The remedy will have to right past wrongs while still allowing Microsoft to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace, said Michael Gartenberg, lead Microsoft analyst for IT consultancy The Gartner Group.
The judge in the US government's case against Microsoft has announced an expedited schedule to craft a remedy.
A ruling could come from Thomas Penfield Jackson in as little as 60 days.
But there is widespread disagreement within the industry as to how a craft a remedy, and analysts say the judge will have to balance several concerns in crafting a remedy.
The remedy will have to right past wrongs while still allowing Microsoft to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace, said Michael Gartenberg, lead Microsoft analyst for IT consultancy The Gartner Group.
Microsoft has a strong position on desktop computers, he said, but "they don't own the server space. They don't own living room, automobile, handheld."
Mr Gartenberg asks, "How do you make sure that Microsoft doesn't necessarily go ahead and own these markets based on its leverage so far?"
But "we also don't want to cripple Microsoft either as the coming sea change occurs," Mr Gartenberg added.
A simple break-up
The complex issues at hand have led some to call for a break-up of the company including Charles Rutstein and Carl Howe, also with Gartner.
"(A remedy) should be something simple that anyone can understand and one that will stand over time," Mr Rutstein said, adding, "they can't keep messing with it."
Most of all, Mr Rutstein said that a remedy should be enforceable without ongoing oversight "unless you're willing for Congress to allocate funds for a Department of Babysitting Microsoft."
For these reasons, Mr Rutstein advocates breaking up the company by splitting up the operating system side of the Microsoft from the rest of the company.
But Mr Rutstein believes that Microsoft should also submit the Win32 application programme interfaces -- the code for building software applications - to the standards-making body the Internet Engineering Task Force in order to guarantee equal access to the APIs.
Gartner believes that this solution would be a boon for users, shareholders and the industry.
The software industry landscape would be comparable to that after the break-up of telecom giant AT&T, and users would benefit from stable platforms, standards and competition.
Costly to consumers
However, pro-Microsoft industry group the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) says that breaking the company up would cost the computer industry $30bn, according to research by a University of Texas economist.
Microsoft Windows is a $5bn market that sits at the middle of a $500bn market made of mostly small and medium businesses, said Jonathan Zuck, president of ACT, which counts more than 900 software, hardware and dot.com businesses as its members.
If Microsoft were to be broken up, the operating system market would fragment, Mr Zuck said, pointing to fragmentation in the Unix market as an example of what would happen to Windows.
Software vendors would be forced to write for different versions of Windows. Software trainers would have to teach to different versions of the operating system, and ultimately these costs would be passed along to consumers.
Mr Zuck believes that the case should be either thrown out on appeal or watered down greatly.