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Microsoft Trying To Woo Businesses To Windows 8
jfruh writes "Windows 8 is the most radical rewrite of Microsoft's operating system in decades — and most of the changes are aimed at consumers and new tablet form-factors. Meanwhile, corporate IT is deeply suspicious. Over at Microsoft TechEd Europe, the company is gamely trying to explain to enterprises why they should switch, with easy-to-write enterprise apps and the ability to stream server-side x86 apps to Windows RT. Not everyone is convinced."
All of those things are at features or at least possible to do in windows 7 currently, so why upgrade? I would like to see REAL reasons! New file system? Better security model? Whatever. Otherwise its completely pointless. Regarding the simple UI model, well obviously that's a model of perspective. It wouldn't be difficult to develop an app that would look exactly the same on any existing system. In my opinion, its the Metro UI not the OS itself that is going to prevent enterprises from adopting w8. Sure it makes sense with a touch screen but the fact of the matter is, it is not efficient with a mouse and keyboard, even the desktop view is crippled. Like the author said, give the user the choice, and stop trying to force this metro UI garbage down every bodies throat. UI design is NOT a once size fits all endeavor!
Who, or what 'Enterprise environment', would start over and rewrite their entire app catalog, in house or commercial, just for Windows 8 with it's 'radical rewrite'? Isn't this the next 'WindowsME'???
Silverlight? Going the way of the dodo. .Net? Going the way of the dodo.
What the hell is Microsoft talking about? Or more interestingly, what are they smoking at Redmond?
Moving to server-side heavy lifting for real-time Windows in 'Enterprise' environments.... to do what, read and reply to all my emails? Feed me inventory reports on how many widgets just shipped, to my Windows tablet in fancy non-webbased interface?
Sorry. Not seeing the trees here. Can someone point me to the forest?!?
Maybe MS should try the Apple approach of refusing to support any computer slower than a certain clock speed, and no updates for an OS older than ~3 years. That would mean XP would never have been given a free Service Pack 2 or 3, or security updates.
BTW will Win8 run on 512MB like Seven can
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Well, I would add "meant to kill off XP And Linux".
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'm a IT Manager. I still have XP in my fleet because it still does everything we need it to do. MS got it right with XP, it has enough features to be useful, but not too much fluff to be painful. I still rate XP as the best desktop OS in existence (features, UI, compatibility, support). Vista and 7 just made corporate SOEs harder and more complex to implement. The Win8 UI looks great for tablets and phones, but doesn't look likely lend itself to productivity. In a corporate environment you generally have only a handful of apps which you use every day, some of which are custom written, and mostly you have multiple windows open side by side that you work with. I am yet to see this simple function demonstrated in Win8 which has me a little concerned.
1) I just spent two years testing Windows 7 deployment in our environment, learning the different behaviors of the OS, getting all the group policies & registry settings set exactly the way I want them, and familiarizing myself with the environment enough so that I can see in my head the system and its menus so that I can navigate myself and others through the system w/o hiccups. I don't make that kind of investment in my time to a new OS w/o wanting to wait at least three years before having to make a new change to our systems.
2) Windows is doing a near-complete overhaul to their OS. Last time this happened, we got Vista. Enough said.
3) Even when Windows 7 came about, I still waited a year before deploying it in our environment. SP1's for Windows OS's have had a good track record thus far.
... Or doesn't Metro make you think that it's a 2012 version of Packard Bell's Navigator for Win 3.x?
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There are a lot of solutions for Linux, including Secure-Boot compatible ones:
- Like Canonical's attempt to pay to have a boot loader get signed with the same key as what is used to boot Windows, so any mobo able to secure boot Windows should be able to secure boot such a bootloader too, and from that point onward boot any kernel (ubuntu official, custom or whatever) or even boot manager that the user would like to.
- And canonical's hope to also have its own keys accepted into as many motherboard as possible thus enabling them to start a more open-source firendly key infrastructure. (I.e.: lots of enthousiat mobo being also able to boot canonical signed code. Boot loader, straight kernels, whatever).
They are a lot less options for secure-booting Windows XP:
- Microsoft is NOT going to sign Windows' boot loader or whatever. I mean XP isn't even designed to boot on UEFI anyway ! And they have all the reasons to restrict secure boot to Windows 8 only.
- The only secure-boot compatible alternative would be to use a mobo with caninocal keys and either get SeaBIOS (a bios implementation to boot BIOS based OSes like Windows) signed, or use a signed bootloader and convert the SeaBIOS as a possible boot target for that. That's a lot of custom hacking. Enterprise IT department aren't going to like it.
Or disable secure-booting and either activate legacy BOOTing (if supported) or boot into a BIOS compatibility layer (like SeaBIOS):
- but you don't know for how long a legacy BIOS booting will be available (currently major recent OS from Microsoft support EFI booting, as do linux)
although currently non-secure-boot is possible and mandated for x86 hardware (but not supported by XP).
So in short:
There are way to get Linux working - even all the while keeping secureboot enabled.
Microsoft won't be helping for ways to get XP booting.
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I am the IT manager at the company I work for, and am the one responsible for the server infrastructure and ~150 client computers
The only thing keeping us on Windows at work is due to our highly specialized and highly expensive ERP system, which runs most all aspects of the business.
If this system had an update released tomorrow that gave it Linux support, or even Mac support, I would ditch Windows like the bad habit it is faster than you could double-click.
The ERP company literally just released an update to allow the client to run on Windows 7 and not fall on its face on a 64 bit OS. 6 months ago now.
I began our XP to 7 migration plan a while before that, but with this rather critical dependency those plans have been on hold until January.
After putting in all the capital expenditure and purchase order requests to update our 5-6 year old Win2003 servers, I only last month got approval.
I'm not expecting to get the hardware for another 2-3 weeks. I'm expecting the ERP upgrade to take longer to fully test than I am the Windows 7 upgrade.
After all of this, I am not about to even listen to, let alone consider, how "easy" it is for enterprise software to be written for Win 8. That does not help with our million and a quarter dollar investment in existing software. I'm not about to replace last years 23" wide screen LCDs with new touch screens, especially so when our primary use is data entry. And I'm most certainly not looking forward to tossing out a decade of knowledge and learning experiences for Windows 8.
On that last point, while I fully expect to be playing around with and learning Windows 8 on my own, one thing that needs firmly kept in mind is that the company I work for does electronics manufacturing. Nearly no one is or has interest in the technicals of computers. They just prefer computers over pen paper and calculators. We even have a whole department of 30 people, of which only TWO own computers at home. (Yes this is as boggling to me as it no doubt is to you, especially in this day and age!)
These are not people who use computers purely for the sake of using computers, like we are. To them they are just tools to get work done easier and quicker.
Anything that distracts from that simple and only goal is not a benefit to us, and Win 8 falls firmly in that category.
I am not in any way looking forward to the re-training Windows 8 would require ON TOP OF the training for the new ERP update, which we already have to do.
Point being, Windows 8 is nothing but a bunch of time and money that does not benefit me or our company in any additional way than XP has and 7 will for some time to come.
Even if it was free software, my time would be better spent elsewhere, that would more than likely end up saving us time and/or money, if not actively making us money.
Windows 8 doesn't bring anything to the table we want. While not all businesses are the same, I think Microsoft is about to be surprised by how many are similar in this regard.
Of course I was. We got rid of our Win2K and NT4 machines in time, except for one or two that run scientific instruments; these are off the Internet. Having a site license for Windows upgrades is pretty damn nifty.
You want obsolete? I inherited an area with two computers that were used solely to automatically SSH into an intranet administrative server and enter data. Guess what operating system they were running in 2005.
It was MS-DOS, and they weren't replaced until summer 2006. Given the sheer obsolescence and limitations of the operating system, I would actually be fine with them being in service for that one limited purpose today. DOS was so simple that it was easy to delete any non-needed executable, so you could be pretty sure there wasn't anything in there besides IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM, the TCP/IP stack & 3Com driver, and the SSH2 program itself.
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The biggest reason Windows 8 won't be another Vista is because Microsoft is now legacying Win32. The mandatory start screen just drives that home. If you could turn back on the start menu, it wouldn't be bad, but MS really wants everyone to know the "desktop" is dead.
Developers may well conclude that if they're rewriting for a new API, they might as well pick iOS or Android as that's what people already have & enjoy using.
Windows 8 = beginning of the end of the Wintel ecosystem
Well, I've seen ITs get very radical, while being simultaneously conservative. Ie, new IT VP comes in, old experienced staff gets canned, new inexperienced people come in. Then new procedures start to roll out, everyone must start putting enterprise apps everywhere, working server apps are replaced with broken stuff from Microsoft (sharepoint), etc. So it's radical because everything's being shaken up and turned upside down, but very conservative because they're doing exactly what every other IT house on the planet is doing (ie, following the Borg Directive from Redmond).
At the office the MS rep was asking the CEO and CTO when we were going to move to Windows 8, The rep was told, AS soon as we get an unlimited Site license for Server Enterprise, SQL enterprise, Exchange Enterprise, Office, and Windows 8 super ultimate premium professional edition for free from you.
Until then we are still on target for switching away from Microsoft as a platform on servers and desktops.
The MS rep was visibly shaken, We have successfully deployed libre office everywhere to kick out office. WE are also starting to switch sales people over to Chrome books and google docs.
MSFT in the back office and desktop is so 2012, the future is microsoft free.
The odd thing to me is that they just can't compromise and allow for a Start Menu on the desktop. It isn't like this is a new product, they have a significant existing user base. Just have an option. Maybe right click the taskbar and the properties dialog has a "Show Start Menu" option. That alone would be huge.
The funny thing I think is that one of the reasons Windows Mobile 6.x sucked was the insistence on the Start Menu paradigm. But now to have a more mobile friendly interface they kill the start menu on PC's.
that every business in the entire world would have enough sense to know that the corporate environment is not a place to be using the bleeding edge of software versions, no matter how much wooing they get.
Want to know what is weird?
What if you could go back in time 10 years and show your past self that post? Corporations had deployment plans for XP and Windows 95 when it was still in beta in the good old days. It was the norm to recycle everyone's PC every 3 years and 5 if you are very very cheap and stingy etc. Never this we will keep this browser and OS for 10 years while everyone else updates theirs every 6 weeks etc.
I almost have to ask wtf happened? The great recession and Vista changed the world. IN all seriousness no one should be running XP anymore. If you told me back in 2001 that we would still be running XP for the majority of business computers I would have looked at you funny and laughed.
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I have a hard enough time telling people how to open control panel or the printers section in windows using keyboard shortcuts and CPL commands, I can't imagine having them use this completely useless navigation system.
I really don't understand why MS always tries to change what we know. Why can't they stop moving things around and decide on a file structure and basic command structure that NEVER changes?
But... they do. You can replace the shell (by default explorer.exe) with whatever shell you want via a simple registry change - there are several third-party shells out there. Of course they aren't as popular as Explorer, but then again I feel the default Windows shell is extremely flexible and has far fewer issues with it compared to most Linux DEs such that most people don't feel the the need to have to change shells in the first place. Every single DE I've tried in Linux has some issue that isn't present in another DE, even though that alternative DE has issues not present in the first. Windows 7 seems to have made enough sensible decisions and allow enough flexibility as part of its shipped shell so that this isn't an issue.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
I'm not sure why this is modded funny. As an independent dev, I talked with a couple companies this week that want to start porting apps they have for iOS and Android to Win8/WP8. If Win8 gets a little traction there's going to be a bunch of work in the future, hopefully that happens.
They can't do it, their EOL deadlines are part of the contracts they sign with major corps, not to mention it would cause businesses to turn away from using MSFT Windows if they couldn't figure in the EOL into projections. I know you're trying to be funny but that is actually one of the things I've always liked about windows, in that while they can always extend they have NEVER shortened it.
As for the other poster that likes Win 8? I'd like it too...on a smartphone or a tablet but NOT on a desktop. think I'm joking? Look up any of the talks Sinofsky has given on Win 8 and count how many times the man says "touchscreen". last one I saw I quit counting at 30. Now what is wrong with that? well touchscreen desktops and laptops are less than 4% of the X86 market and when you remove non user applications such as kiosks and POS you are looking at less than 2% of the market.
So here you have the guy in charge of Windows 8, one of MSFT's two cash cows, and he has based his entire premise on forcing a UI that is designed for touch onto a market where less than 2% of the units sold HAVE TOUCH. Think about that for a minute...do you HONESTLY think MSFT has THAT kind of clout anymore? That they can force the entire industry to switch, when a 17 inch touchscreen costs $300 and a 27 inch non touch costs $189?
Without touch Win 8 sucks, and the consumer is gonna be faced with units that are smaller or more expensive WITH touch or larger or less expensive WITHOUT, no where do YOU think they'll go?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you have a touch-based UI, it is easy to make that work with a mouse. The opposite it not true; my fingers are too big for tiny icons. I'm glad Microsoft is finally pushing developers to consider that constraint.
Check out Sinofsky's explanations of how Microsoft specifically keep the mouse in mind when designing Windows 8, and the studies and theory supporting the notion that it is better for mouse input than previous versions: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx.
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