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Microsoft to Storm Linux Strongholds
VitaminB52 writes "Microsoft is only winning about one out of four deals where IT shops are trying to move off of proprietary Unix. To turn that trend around, there are four specific Linux strongholds where Microsoft is focusing its attention." From the article: "After discussing server clustering, Web hosting, and server appliances, Ballmer was cut off by the interviewees before he could identify the fourth. But my guess is that, given the way Ballmer emphasized Software as a Service (SaaS) as a core theme for all the work that's taking place at Microsoft right now, the fourth stronghold of Linux that Microsoft wants is the SaaS stronghold where Linux is the operating system behind a Java-based application server technology ... Ballmer knows he's got a long roe to hoe. 'The day I come in front of the Gartner audience and say we have a better Unix than Linux, that'll be a good day.'"
Why does the title give me a mental image of the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur and co are trying to get into the Castle... Except it's microsoft execs being taunted by penguins. I really need some more coffee.
Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow...
...is Ballmer hoeing fish eggs???
No wonder he gets angry!
Game dev and music blog
...the fourth stronghold of Linux that Microsoft wants is the SaaS stronghold where Linux is the operating system behind a Java-based application server technology
Sure, that makes sense, especially considering the big announcement last month of JBoss partnering with Microsoft to build up interoperability with Windows servers and the JEMS stuff.
The thing is, the execs that have to make these decisions are used to having a big company behind their Unix OS and are more comfortable with Windows in general, so just that alone works against Linux migration. Still, time will come as this generation quickly moves up the ladder and becomes the decision makers; the value of Linux and BSD will not be overlooked as it is today. While Linux has captured a good market, this will acclerate much more as the years go by.
fak3r.com
"Hey, don't switch just yet! Just hold on a few more years, and we'll provide something like what you want! No, really! Please don't forget about us!"
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
When it comes to real users, bubbly GUIs like those shown in most Windows Vista screenshots do not appeal. Most serious users will mock such sassery.
When it comes to configuring Apache or a SQL database, nothing compares to being able to directly edit text files and run services easily from the command line. This is what UNIX, Linux, BSD and Solaris offers.
They'll at least need to get Monad finished, and it will have to trump the existing UNIX command line in some fashion. But if they keep throwing bubbly interfaces as professionals, the bubbly interfaces will hamper the ability of such professionals to get work done.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
From the article: ...in many of these cluster and grid scenarios -- scenarios that often involve home grown setups with versions of Linux that aren't supported by any of the various Linux distributors -- the people running them are again not incurring any licensing costs on the operating system.
Yeah... it seems like there is a basic concept here, that the kind of people who need clusters are also the kind of people who can generally take care of them, themselves. Or is Ballmer trying to suggest that MS can make clustering so easy and slick that any old researcher with a few processors could set it up?
As for the "better UNIX than Linux" quote... uh... what??? Microsoft Unix? Isn't it obvious that Solaris and AIX users migrate to Linux 75% of the time because they're familiar with the basic OS underpinnings? It's a knowledge reuse issue. Does Ballmer really expect MS to create an OS that is similar enough to capitalize on this reuse?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
funny to see Microsoft realizing that it's web server offerings have "the bloat". But that's also a huge problem for appliances and high performance computing applications. Writing apps for an API on top of The Bloat is painful too, even with IDE code wizards. And what to do when the Bloated Black Box doesn't behave or act the way you were expecting?
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
It's everywhere, it doesn't have or need "strongholds". It simply flows to areas the economics make it useful. The implication of a stronghold is that it's good for one or two things and has to defend against instrusion by a determined foe. Very... Balmeresque... thinking.
Deleted
Vendor neutrality. Let's see Microsoft attack that one. Be kind of paradoxical, really.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
First -- If SFU isn't the answer, make it the answer. There's no technical reason Windows can't have a good Unix environment on top of it. Get some sort of *nix-like package management on top of it so the OSS world can build and distribute tools. Build in a "registry file system" or whatever you need to make *nix tools work better on the Windows OS.
.NET, MS should provide better support for J2EE vendors like JBoss or BEA. (I read the biggest chunk of MS's "enterprise" penetration is actually as a platform for running Java servers.)
Second -- Apache. There's no reason people should have to run IIS, so build up Apache to be first class on Win32. Give it windows authentication and a GUI manager.
Third -- Java. It's not going away, so even with
You're right that POSIX->Win32 is a bogus migration plan. So the real solution is to provide better *nix-like tools that bridge the gap between the unix world and the Windows OS. If the capabilities are there, people will migrate.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
A Unix admin can't take humiliation by jumping off from Unix to Windoss! Linux makes better sense to them than windows anyday!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
New research and office space, ~300 users. MS came in with a partner firm and said they could make all this work for "only" $1.5M over 3 years. 12 servers (Yeah 12!), one each for email/exchange, AD, file, dns, dialup, blackberry, applications, etc.
I presented something which will cost ~$90K for the hardware, zip for the software and give us more. The users will still have Windows on the desktop and won't care about the backend stuff. And I know this will work, it's a virtual duplicate of 2 other places I set up for this org.
MS & partner firm hate me.
It seems to me that, without completely abandoning the company culture and MO which I doubt they can or will do, the best they'll be able to come up with is another commercial unix. Which would be rather silly, and a waste of time. There's a reason everyone and their dog are migrating AWAY from commercial unix, and to Free linux-based systems, after all. And it's not because AIX or Solaris lack features or functionality so MS could step in and better them. It's because Freedom has plenty of practical advantages.
What can they do? Revive Xenix? SCO would love that, but who else would care? Do the NT POSIX subsystem again, only this time for real? Sure, they could do something like that, but why would anyone buy it even if they did? It will never, ever, be Free, so it would simply be yet another commercial *nix. And commercial *nix is dying.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The PC market is pretty mature at this point; things are changing. The only constant is that prices are continuing to fall, and that IS putting OEM pressure on Microsoft to drop prices. It hits with a double whammy I'd bet, as most of their applications are bundled deals.
I know that the clients I deal with are VERY hesitant to migrate from Windows XP (many have not migrated from Windows 2000 or 95).
Embedded devices have been a problem for Microsoft; Their XP embedded is much better than CE, but both are overly complicated and do not have a good reputation with people I've worked with, and I don't especially like them either. Even the classic RTOS makers are getting hurt by things like RT linux.
Web services are another potential front microsoft is going to lose big on; unless MS is able to tie in propietary hooks to IE, they're going to lose there in a big way just by the nature of the product. If it doesn't matter to the user what platform they interact with, the back end can shuffle around between vendors so long as the end user experience remains the same. Does anyone care what OS google runs, so long as it works (Fast)?
You want to know where Microsoft and Windows have a huge lead? It's in development environments and integration and third party libraries. Even the Mac is a little behind there, but is in much better shape than Linux. Companies like Borland et. al have come a long way, but the tools don't seem to have picked up widespread adoption with the FOSS people.
Interesting times.
..don't panic
Gates: Hallo! Hallo!
Mandriva: 'Allo! Who is it?
G: It is King Bill, and these are the Programers of the Square Table. Who's castle is this?
M: This is the castle of my master, Guy de Linus!
G: Go and tell your master that I have charged myself with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night he can join us in our quest for the Holy OS.
M: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen... Uh, he's already got one, you see?
G: What?
Balmer: He says they've already got one!
G: Are you sure he's got one?
M: Oh, yes, it's very nice-a (I told him we already got one)
G: Well, um, can we come up and have a look?
M: Of course not! You are Windows types-a!
G: Well, what are you then?
M: I'm Linux! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king!
B: What are you doing in our computers?
M: Mind your own business!
G: If you will not show us the OS, we shall take your castle by force!
M: You don't frighten us, Windows pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Bill-king, you and all your silly Windows kaniggets. Thppppt!
B: What a strange person.
G: Now look here, my good man!
M: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
B: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
M: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
- but we can defeat ourselves.
...' who are infallible in their wisdom.
What I'm getting at is the way a number of important SW projects seem to be run increasingly by people who are no longer interested in listening to what people want, but instead pursue their own pink clouds and visions about what would be 'great' or 'cool'. Fortunately this hasn't hit the kernel as such, but I think there is a clear trend.
I think the problem is that some of the big, central projects, like GNOME, Mozilla and others have reached a stage where they are no longer really open and approachable to outsiders. In many cases there's a feeling that they see themselves as 'the holy church of
It's not all doom and gloom - there are many projects where the developer group has kept an open mind. But it requires an ongoing effort to stay that way. We should learn a lesson from Microsoft: In the very beginning they won the hearts and minds of a lot of people, not because their products were outstanding, but because people saw them as something great, something that enabled you to get close to the computer, and from that a lot of great SW was created. Then they got greedy and thought they were the infallible 'Church of PCdom', and a lot of people lost all respect and trust in the company. Now they try to win it back, and perhaps they can in time, who knows.
But if we blindly follow in their footsteps and commit their errors of hubris, we deserve our defeat.
...Novell/Suse on Intel and AMD powered boxen is making major headway as well. On the other hand there is also plenty of MCSE/MCSA people on their way into management and not just Linux fans. There will be a continuing migration from the old UNIX brands like Sun for example to Linux as Linux matures but I would not expect any migration from Windows to Linux to become an uncontrollable Exodus.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Web Hosting companies and SaaS businesses use Linux because they need lots of inexpensive servers. These companies can reduce their costs and increase profits by deploying linux on all their servers for free. This also means they don't have to track licenses and worry about audits from Microsoft in the future. Unless Microsoft either gives away their software, or provides so much extra functionality that it outweighs the cost of the OS, I don't see how they are going to gain in this area.
That big target that MS needs to hit is the manageability target. We need to be able to install a light OS, pre-configured for our environments, in a fraction of the time it takes today, and it needs to be centrally monitorable and manageable without having to purchase a very expensive commercial package to do so. The entire OS has to be scriptable from the commandline. In server environments, commandline is king.
Has anyone stopped to consider that what hinders linux migration the most is the linux community itself and gaming industry?
Linux community is often misorganized; programs and information is hard to find. Slashdots sister site, freshmeat, is hard to use. There is to many distributions available. The choices of distributions and programs are boundless to the point where it confuses the consumer. Confuse the consumer and it will run the other direction.
Moving right along, it is also gaming industry that hinders Linux growth. The popular games like The Sims, Battlefield, Total Wars, Doom, and Madden 2k6 are not developed on Linux. WINE and Emulation software not the answer. It is only a temporary fix to the larger problem. Linux needs the game publishers and developers behind it.
Linux community should stop bashing Windows or OSX and focus on it's own areas of concern.
\
Microsoft and Ballmer just don't get clustering at all and I feel sorry for the 25% that got sucked in by M$ BS. Ballmer is bringing spoons to a steak party.
An OS that is graphical wastes resources in a clustered environment. It wastes CPU in managing it; it wastes electricity in powering it and adds to the total BTU output that raises A/C costs. Forget about the complexities added in that M$ solutions are new, poorly tested and of beta quality when compared to any UNIX/POSIX type OS. None of the aforementioned adds value to the compute task and often detracts from it. Most can be critical project problems if not managed and planned for.
One also has to look at the software acquisition economics. Say you have a 1024 node cluster. 1000 * 1024 for server licenses is $1M $$. FC4 is out and even if you used commercial Linux you would never pay $1M for this quantity of licenses unless they tossed in the installation and configured the cluster for you.
There are also other issues such as kernel/network performance and tuning but I will skip this.
My dream cluster would be few thousand Linux AMD 64 dual core, dual CPU systems with 16GB of ram in a 2 or 4 U package with front loading drives and can be managed without a VGA... hm... this OS/hardware exists without Microsoft!
Like, y'know, http://www.theosfiles.com/os_linux/ospg_Linux_stro m.htm ?
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
A central open source project can become unimportant very quickly if they start making the wrong decisions. Look at xFree86 - x.org forked their codebase and the distros followed. The same would happen with Gnome and Mozilla if they went the wrong way... though Gnome users are quite clearly insane to start with. ;) (KDE user)
Doug - a genuine Cluster Monkey
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
Increasingly Microsoft are becoming "just another vendor" and they seem to be ill-placed to adapt to this kind of change in the market. Their recent bemusement at the MA OpenDocument decision is a good case in point. Lecturing your customers on why they're wrong, and maybe a bit stupid, isn't something most companies would try to do.
So now they want to be a Unix vendor? To push themselves into a market packed with Linux solutions and proprietary companies that survived the 80s Unix battles. The ones that allowed Windows NT to get a foothold in server rooms in the first place? Hmmmm. Yeah, that makes sense.
They're probably going through the same pain as many of the other big companies who've seen technologies they thought they owned and dominated by right become commodities.
I'm beginning to wonder if they can find a way to compete now. Without the sort of dirty tricks that everyone is becoming wise to that is.
Ame
Microsoft might use synergy!
but someone might find it useful.
There's a transcript of the session here.
And as mentioned in the article:
A copy of the entire 45 minute interview can be downloaded (it's 21 MB) by clicking here.
The question in the article can be found 27 minutes and 13 seconds into the audio file.
And interestingly enough Ballmer was asked the following (at: 2:37)
"I have a question for Mr. Ballmer. If you attempt to thwart Google with your acquisition of the ???????*. How many chairs will Business Week report you as thrown?"
He responded with:
"I've never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life."
* I couldn't hear what was said, if anybody knows reply to this post.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
...Is this memorable quote from TFA:
;-)
"...Ballmer responded to a question about how Microsoft plans to deal with the remaining 75 percent by saying "We are not winning more than we're losing."
Eeeshhh... Balmy needs to go to work writing for the Firesign Theater. Grammatical talent like that doesn't just (g)roe on trees.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
It's not the bubbly that is appealing, it's the ease of use. WHy would I want to use a shell to configure a server?
If you have to ask yourself that question then you don't have a lot of experience administering servers--or have only been tasked with administering a very small number of servers.
GUIs make desktop computers easier to use. You don't want to mess around typing arcane commands to write a letter to your mum or balance a chequebook or play a game (hmm..brings back memories of the 1980s and typing LOAD"MYPGM",8,1:RUN" to use the computers at school). The needs addressed on a desktop are quite a bit different than those addressed by servers, and 90% of desktop users are not IT professionals--and (hopefully) all sysadmins are capable professionals.
If you had to administer a large-ish system consisting of many servers the you'd realise how much of a hindrance a GUI can be on a server--and a poorly architected system such as Windows as it exists today makes the situation worse.
* Firstly, using hardware resources to drive a rich GUI on servers that quite often are not even equipped with monitors seems a bit wasteful and pointless to me.
* Second, GUI-based interfaces are just not scalable--they're engineered to operate on PERSONAL computers. Remote access to GUI-based servers is orders of magnitude more complex than command-line style systems--I'd take SSH over Terminal Services any day.
* Also, once you know the command line doing shell scripts to automate administration tasks is easier, faster and more powerful--I don't know of a single GUI "wizard" that is faster or more powerful than VI and a bunch of text files...which brings me to another issue: when a GUI is the only option to configure your systems then you have to rely on a special application to get your job done. If that application breaks or is otherwise unavailable you are screwed. If for some reason I cannot use GConf on my Linux box I can revert to any text editor, whereas if I cannot use REGEDIT on Windows I have no other option (editing the BINARY registry data by hand is not a workable solution so some application to interpret it is required).
To me, clinging to shells and texteditors, sometimes looks like an attempt to keep things mystical/magical/voodoo like just to make sure you get payed a smart buck to operate these servers.
That stems from a lack of understanding. Most casual Windows users do not understand Regedit or any other system-admin tools even though they are completely graphical. To me (someone with a background in electronics desgin), pointing and clicking in some special sequence looks even more like "voodoo" than the command-line as it is so divorced from the underlying system that I can't be sure exactly what the computer is doing behind the scenes. People like me are sometimes uncomfortable when stuff like that is obscured.
Unix types are like me--they are so accustomed to knowing what happens "under the hood" that they lose confidence in a system when the hood is welded shut and they have no way of confirming everything is right. That is the biggest challenge Windows has in winning converts from UNIX. It's like Microsoft is going to China and telling everyone they have to learn English, and when some of them compalin they are toald by Microsoft advocates that English is much easier than Chinese and you should support such "progress". What about "services for UNIX" you say? Well, that is like a "mostly" complete Chinese-to-English dictionary. Not only does it add to the cost of conversion--it is mostly intended to engourage migration away from the "old ways".
Why should the administration of servers and adatabases remain behind in an evolving software world?
Why should administrators have to contend with a one-size-fits-all user interface that serves every purpose at least marginally but serves no purpose particularly well? You are assuming a command-line is "less-evolved" but many would beg to differ. Some people