hmm, successful as in profitable?

Taking a step back from the technical discussion I see a mayor re-marketing strategy pushed forward with 2008 R2 but as developers are we getting quality products or market domination? We have so many editions developer, standard, enterprise, express, web, workgroup, datacenter, Parallel Data Warehouse, compact, azure, etc, etc. But do any of these products truely stand on there own two feet or are they all reliant on additional M$ technologies (windows server, share point, .net, excel, even bing) and additional M$ certificated personel.

All the competitive products mentioned deliver very successfully without forcing you to commit to a M$ marriage and a very expensive long term relationship.

I just hope the MPP solution houses keep producing quality and don't get eaten up by the marketing giant.