Bill Gates retired last week, though he remains Microsoft's chairman. Some chairmen
have a soft touch, are more figurehead than figure. I expect Bill will be different,
that he'll err on the side of being a strong rather than a weak chairman.
Over the years, I've been asked many times what Microsoft would be like without
Gates. My theory was that Microsoft wasn't so much focused on a single product
as it was on building an integrated system, like a quilt. Each piece didn't
have to be better or as good as the competition's; it just had to fit better.
I also believed that Microsoft was a bit like the Pentagon: It had plans for
nearly every contingency. My conclusion? Gates could leave and Microsoft would
be fine for the next five years. It just has to keep making more quilt pieces.
To some degree, that's still true. Desktop OSes and Office suites are still
rich clients, and servers by and large are big hunks of IT-managed software.
But the world is changing, and services are taking hold. Microsoft has to be
agile and make faster and, sometimes, radical decisions.
So Microsoft will be different without Gates full-time. Steve Ballmer will
be more free to be Steve (that'll be fun to watch!), and it'll be put-up-or-shut-up
time for Ray Ozzie. Speaking of whom, if you want the real inside dope on Ozzie's
challenge, read Redmond Editor Ed Scannell's recent cover story, "Cloud
Man," here.
Do you care about cloud computing? Share your insight by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on July 02, 20080 comments
Microsoft has been on an openness kick of late for two reasons. One is of a
legal nature; Microsoft's toughest legal foe is the European Union, which has
been suing and fining the company for years. The U.S. government, though far
less active under the Bush administration, is another thorn. And, lastly, Microsoft
competitors have been suing over antitrust.
The other reason is the reality that open source exists and IT likes it.
Regardless of the reason, Microsoft is taking openness seriously. It struck
a deal with Sun, whose former CEO, Scott McNealy, has more bad words for Redmond
than an HBO late-night series. While the Sun deal has been a bit of a dud, the
one that has bore real fruit is the Novell
arrangement, where the companies offer mutual tech support and now have
significant interoperability.
Microsoft is extending this activity to the rest of the open source world through
its Interoperability Principles. The latest news is that Microsoft has formally
released documentation for key protocols used in the latest versions of
Exchange, SharePoint and Office. If you're a real glutton for this kind of stuff,
there are now 50,000 pages worth of protocol specs. Now there's some fun summer
reading.
Do you use Novell and Microsoft? Is the relationship as fruitful as I make
it out to be? Set me straight at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on July 01, 20080 comments
Unless you were living in a bio-dome or were in a Nick Hogan-induced coma, you
must have heard that Bill Gates retired last week.
I've been fortunate enough to cover Microsoft for the last 20-plus years, and
have never been disappointed with the company's drive, personality, toughness
or brainpower. This culture came directly from chairman Bill.
Some employees even took to looking like Bill, acting like Bill and talking
like Bill. Bill even invented his own vocabulary: "Golden" was good,
"random" meant your thinking was scattered or stupid, and "bandwidth"
was your ability to concentrate and deal with something.
In the early days, a reporter could talk to Bill quite easily. A new version
of Word? Bill was the guy to interview. On the other hand, one time while NeXT
Computer was making an announcement, I told the company I wouldn't do the story
unless I could talk to Steve Jobs. Even after I explained that Gates regularly
did these interviews, it was still no dice. (No story, either, Steve-O!)
Tomorrow I'll talk about Microsoft without Gates. Have you ever met Bill? Send
your story to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on July 01, 20080 comments
Some of you who downloaded XP SP3 got a little surprise:
corrupted
registries. The problem is that security software such as Norton anti-virus
wants to use the same registry entries that the service pack is trying to delete.
The result? Wireless connections that no longer connect and random restarts.
(I thought this was just a feature built into all desktop versions of Windows.)
Microsoft has a fix now, and you can get all the details right here.
Posted by Doug Barney on July 01, 20080 comments
Microsoft did the near unthinkable last week: It shipped a major product --
early!
Yup, Hyper-V
is in manufacturing, two months earlier than we expected. (Truth be told,
we usually expect these products to slip several times, so August to us would've
been early.)
This is an industry-changing event. Microsoft is unequalled in building third-party
communities, and I expect VMware vendors to add Hyper-V -- and for more traditional
Windows third parties to jump in, as well.
There are plenty of gaps to fill, as Hyper-V is a first-generation product
and doesn't sport the maturity of a VMware. Among the missing features is NIC
bonding -- which helps ensure the network connections stay up even if one NIC
fails -- and live migration.
Here's what astute reader Mark had to say:
"Hyper-V is still in beta, has no live migration, has no farm concept
with automatic load balancing and HA, no over-committing of resources (this
one is huge as I ran out of memory on an 8G system with just six VMs; I usually
get 12 on this same hardware using the same VM configurations), requires an
installation of at least Server 2008 Core Edition (OK, not bad, but there's
still a lot running in the root domain), has restricted x86/x64 OSes, and
is dependent on specific CPUs (which places you at the mercy of the chip manufacturers).
Then there's the inability to throttle or isolate the root domain from
VMs. I'm able to kill all running VMs by eating up memory in the root domain
and chewing up the CPUs; other than live migration, I consider this to be
the No. 1 problem. You shouldn't be able to bring down your VMs by runaway
processes in the root or console OS.
And, to top it off, it's basically a Xen knock-off (in fact, it's so similar
(with similar problems), that I wonder how much open source code crept into
this closed source product.
It amazes me, the giddiness with which people are approaching this pre-1.0
product and clearly inferior technology. The Microsoft Machine with its adherents
are at work here, but this certainly is not amazing technology at all. Maybe
one day, a few years from now."
Have you tried Hyper-V? Do you agree with Mark? Any deployment plans? Let us
know by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on June 30, 20080 comments
Internet Explorer gets lots of knocks for vulnerabilities, but its main rival,
Firefox, isn't perfect, either. The most recent rev, Firefox 3.0,
has
a hole that could let a hacker run code on your computer. Details haven't
been released, as the Mozilla Project hasn't finished its patch yet.
Redmond Report reader David pointed out that while Firefox may have fewer flaws,
he finds them harder to fix. Here's what Dave had to say:
"I don't care how many patches are released for IE, or how few for
Firefox. I patch Microsoft products with WSUS, which automatically approves
critical and security patches so they install on all the client PCs without
admin or user involvement. Even if the PC is sitting at a log-in prompt, IE
will be patched automatically. And I have an e-mail waiting for me each morning
to notify me of errors or problems.
With Firefox, I'm relying on an update mechanism that cannot be monitored,
and requires user intervention to initiate updates. It's the most administrator-unfriendly
program I've allowed on my network.
I don't have any unpatched instances of IE on my business LAN. I hope
that's true of Firefox, as well, but I have no easy way of knowing. It only
takes one unpatched vulnerability, so unless Firefox can assure me that it'll
never require even a single security patch, I'm at much greater risk from
Firefox than I ever will be from IE. As a user, I'd probably prefer Firefox,
but not from the admin standpoint."
Posted by Doug Barney on June 23, 20080 comments
Every year, Microsoft holds a contest for the best leading-edge PC designs.
I love seeing the cool ideas that come from college students around the world.
My only beef? These puppies never make it to market.
The
latest round of designs, which will likely never be produced, include the
Napkin PC, a Backpacker's Diary and a computer built for pre-schoolers.
The Napkin PC sits on a table like a napkin, and can be written on like a napkin.
The PC, however, can't take care of your coffee stains. The irony, of course,
is that many seminal PCs, like the original Compaq Portable, were designed on
napkins. I'm not sure if the Napkin PC was sketched on a napkin or a CAD program.
The Backpacker's Diary also uses a paper metaphor -- in this case, a book rather
than a single sheet of absorbent paper. Each page features a different function.
One nice thing for those out in the woods for days: solar charging!
If you were to design the next PC, what would do? Let us know by writing me
directly at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on June 23, 20080 comments
Bill Gates is retiring this week to spend his time helping save the world (that's
no joke -- the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does amazing work).
The editors at our sister publication Redmond Developer News, aimed
at corporate software development managers, decided
to find out if Gates was as good at making software as he is at making money.
Longtime analyst guru Will Zachmann took up the challenge and spoke to a who's-who
of software to see just how good Gates was at the craft.
The conclusion? Gates was and is a fine technologist, and clearly knows his
code.
Posted by Doug Barney on June 23, 20080 comments
Doug wrote
yesterday about Microsoft's much-touted Hyper-V. But a few of you aren't
buying into the hype:
Hyper-V is still in beta, has no live migration, has no farm concept
with automatic load balancing and HA, no over-committing of resources, requires
an installation of at least Server 2008 Core Edition, has restricted x86/x64
OSes, is dependent on specific CPUs, is unable to throttle or isolate the
root domain from VMs, and -- to top it off -- it's basically a Xen knock-off.
In fact, it is so similar to Xen (down to the problems), that I wonder how
much open source code crept into this closed-source product.
It amazes me, the giddiness with which people are approaching this pre-1.0
product and clearly inferior technology. The Microsoft Machine with its adherents
are at work here, but it's certainly not amazing technology. Maybe one day,
a few years from now.
-Anonymous
"Hyper-V Poised for Greatness"? Rhetoric. Don't get taken by
the Microsoft advertising juggernaut. It will stop at nothing to make us all
think the Hyper-V will challenge VMware ESX or even Citrix Xen in the short-term.
It will be a challenger in the long-term, but is definitely not enterprise-ready
in its current form.
-David
Got something to add? Let us have it! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail
to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on June 17, 20080 comments
The second issue of
Virtualization
Review, our newest magazine, is now out. Our first issue walked through
the major platforms,
VMware,
Microsoft
and
Citrix/Xen.
We even had a killer preview
of Hyper-V written by virtualization star Chris Wolf. This puppy is going
to change the virtualization market forever once it ships this summer.
Our second issue was even better. Here we focused on the major hardware players
-- IBM (which invented virtualization in the '60s), HP, Sun and Dell.
Here's the quick-and-dirty: IBM
has the most complex strategy. It has hypervisors -- either home-grown or third-party
-- for everything from mainframes, to the Power6-based System p, to industry-standard
rack and blade servers. On top of all that, it has a wealth of proprietary management
and storage tools.
HP
is similar to IBM in that is has proprietary management and storage tools. But
it doesn't make its own hypervisor.
Sun
has been doing virtualization in one form or another for many, many years. Now
it's pushing its own hypervisor and a new virtualization management platform.
Both of these are open source, as Sun will tell you again and again (and again).
Dell
is the simplest of the four. It sells industry-standard hardware equipped with
third-party software. 'Nuff said!
Posted by Doug Barney on June 16, 20080 comments
At last week's Tech-Ed, Microsoft VP Bob Muglia crowed about Hyper-V. You can
test him at his word, as the hypervisor is nearly here; beta testers can get
the
latest
release candidate, meaning it's almost all set to go.
Topping the list of new features are better management of Linux VMs, fewer
bugs and snappier performance. You can get the software through Windows Update.
Are you jonesin' for Hyper-V? Share your thoughts by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on June 16, 20080 comments
Google is pretty darn impressive. It has no huge staff of well-paid journalists,
yet it makes millions selling ads that surround today's media. As a journalist,
I think Google is parasitic -- the tape worm of the media world.
Given all the free cash involved, it's no wonder Microsoft wanted in on this
kind of action. But Microsoft last week decided it no
longer wanted to pay $40 billion-plus for Yahoo just so it could copy Google.
Now that Microsoft has given up on Yahoo, Yahoo is moving closer to Google
with an agreement that would put
Google AdWords on Yahoo sites.
Is this innovation or more of the same? Let us know by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on June 16, 20080 comments