a lot of time evangelising object technology for IBM, and at the time this meant going head-to-head with Microsoft's rival technologies. Which themselves have slowly but surely morphed towards .NET, which Cliff will now be busying himself with. He got himself more of a proper job, architect of the IBM Workgroup project, just around the time it was all starting to come unglued, but then transferred to Lotus after IBM bought the company.

The way Microsoft tells it, his time in the front ranks of the Rebel Alliance seems to have fallen within "Reeves worked with Microsoft and its products throughout his career. He took part in cooperative efforts and alliances between IBM and Microsoft, and participated on a collaborative team working on the IBM OS2 operating system."

That long history of cooperation will be news to the Brit press who used to go drinking with the convivial (also Brit) Reeves, but we're sure he's pretty much through rehab now, so why rake up the past? He was with Lotus until last December, but left when his IBM pension matured, commenting: "The biggest single weakness in my resume is I worked at one company." Not any more Cliff, as his old IBM buddies might reckon, not any more... ®