Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Segments Linux "Personas"
RJ2770 writes "Microsoft has started a project for their partners to help identify the personas of different Linux users in an attempt to sway them toward Microsoft products. In addition to the web site there is a podcast on the market research behind the project, again directed at Microsoft's selling partners."
Microsoft is taking you seriously now - you better start doing the same thing.
I see that Microsoft is taking good, strong steps to prevent those evil Linux users from viewing this secret data!
☠
It's part of a philosophy called "know thine enemy." Generally good practice, whether in business or at war.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
MS should really start by figuring out what is useful for their users, then for Mac/Linux/BSD/something else users want.
I personally wonder at what point "innovation" was defined as get in the way of the two functions all ones users need. Just make an OS which is fast/efficient and doesn't throw up cryptic error messages regularly and I will be reasonably happy with whatever else goes on.
...I find http://www.stacymunn.com/resume/index.htm.
Either she made this for Microsoft, or there are more Stacy Munns at that company than I would usually expect.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Do a WHOIS on the domain... not sure how comfortable I am pasting it here.
Let's just say... it just oozes professionalism. And seems to have nothing to do with Microsoft
Linux users are, among other things:
* People who like knowing what their computer is up to (kind of like motorheads for the information age);
* People who don't like M$ deciding how their computers will work;
* People who don't want to spend money when a more reliable solution exists for Free;
* People who believe that competition is a Good Thing (tm);
* People who resent being called pirates (at least without being able to make others walk the plank!)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
What is a Microsoft sales troll supposed to do about the missing entries:
:) Come on, come try and sell me some Windows Server 2003 licenses.
FSF True believer: If it ain't Free it isn't an option.
Disgusted Ex Microsoft customer: Experienced Microsoft products since they were in ROM chips and hasn't found one yet that wasn't a roach motel. Doesn't plan on wasting money on more of the crap until they manage to get several in a row right... i.e. never.
Political MS hater: Hates evil corporations in general, believes Microsoft more evil than Exxon-Mobil, AT&T, IBM or the MPAA. Believes Microsoft is an unrepentant monopolist hellbent on enslaving the world.
Then there is me, a little bit of all three.
Democrat delenda est
Here's my demographic.
I'm a computer user who likes my machines to be as crash-free as possible. Failing that, I'd like access to the source code so I can fix whatever problems I perceive, rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
Ok - that's my "Linux Persona". Now let's see you cater to me.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
For me it's more basic than that. I recently got a job and was plunged back into the world of Windows servers, and am now dealing with licensing issues whose only solution will be dropping money into Microsoft's pocket. I'm gonna be blunt, a lot of IT types like Linux because we don't have to worry about it. Add another user, workstation, server, whatever, and I don't have to plop down cash, or worse, have to go to my manager hat in hand and beg for more gruel to shove down Microsoft's mouth.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is this a joke or is microsoft really that desperate???
Damn, this entire campaign sounds like one fucking sad attempt at trolling.
Really? Because for years, I've been seeing posts and articles on slashdot that talk in terms of winning people over from MS to Linux. Unless that continually played tune is also trolling, then I don't think that MS trying to understand the different stripes of people that are (or might consider) using Linux is anything other than basic market research. Not all of the Ubuntu crowd may consider themselves to be "winning" someone away from Mandriva, but I'm sure that language gets used sometimes. Just like people in the Firefox camp often talk about winning a larger share of browser users away from MS.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Not sure if "enemy" is the right word to describe a (hopefully) potential customer.
This site is a sales tool to help sales folks penetrate into different environments where Linux has some level of establishment. Based on a set of simplistic characteristics (how ingrained is Linux? how risk adverse is the customer? are they frothing-at-the-mouth OSS-kool-aid punch drunks?), the tool gives generalizations as to the type, size and length of each opportunity across 5 broad categories.
This type of tool is great for sales folks trying to get their heads around something they don't really understand. Right off certain approaches with broad strokes, and push the blue kool-aid instead.
Where a lot of this falls down is the reliance of already-proven sketchy evidence (Get The Facts, TCO studies, etc...), and some overly simplistic anecdotal evidence ("Customers are already switching from Apache/Linux to IIS6/Windows" ; "Customers are finding that development with ASP.NET is quicker and easier" ; ...). The reason that the sales cycle is longer for some of the types is that either they are rabid OSS drones (medium-length cycle; note to sales folks - do a political end-run around the geek) or they actually have successful experience with the alternative platforms (longest cycle; note to sales folks - it is going to be a hard fight and a lot of the "sales tools" relied on for other profiles likely will fail here).
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
To whome it may concern: Thank you for your presentation and dedication to helping me 'fight' Linux! I can honestly say that you have convinced me, now more than ever, to continue to push Linux whenever and wherever available, both in my personal and professional life. Any company I work for, any organization I am involved with, and anyone I assist with computers. I will tell them of my experiences with Windows, the many problems it's had as well as my experience with Linux and its ability to out perform Windows with ease. I am not sure what else to say other than to tell you that I find this dedication to 'fighting' Linux to be simply horrific. It's downright insane to continue to try and smear Linux like you do. The sad thing is, I'd probably be much more of a Windows fan and supporter if only you worked with everyone else rather than try to get rid of them in any way possible to the point that it becomes your obsession. Again, thank you for your help to convince me to KEEP USING LINUX!
*(which would have made a fun episode of ST:TOS)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I'm the "Tired of all the DRM in Windows so I'm moving to Linux" persona. I suspect that my type is growing with each new piece of DRM pushed into Windows.
I guess so. However, one chief requirement of our application is "no BSOD" to prevent the telescope antenna crashing into the platform, so Windows was ruled out in about 12 nanoseconds.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If MS made an OS that was fast, efficient, stable, and supported the hardware most folks desired, there would be no reason for customers to buy the next OS when it came out. So, to support their business model, each OS has to be slightly behind for its time, either by speed, stability, or hardware support, so consumers have a reason to buy the next OS (or PC with the new OS) when it comes out.
Or I could have this all wrong, and be corrected below.
Try actually reading the website - it's supposed to be helping MS people to identify and understand Linux people. That list is merely a list of characteristics of that type of Linux user, not a list of 'problems with Linux' or 'reasons to use MS.'
In fact I think the open source movement should be waaaay more worried about this type of thing than the usual rantings from Redmond - this has the hallmarks of a well researched strategy, with good identification of the reasons people might be using Linux. That will allow much more carefully planned attacks on Linux market share.
Read Pynchon.
Here are my stats:
* I am a former Microserf (I was a fool to leave thinking dot bombs would pay off bigger but that is water under the bridge)
* I've played with Linux since it was first posted to Usenet, before I worked for M$. I loved having a Unix on my home PC but for day to day stuff preferred Windows
* When I worked at M$ Linux was my primary OS at home. Even so I was a Microsoft fan, because even with BSOD issues, Windows worked out of the box
* Part of the attraction to Microsoft was their viral marketing. They intentionally made earlier versions of Windows easy to copy and share to increase popularity. This was intentional.
* I began to hate Microsoft when they turned on average customers and took away ownership rights. Right of first sale DOES apply to over-the-shelf software but they have successfully rewritten the rules, for all intents and purposes
* I hate how restricted Windows has become. It used to be trivial to run an alternative desktop, all the way through WinMe it was a System.ini setting, and in NT4 and Win2K it was a registry entry. Now, to do something as trivial as change the theme, one must buy a Microsoft-approved "signed" theme, or must violate the EULA (and break the DMCA in M$'s eyes, although interoperability clause allows for it) by reverse engineering or patching the theme loader to allow unsigned themes.
My dream OS would be the Windows kernel to allow for 100% hardware support, but BSD userland tools and the KDE desktop, enhanced by Beryl.
So pray tell, Microsoft, how do you win users like me back as customers? Are you going to open up your OS, drop the DRM and actually make it as usable and extensible as Linux? Or, are you going to continue to tighten your fist, losing more and more previously-loyal customers in the process?
In summary: Fuck you Microsoft.
2. Your Parents - they don't really know much about computers and will use whatever the computer they bought came with.
3. Market Follower - M$ bitches.
4. The Windows Enthusiast - these people are extremely rare. They actively believe that M$ products are superior to anything else out there and believe that if something is free, there must be something wrong with it.
5. Scientists, Engineers, Professionals - use Windows due to vital software existing only on that platform.
The more they attack linux and open source the more make it legitimate in the eyes of the business users. They will never win that war.
I suppose they tried ignoring it and it didn't go away so now there are no other options but still.
evil is as evil does
I know a few entrepreneurial internet startup types. These are the guys who are creating the new economy, right now. Building innovative new services, mostly using the web. This area is the future, everyone knows it, and I fully expect some of my friends to be multi-multi-millionaires in the years to come.
.. and that's why I don't worry about Microsoft anymore.
Now if I were to suggest to these people - any of them, in fact - that they deploy on Windows, they would roll around on the floor laughing for a few minutes, before permanently writing me off as a complete idiot.
This is Microsoft's problem. They can fool the old guard for a while longer perhaps; no-one wants to do any large scale Exchange migrations anytime soon - not anyone who's ever tried before, anyway. But the new guard, all the innovation online, doesn't belong to them and moves further away every day. All the exciting new developments on the web are OSS and without even a single exception no-one I know would consider using anything else. Even those who still program on Windows wouldn't use it server-side.
So this marketing effort might pay off a few percentage points here and there as MS squeezes Joe Company's backroom for a few more Server 2003 licenses but the really big ship has already sailed, a long time ago. Can you name even a single new online service you're excited about that uses Windows? Even one? Thought not.
So hell, let them squeeze the old guard for all they're worth. The new platform, the web and the internet itself, has slipped through MS's fingers
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
;-)
w se_thread/thread/bec275e6460080f8/ffccd9666ac67f5d ?q=kenny+linux+&lnk=ol&
:)
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/bro
Me? Proud user of Linux as my primary desktop since kernel version ~0.91 and big fan of lisp since even before then, but do not assume that seeing a picture of a boot-up sequence, even from the first-class seat is necessarily a good thing!
It's not so much the cost of the licenses, but the amount of time required to keep license for all the MS products up to date is just not something workable. On top of that, windows servers are pretty complicated and time consuming to administer (reboots/downtime off hours at least once a month due to lack of shared library versioning and inode support, editing registry entries, etc), so it's not like you're saving money in the long run.
Where a lot of this falls down is the reliance of already-proven sketchy evidence (Get The Facts, TCO studies, etc...), and some overly simplistic anecdotal evidence ("Customers are already switching from Apache/Linux to IIS6/Windows" ; "Customers are finding that development with ASP.NET is quicker and easier" ; ...).
I looked at all the personas and found every one of them fell in the range of 25-28 servers with the exception of the Unix one at 31 servers. Looks like a limited market segment survey to me. The segmemt missing is the SOHO or Home Office where computing is dependant on applications such as Quicken and an Office product and web browser. TCO is a big deciding factor. Instead of upgrading from MS office 97 and such, we built a white box computer and put Ubuntu on it. As a bonus, for our graphics arts we use the Gimp instead of Photoshop. We don't need another copy of AV software. The software savings has paid for the hardware. To share files, we picked up a NAS using Linux. It uses an encrypted Reiser filesystem and we have put all our printers on stand alone prinservers. The NAS and Printservers are all Linux. Other than some drastic price changes, there is little MS can do to get us to be an all MS office. We can't justify the cost. One copy of MS office is expensive. 4 copies (main office, kids PC, & 2 laptops is a show stopper. Linux does the job with either ABI Word or Open Office and doesn't break the budget. It also works with newer MS office files sent to us. Office 97 doesn't display them properly if at all.
When the adoption rate reaches critical mass where I can pick up a copy of Turbo Tax for Linux and Quicken will be the day MS stock has a bad day. There isn't many markets with more price concious buyers than the SOHO market.
The truth shall set you free!
totally agree. I do this kind of work (user/personael modelling) for a living, and it's damned powerful if put to good use. You're spot-on, that's what this tool is for, to solidify arguments against linux, primarily at the managerial level. It allows for targetting and "customer insight" that gets behind the boring ol' arguments. And as much as I hate MS and am a linux guy, they're putting good tools in the hands of the organization. Not trolling, but OSs could learn alot from this.
I do not quite understand Microsoft's strategy here, for many reasons, which I'll try to enumerate logically. I am not trying to troll. I am trying to be objective, and when I do criticize Microsoft I do so purely academically, so please do not turn this into a flame war.
Further, the main buyers and users in this segment are not average users who need to use computers for nothing more than word processing, email, and web. They are power users who are well aware of the strengths and limitations provided by the different systems. They know first hand the problems of using Microsoft server solutions.
If they really want to capture this smaller market (again, I am not sure why they would except for the pursuit of total monopoly), it seems that they need more than a new sell technique. Instead, they should develop their new programs and services to inter-operate with existing standards and systems. As they develop server solutions for power users, they'll win over the server crowd with their commitment to excellent products, not some new half-hearted add campaign, which many (such as the
I know I do not have all the answers, but I think that Microsoft is getting everything wrong here. It seems that capturing the server market has a very small return when compared to the desktop market. Additionally, the cost of "doing it right" with inter-operability-centered design of new products while maintaining backwards compatibility would greatly reduce margin (e.g. look what happened with all the grand ideas of Vista). Nevertheless, if Microsoft is determined to win this market, they need to do so with more steps of good faith and less aggressive talk about intellectual property (happy, willing customers are
Many, if not most, Linux systems are embedded
And what of those who use Linux, daily, in the form of Google, Amazon, et al? How does one (MS in this case) sway users away from these?
Sounds like a big job.
4. The Windows Enthusiast - these people are extremely rare. They actively believe that M$ products are superior to anything else out there and believe that if something is free, there must be something wrong with it.
Extremely rare? Have you ever ventured outside slashdot? They are extremely common!
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mohandas Ghandi
This article is a sign we're deep in the fighting stage now.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Whoops, silly middle mouse button...
>We'll give you the fix in "a future release".
I think you've got this wrong, shouldn't it be, "We'll SELL you the fix in "a future release"."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Let's see...
.NET, ASP.NET (IIS6, Apache+mod_mono), Visual Studio 2005 (2003 is fine, 2005 is great), SQL Server 2005 (2000 is good also) and things which comes with those.
As a developer, who makes software for living and for fun: C#,
As normal user: MSN Live Messenger, Windows Media Player 11 (great UI)
Non-Microsoft products, which I really like: mIRC, Guitar Pro 5, some games
And oh yeah, I use these every day on Windows XP and they all work great for me.
You don't know what you don't know.
Their mice and keyboards aren't bad.
Quoted for truth! Well, actually I think Windows 2000 was a similar "sweet spot".
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
I've had a similar experience. I'm setting up a trial installation of MS Project Server 2007 and the process is bizarre! It requires 4 different licenses just to get up and running: 2 Windows 2003 Server licenses, 1 SQL Server 2005 license, and 1 MS Project Server 2007 license. Each user that wants to connect to Project Server needs a licensed copy of MS Project 2007 Professional @ $1000 each. The setup of all these servers is convoluted, poorly documented and each requires a significant level of tweaking to get reasonable performance.
It's been a long time since I've had to deal with Microsoft's products and I've forgotten what a mess it is. It's so bad that it makes setting up and configuring Oracle's stuff seem simple.