The battle used to be East v West. Not USSR v USA but Cambridge, MA (Lotus) versus Redmond, WA (Microsoft) for the heart and soul of collaboration.
As if to rub IBMs (principally New York centric) noses in 'it', Microsoft has announced that Cambridge:
"...will be the home of Microsoft's Boston Concept Development Center, a first-of-its-kind research unit that's assembling dozens of engineers and designers and sniffing out technologies with the aim of incubating new Internet businesses within the company."
The new location at One Memorial Drive is just a few blocks up the road from the spiritual origin of Lotus Development.
This will be the home of Microsoft Innovation (yes its not an oxymoron) and will be headed by two long term Lotus 'names'; Ozzie (Jack) and Sturtevant (Reed). I think we can expect to see a few more ex and current Lotii returning to the land of Harvard and MIT over the coming months.
More on the Seattle Times article here.