Slashdot Mirror
Bob Muglia on Longhorn Server, Linux and Blackcomb
An anonymous reader writes "In a wide-ranging interview, Microsoft's senior VP Bob Muglia talks about the work involved in getting Longhorn Server out by 2007. He also gives the lowdown on the next major release of Windows Server, code-named Blackcomb. 'If Indigo (a major feature of Longhorn) took four years to develop, some major infrastructure things inside Blackcomb will also take four years to develop,' Muglia said. On competition from Linux, he said: 'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.' Very different from what Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates have been saying but Muglia says he's trying to teach them a thing or two."
'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.'
He realized that it is hard to fight Linux itself, because there is no single company producing it. So he aims at companies offering Linux as an alternative to Windows in order to solve specific problems.
'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.'
Well, that's true enough. Linux does NOT compete with Microsoft, and in fact never did. A Linux distribution company such as Red Hat competes with Microsoft and a Linux distribution competes with a Microsoft product such as NT.
It's like back in the day, Intel sent a sales rep to my (then) employer asking how Intel could help us. We explained the score to him: we don't buy Intel. What we buy is Compaq (i.e. complete systems) and if they happen to have Intel in fair enough, but really, that's Compaq's decision, we don't care.
Thus it is with Linux. The average person DOES NOT CARE whether the kernel on their system is Linux or the NT kernel or Mach or anything else. They just want to run their applications to get the stuff they want to do done.
At first they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us, then we win -Mahatma Gandhi Funny how this seems to be already happening with Linux & MS ... technology used by our competitors ... whatever!
Just the small fact that Linux is FREE and what you really pay for wheny buying a Linux distro such as RedHat or SuSe is support.
True, but how much difference does that actually make? If you buy 25 licenses for Red Hat's enterprise distribution, they won't support you if they find out that you installed it on a 26th system.
Now, obviously, if you simply download Fedora (4 CDs worth of it, I wonder how big Longhorn will be) you can run it on as many systems as you like, but you're on your own if you want support (no, Usenet doesn't count as an advantage here as there are also Windows newsgroups, mailing lists, whatever). That's free. But in practice, for a corporation, buying Red Hat isn't so different from buying NT.
A server shouldn't need to be the most complicated thing ever. Fundamentally, it does a fairly simple job. Making it 'more complex than ever' makes me want to use something else! (I'm a Tech. Director).
Wouldn't it be cool if MS said "Hey this new OS will use half the resources, be 99% secure, and run on a reasonable spec PC, and be simple to use and understand". Don't think we'll be getting that somehow though...
Still, I suppose from a business point of view they have to keep swimming, like sharks.
"This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time."
When i slap together a new LAMP server on linux it sure as heck is taking business away from Microsoft. A DNS, DHCP, Firewall, mailfilter/AV is today only a couple of cd's away for most admins with half a brain. And the best part? It doesnt cost a dime!
Even if Microsft successfully attacks all the companies selling linux there will still be a significant marketshare who is using linux on servers. What Microsoft should do is start selling applications and services to linux, like a full blown emulator for win32 and Office for Linux.
That way they wouldnt have to kill competition to earn money. Sometimes it feals like killing the competition is the goal and making money just a side effect.
HTTP/1.1 400
The company where i work is in the process of migrating from NT/2000 to XP, and they've had to pay all these costs as well. These aren't really "extra costs", they're just costs - you pay them whenever you migrate to/from any OS or distro. The difference (and i don't know how big a difference it is) lies in the license fees which you pay for, on top of everything else.
#!/usr/bin/english
When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.
In other words you think of it as a competitor.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
the guy says:
"... and we think about software-based solutions to information technology problems and how our software can drive down cost. That's pretty distinct from, say, an IBM that is first and foremost a consulting company. Our focus is how to provide more out-of-the-box solutions that don't require those consulting services."
MS always uses the "low cost - no need for expertise" argument, yet always fails to deliver. windows consultants will always be needed. IMHO, when you make a swiss-knife piece of software, you'll always need an expert to implement that part of the swiss knife you actually need in a specific situation.
i don't think you'll spend less on consultancy, as compared to other solutions such as linux...
OK ok, so its not a competitor but a competing product, and the companies such as RH, suse selling it and providing support are the competitors. What is the practical difference?
For one thing, it's way harder to fight. It means they aren't fighting a competitor, they are fighting a paradigm shift. IBM may wave the Linux flag, but the real danger is that they are getting away from selling software and focusing on solving problems for businesses more cheaply. SCO could kill Linux, and IBM could switch over to BSD without scarcely missing a beat.
As long as people are buying a brand or a worldview or a technology strategy, MS in unstoppable because they define the battleground and charge admission. If people look at problems they have defined for themselves and how to solve them most cheaply, MS no longer defines the battleground and a lot of the stuff that's designed to keep Microsoft in charge of the gates becomes irrelevant.
Look, business is a dirty, bare knuckles kind of thing. You find the choicest customer, become his friend, and use that relationship to tar the competitor. With Linux, MS must discredit the very idea of working anybody but MS. True, a lot of customers think this way; but it is a result, not a strategy. MS wants to create this worldview, but it can't rely on it to be stable in and of itself.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
He's quite right here. Linux isn't a competitor - it's just a kernel. GNU/Linux is a competitor. GNU/Linux with X and KDE is a dangerous competitor. But Linux on its own is not a big problem.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Quick, everyone, patent your little (or big) bit of Linux now, while you can......
Only joking of course, I doubt that what Sir Bill has between his ears is capable of grasping how extensive and powerful the facilities provided by Linux really are.
If they want to make a *nix-like system, they will face serious sompetition, from IBM, Sun (now remember how quickly Bill fell out with IBM, the same will happen there...), the SCOundrel even, all of whom do it better than the Monopolist would ever manage. I have not forgotten Xenix, it was truly pathetic. But, by the time they ever get anything out of the door, SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake and others I can't be bothered to remember will be selling so well that a new entrant will stand no chance.
The first rule of marketing, so I am told, is timing. Longhorn is late and getting later, if they hack it about and take bits out to speed up the development, it will get later still. So they will fall short on the first rule.
I think the practical difference is, Microsoft realises that they can't take out Linux at the source, that they have to attack the people who sell, service, support, and distribute Linux.
This leaves them fighting on multiple fronts, which stretches their resources and makes it harder to eliminate. For example, if they say that Redhat doesn't offer some feature (in an attempt to convince someone to drop/not start to use Redhat) that person may investigate other options to find that SUSE, for example, does provide that feature.
Sure, Microsoft may have cost Redhat a customer, but they haven't slowed the adoption of Linux.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
That's a profound observation I see played out over and over across my customer base. The longer I'm in IT, the more I encourage my customers to keep their data systems simple and build them on open standards. Then some rep will come in with some dribble about the "development stack" (I've never figured out what that was) and "information transparancy" (my personal favorite useless buzz phrase) and a demo and pretty soon UPS will be wheeling in some boxes. Nevermind if it can talk to the other systems and fits in with the integration plan. And what platform does it run on? Who's going to administer the box? Who is going to be the customer owner? No thought at all. It looks pretty let's get that.
And the best part is the vendor will blame IT if it doesn't work right. We're obviously not following "best practices" however the f' they happen to be defining those at the moment. Hey, has anyone seen the big book of Best Practices anywhere? Crap, someone keeps borrowing mine.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A very high percentage. It depends on how fast the hardware ships. Any application with a high memory demand will see the advantage of 64-bit.
Sure dude. Because the hardware hasn't already been shipping for friggin months and months...
Liberty.
A misconception that I see over and over is that there exists a competition between Linux and Microsoft.
This is a misunderstanding.
Some people believe that Linux and more generally, Open Source Software, has a goal of becoming the operating system of choice in all venues.
This is false. And this is why
Microsoft is a Corporation in the United States of America. The Microsoft Operating System is a computer program.
Linux or OSS is a computer program. It does not belong to any Corporation anywhere.
Microsoft (the corporation) wants to be the king of the Operating Systems. Microsoft Operating System (the computer program) can't tell one way or the other.
Likewise, Linux or OSS, doesn't care if nobody uses it. Ever. It is a computer program, and lacks the Corporation that seeks to dominate the world.
Open Source Software belongs to no-one. Most importantly, it does not belong to a United States based corporation. Indeed, much or most of the Open Source Software I use is developed outside the borders of the US.
Linux doesn't compete with Microsoft.
It doesn't need to!
On the other hand, Microsoft IS THREATENED by Open Source Software. Microsoft wants to convince the Companies of the world that it CAN compete with OSS. And so it spreads the misconception that Linux (and OSS) competes with Microsoft.
Open Source Software will prevail.
Ten years from now, there will still be OSS. It cannot die. Even if it is outlawed in the US and Europe, it will survive on the thousands of computers outside this realm. MS, on the other hand, could be just a shadow or a memory in ten years, having suffered declining revenues and a shrinking customer base.
OSS will never die
Long live OSS
There's another potential shift that threatens Microsoft... and it dove-tails rather nicely with this observation. It has to do with commodity markets.
Microsoft won because IBM lost. That is, IBM lost control of their microcomputer platform which began the commodity hardware market. And as businesses grew taking advantage of commodity hardware, they all turned to Microsoft to provide the OS. Microsoft rode that powerful wave with great success.
It is possible that the tide is turning. Now, the OS is in danger of becoming a commodity. And Microsoft doesn't relish the idea of being under that wave. It would mean a certain loss of control on the market. That makes financial success less of a given. But it also makes it harder for one to push one's own agenda and ideas.
This threat isn't simply a matter of sales either. It is also about perception. Consider this when Microsoft talks about licensing and the steps they take to ensure compliance. Also keep this concept in mind when Gates talks about free hardware.
After all, clicking the "Go away" link is so damned hard.
Meanwhile, there's an ANNOYING light bulb in OpenOffice that appears every ten seconds...
That makes financial success less of a given.
Innovators dilemma.
MS has the people and money to do pretty much as it pleases.
It would not please it to undermine Windows by selling Office for Linux, in particular.
Yet, if Linux continues to grow and MS wants to be a part of the software vendor marketplace it has to be able to offer compelling products on whatever the customers are using.
I think they could sell a lot of copies of Office for Linux right now.
But they'll wait because they don't want to be part of the movement putting a knife in the back of Windows. Office for OS X isn't so chancy because they feel comfortable that Apple has a relatively slowly-changing market share.
The problem is that by the time they decide Windows the underlying OS has been marginalized by a "better commodity", the Linux users will have adapted and made due with OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."