Microsoft Is 'Demoting' Windows for the Cloud, Says CNN (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Microsoft is giving Windows a demotion, and leaning into the cloud. CEO Satya Nadella told employees on Thursday that Terry Myerson, leader of the Windows and Devices Group, is leaving the company. "Microsoft has been my work, my team, and my purpose for 21 years," Myerson wrote in a LinkedIn blog post. "It is an emotional day"... The shakeup includes the formation of two new engineering teams that will prioritize Microsoft's cloud and artificial intelligence products -- a move that should make investors happy, said Brad Reback, a software analyst at Stifel. Morgan Stanley said recently that Microsoft could hit $1 trillion in market value within a year, thanks in large part to the strengths of Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing service, and the cloud-based Office 365 software suite... Amy Hood, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in January that the company's commercial cloud revenue grew 56% year-over-year. In that quarter, Windows commercial products and cloud services sales fell 4%.

Comments

Good luck

[Ol Olsoc]

It should work about as well as Adobe's creative cloud.

Re:Good luck

[ColdWetDog]

Is this a bug or a feature? Adobe has been doing pretty well, thankyouverymuch. Personally, I can't stand it and have plans to migrate off of the 'cloud' but it has been embraced by most (non Slashdot) users.

Re: Good luck

[Junta]

Grudgingly accepted is good enough for their bottom line to be happy, sadly.

Re: Good luck

[hai_Priesty]

For this quarter perhaps, until a somewhat convenient replacement come to market and customers switch by droves, since they set the bar low.

Re:Good luck

[Billly Gates]

Adobe is how NOT to move to a cloud.

I lost count how many websites were written with broken --webkit CSS extensions instead of W3C. Why?? Easy the cost to upgrade to a post 2011 version of Adobe Dreamweaver is like $75 a month!! That adds up fast.

Office 365 is like $9.99 a month per user in comparison. MS at least throws you a bone with their cloud subscription. 1 TB of cloud OneDrive storage, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, free upgrades, etc that you do not get if you buy the boxed version of Office. They offer more if you throw more money to them but it is a choice on which is more important.

I am in the minority here of favoring the cloud for business users and ditching Windows and it's horrible monopoly. If MS wants to give an OS that just works for free and you and I are free to pay more for services we don't need than what is the problem? It seems to be a consensus here that cloud == a ransomware syle lock screen asking for a credit card to use Windows.

It is not like that at all as MS would be sued and prosecuted into an oblivion and commit suicide if they were that dumb.

Re: Good luck

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Grudgingly accepted is good enough for their bottom line to be happy, sadly.

True, but the sustainability of a strategy based on grudging acceptance is always uncertain.

Of course when Adobe went to CC that was commercially good for them in the short term. They replaced intermittent revenue from customers, many of which were no longer buying every new CS update, with a more predictable subscription revenue stream. In most cases, that revenue stream was also going to work out at more money per customer even for those customers who really were updating regularly before.

However, credible alternatives for simple uses or specialist niche markets were starting to appear and steal small amounts of market share within a few years, and they are growing in number, scope and awareness. Go read any online forum visited by creative people today, and you'll find a mix of sentiment between people who view Adobe as still the industry standard/800lb gorilla and people who have made the switch to alternatives and been happy with the results. You'll find plenty of comments from those who are upset by the CC subscription pricing, and plenty of comments from people who still use CS 5/5.5/6 and refuse to upgrade. You'll find plenty of comments from people asking what has really been added in all the time since CS6 to justify the upgrade and lock-in and all the extra cost, too, but few good answers.

Adobe are very cagey about breaking down their subscriber figures, even in their official reporting. For example, consider any recent call or regulatory filing or investor literature and try to work out whether subscriber numbers in North America or Europe or Asia are trending up or down. Try to work out whether the money is coming from new customers or long-standing ones. Try to work out whether it's big institutional customers paying the bills or small agencies and freelancers. In fact, try to identify where the money and growth are coming from in the subscription revenues in any sort of detail at all. Usually the best you get is a few carefully chosen highlights.

My suspicion -- though that's all it can be, given the above-mentioned lack of hard data -- is that Adobe will continue to do OK with subscriptions for a while, but they opened the door to much more serious competition and over time that will hurt them. It's possible that this is already happening but it's being masked for now by growth outside of their traditional markets. In any case, if they don't seriously up their game and produce real extra value in CC to justify the ongoing subscriptions, sentiment could start to shift, and if the momentum in the market starts going in the wrong direction, that nice-looking stock chart could become very ugly.

And that was the end of Windows

[pablo_max]

Seriously, how freaking stupid can companies be to think that the "cloud" is the answer? I genuinely don't get it.
Do all of these companies think that everyone has fiber to the house with 1gb/s upload speed?
Do they not understand that most home connections have between 5 and 10mb upload speed and that they data caps? How the fuck should a cloud based system work under such conditions? I assume this would be a comcast wetdream. Think of the overage charges!
Now that NN is dead, they can say.... oh... we see you are using a cloud system.. yeah, you need to pay extra if you want more than 1.5mb/s.

Even here in Europe, where the internet has massively cheaper than what you pay in the states, I still have only a 400mb DL and 20mb UL. Faster isnt even available where I live.
It feels like am waiting forever to put a large file on my onedrive. I usually never use because it is so slow. If the file is like 7 or 8 GB, I would use my works wesendit account and just email myself the DL link to DL from my offsite machine. That is WAY faster than onedrive.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[Junta]

In the commercial software space, there is a great deal of pressure to migrate/establish userbase to cloud customers. Not because it is a channel to deliver capabilities otherwise impossible, but to transform your customers from transactional to recurring revenue.

In the transactional situation, you have to find some compelling motivation to drive users to conduct another transaction with you. Rpoblem is at some point you pretty much "finish" your vision (office 97 can achieve largely the same results that current office can do) and further tweaks to your product aren't enough to drive revenue. Making companies live in fear of being end of support and the treadmill of office format compatibility can carry MS far, but nothing beats making the software evaporate when the periodic payment doesn't happen.

Note that with Office 365, the use of the internet can be quite low, you install it locally and can ignore online mostly, except it checks subscrption status, but that's not much bandwidth.

They can also, frankly, take their eye off the ball with Windows. It's market situation is pretty well set. They've tried to expand it and failed utterly (Windows 8 strategy of screwing the desktop users to try to drag them into liking a phone-capable UI), they've tried to move the application publishing norm to an Apple/Google like one (which is also a failure) and tried to make Windows lock users into the store to make it more appealing (S edition, which did nothing). At the same time, even as they obviously pissed off customers (Vista, 8), their market share was steady, so it's also the case they can't lose more than they have.

So simplify their support burden as much as they can (you *will* be updated to the most recent 6-ish month release, because it's the same) and coast. Have to continue to do sustaining investment as it is their foundation for other services, but growth investment is a lost cause (can't get beyond 95% share, wouldn't be worth it if they could, and can't leverage the platform to break into more markets).

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[Billly Gates]

Seriously, how freaking stupid can companies be to think that the "cloud" is the answer? I genuinely don't get it.
Do all of these companies think that everyone has fiber to the house with 1gb/s upload speed?
Do they not understand that most home connections have between 5 and 10mb upload speed and that they data caps? How the fuck should a cloud based system work under such conditions? I assume this would be a comcast wetdream. Think of the overage charges!
Now that NN is dead, they can say.... oh... we see you are using a cloud system.. yeah, you need to pay extra if you want more than 1.5mb/s.

Even here in Europe, where the internet has massively cheaper than what you pay in the states, I still have only a 400mb DL and 20mb UL. Faster isnt even available where I live.
It feels like am waiting forever to put a large file on my onedrive. I usually never use because it is so slow. If the file is like 7 or 8 GB, I would use my works wesendit account and just email myself the DL link to DL from my offsite machine. That is WAY faster than onedrive.

First off there are several benefits.
1. Tax code gives huge incentives and returns on leasing vs buying
2. Quarterly spending/revenue ratios that the idiots at Wall Street. A bump in spending a software upgrade DEVALUES a stock brutally! The computer program flags the stock as a company dying and assumes its sales must be down?! So to pay more over time without bumps keeps the stock price higher and consistent . This is why humans not trading algorithms should value stocks. So the company spends more to look like it's saving money each quarter.
3. They can lay off and fire alot of their IT infrastructure team to cut costs. Exchange and SharePoint admins? Nope MS takes care of this etc.
4. It gives smaller companies access to Exchange Online and Sharepoint Online which previously only the big boys with servers and an IT could set up and manage
5. The cloud versions of Office also have LOTs of features such as Dynamics, Planner, Flow, MS Teams, PBX support, mobile device management
6. The customer is a lumber, marketing, grocer, hospital, or whatever company ... not an I.T. company. Outsourcing gives a comparative advantage in that MS can run their IT better than they can and they can focus on whichever products or services they use as that is their specialty.
7. It is cheaper for companies that are not bigger to use the add ons for Office 365 or Amazon than to pay project manager and consultant and then support staff. Especially if they are clueless in managing I.T. ... see #6

I am not saying it is better in every scenario. But for a business these 7 things make sense. For Microsoft it makes sense for revenue as people do not upgrade computers every 3 to 5 years anymore and want latest software. Windows XP scared them and was alive for waaay to long. 1998 is over.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[MpVpRb]

>Seriously, how freaking stupid can companies be to think that the "cloud" is the answer? I genuinely don't get it.

The push to the "cloud" is all about companies taking control away from users

Users don't want it or need it. It's being driven purely by companies' desire to gain more control and make more money

This is not a good thing for users

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[MpVpRb]

>but to transform your customers from transactional to recurring revenue.

And they don't seem to care that this is bad for customers and that customers hate them for doing it

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[thegarbz]

Seriously, how freaking stupid can companies be to think that the "cloud" is the answer?

You haven't read a Microsoft annual report have you? Or see Microsoft's shareprice since they started down the cloud path right? Or looked at where their enterprise services profits come from.

How stupid can they be? Stupid enough to be getting very frigging rich. I wish I were that stupid.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[thegarbz]

It feels like am waiting forever to put a large file on my onedrive.

If you're waiting for your files to move to the cloud then you are doing it wrong. These things are background services for a reason.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[Junta]

To be hated, yet still take their money.

As a market and a society, we have allowed them a monopoly, and let it fester. Now, they don't need to even vaguely care about customer sentiment, and instead focus on how to make that relationship as exploitative as possible.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[jon3k]

Seriously, how freaking stupid can companies be to think that the "cloud" is the answer? I genuinely don't get it.

Pretty easy.

Even here in Europe, where the internet has massively cheaper than what you pay in the states, I still have only a 400mb DL and 20mb UL. Faster isnt even available where I live.

1Gb bidirectional here. We have 3 gigabit options in Nashville (Google, AT&T and Comcast) and I pay $70 a month.

Re: And that was the end of Windows

[Junta]

I think that's pretty much a certainty on the business side. Already it's almost certain that a business has a subscription, not periodic license purchases.

I strongly suspect that if they tried to pull that in the consumer space, that will make the PC platform too expensive for people to bother. People will just shrug and move to a platform more oriented toward either Apple or Google's home turf. They won't be happy about it (at first), but if owning that laptop has a monthly fee, that laptop is going to get shelved. While certainly Microsoft wants to make inroads to be a viable vendor in those markets, they would cede the rather significant home court advantage.

No, for consumer space, they'll do whatever it takes to keep that market as alive as possible and windows-centric. They will just spend a lot less money doing so. They might offer some integrated cloud data backup options and such, but they'd screw themselves over if they made it a requirement.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[rtb61]

For the investors not for the users. Yeah the cloud, should be more accurately called the digital panopticon, spy on everyone all of the time. More powerful computers than ever, less need for the cloud, yet they push the cloud, to spy on everyone. Companies had better wake up to the fact they are giving away their financial standing, the proprietary secrets and beneficial business practices and leaving themselves 100% hostage to their digital panopticon supplier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (you should read that article and see it as an accurate description of the cloud). You use the cloud, they are no longer your supplier, one of many, they own your information, they own your company and they own you, they can kill you company at the press of a button, they can sell you details to competitors, they can recruit your staff for other companies (not only will they datamine your company, they will datamine your staff including after hours and data mine your customers, the whole idea is nuts. The benefits are empty marketing and the risks are out of your control and M$ is most definitely not a trustworthy supplier, not in the least.

There market share is shrinking rapidly, that being market share of computers as a whole. Losing in phones, servers, laptops, tablets, smart TVs(the likely future biggest high end market, screen size does count) and remaining stable in a shrinking desktop market and the only reason they are not losing in that market is because of no broad app base for Linux Desktops and Apple is only fudging around the edges of the desktop, not really targeting that market, Steam is the dark horse but they are a bit slow, like not having a FOSS section for non gaming applications on their web site.

M$ it's branding is shite, people tend to hate it, so they are extremely vulnerable. Once they get hit by any market share momentum, they will go down pretty fast. The cloud is actually more risky, you can expect porting laws to become reality, they must allow you to port your data to other providers upon request, you know it will become law. Extremely risky move, the quite achiever is actually the better strategy but dicks will be dicks.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[Junta]

In the consumer space, Microsoft brand strength is pretty weak. In corporate, it's exceedingly strong. In many corporate environments, it is heresy to even suggest that possibly a non-microsoft solution would work as well or better for the same or lesser money. MS is a religion of much of corporate IT.

Of course there was a time when Microsoft was the joke of a consumer grade device, and for real work you would have a mainframe or solaris worksation or AIX. Now, well your identity management is probably microsoft, your business pc is probably MS and servers at least have to play nice with MS services and clients. One could imagine the same occurring with Google ecosystem, wokring from daily consumer experience into the workplace. It's one reason I really don't want to see Google compute engine do very well in the hosting space.

Re:And that was the end of Windows

[ebvwfbw]

I hear it all the time. "We have a problem. It has to do with "$fill in something". The cloud will fix this problem." Fill in something is often a security concern. Sometimes computing power. They migrate, then see the bill and realize the stupidity of going to the cloud. With Security they have an audit and get slapped down good. It can be secure, however it's just someone else's computer. They still have to do everything they would normally.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[jellomizer]

No, 2019 is the year of the the end of the desktop.
Linux will never be the big desktop OS we have been waiting for. We can hope it will be the Workstation OS of the future. Because we no longer need Desktop PC's. We need Workstations where we can do real work. For the fun stuff we have consoles, and tablets, and mobile devices. Which for most people would be more then enough for their use. A tablet with Office, and a blue tooth keyboard is more then enough for most people.

This is a different condition 10 or 20 years ago, where a PC was needed for nearly any computing event. At that point Linux for the Desktop may had have some real benefit, saving us from countless windows crashes, because pre-xp windows were based off of the MS DOS OS, while XP and up where based off the workstation base NT system. (Windows 2000, wasn't a PC OS but a workstation OS to replace NT 4)

However today we need more serious Linux systems, designed for productivity and taking advantage of the Workstations hardware and graphics, and less trying to appeal to work for grandma, who at this point probably has more computing skills then you do.

Just the start

[fred911]

I would imagine that they will be "enticing" or migrating all desktop users to their cloud with the goal of eventually eliminating air-gapped desktop functionality and executable / product delivery. Then, once again they'll have free reign to rape and pillage. Service fees for everything, storage, CPU access time, and various "value added services" (like anything more than notebook).

  One would think that their user base would wake up after all the bloated, invasive, insecure and underperforming product they've been using or "upgraded" to, but possibly they're just used to it.

Truly Evil Corp
 

Re:Just the start

[InfiniteBlaze]

The average user never valued the features that the technically-minded bemoan losing. Strong(er) privacy control, opt-out availability, clear diagnostic information....I mean, these are the people who expose their lives to the world in exchange for free entertainment, who never bother to learn about what they use (or how it uses them!), and who were tired of having to deal with people like us directly to get their stuff fixed. They just don't care...but their dollars speak louder than our words. They blindly accept what the big corps tell them because everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn't they? Resistance is futile...

Re:Just the start

[thegarbz]

One would think that their user base would wake up after all the bloated, invasive, insecure and underperforming product they've been using or "upgraded" to, but possibly they're just used to it.

Their userbase welcome it due to there being no other single vendor alternative for management of an entire office. Sure you could cobble together a Linux back end with god knows what different apps from god knows which vendors only to have to go to MS for the desktop system anyway, and what about Exchange .... Or you would realise that having one vendor is actually a very good cost saving measure.

Insecure and underperforming? Tell me just how much better my office would be without an exchange backend, realtime linking between email systems and my desk phone, document editing not just of files, but of resources directly in sharepoint allowing multiple people to edit the same document concurrently.

Yeah Windows I wouldn't run a windows machine without at least 4GB of RAM, but that's a small one-off price to pay.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[pablo_max]

Unlikely. If MS offers Office for Linux then I think you would see mass migration.
But, as it is, that is not going to happen.. likely ever.
If anything, now that Apple is finally starting to support upgrading graphics cards increasing gaming performance, we may see folks switching platforms. Even a lot more hackintosh machines for the DIY man/woman.

Re:I'm confused

[AHuxley]

After renting from MS the cloud allows the desktop computer to work for a set time. No cloud, no computer.

Clippy Cloud

[zifn4b]

I see you're trying to deploy a Docker image to Azure, would you like help with that?

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[kurkosdr]

Reality check on current Desktop Linux distributions: 1) GPU drivers: Bad 2) Hardware support for peripherals and ability to engage low-power modes for better battery life: Bad 3) Application support: Bad (even open source apps have problems like the latest version not available in the repos even for distro version barely 2 years old. Final Verdict: Nope.

The monopoly is finally breaking

[Billly Gates]

This is great news.

Windows has been a thorn in mine and many other IT professionals and users for decades. It was the glue that tied everything in.

While Windows has certainly improved and should have been this stable back in the late 1990s when Unix already was the lack of innovation was killing the technology market.

With mobile, web, open standards, and free software both Gnu, Apache, MIT, and others (I am not just referring to gcc and Linux) we see a different Microsoft and market. Visual Studio is no longer the crappy blob that everyone has to use and is years behind. The C compiler has caught up thanks to Clang and GCC and Visual Studio now supports clang. Free editors based on node.js such as ATOM.io, Microsoft Code, Adobe's Brackets and ide's that are low cost like XCode and JetBrains have further eroded dependence on unupdated Visual Studio. Ironically MS joined the bandwaggon too with MS Code which like Atom.io is also electron based.

We see Office online and also much better Mac support with versions now for Android and IOS. Visual Studio also has a mac port. It still is a stranglehold but it is at least moving due to competition from Google Docs. .NET core is open sourced and runs well on Linux (not Mono but the real deal) and will be in the next version of Redhat.

IE is now dead for all but legacy apps. MS is moving forward with trying to embrace standards with Edge which surprisingly has an Android version.

Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE, and Kali are available on Windows 10 and soon Windows Server if you need to run some apps which is shocking.

Last, Amazon with it's cloud OS scared MS and the office 365 and MS 365 have some bones and extra things like Dynamics, Planner, SharePoint, Teams and other things which improved MS office and gave access to smaller businesses some of the tools the big boys have with dedicated I.T. departments.

This is not the same Microsoft of 2008 10 years ago.

I am not saying they are an angel, but like IBM and Digital before it once they no longer dictate the market and rather play by it or get beat by it things change rapidly. Apple and Oracle to me all far more evil even though they are not monopolies. It makes me glad the ugly inferior IBM PC and not the Mac won the PC wars. Too bad we had crappy operating systems for several decades though.

WindowsXP showed MS that people HATE change and consumers won't pay for Windows. The world is moving on and even business users will simply not upgrade and keep old versions of products otherwise. So Windows will be here like IBM's zOS but will have less and less of a focus and more of something that comes on a PC. MS will make money for services and consumers will simply not care about the OS and run what they want.

Re:The monopoly is finally breaking

[iggymanz]

Microsoft has over 80% the desktop market and that won't change. They dictate the desktop market as they always have. They push business to update their desktops and servers wares, and there is no choice but to comply.

I hope ....

[PPH]

.. Microsoft has paid Comcast, Verizon and AT&T the requisite fees to ensure access to its Azure services. Because their customers aren't going to be happy if they end up using cloud services in the slow lane alongside Netflix.

Re:I hope ....

[PPH]

if the customer is willing to pay

Right. I'll be certain to consider this in my TCO calculations for using Microsoft cloud services.

Re:I hope ....

[PPH]

you have the option of provisioning leased lined directly to the cloud provider

Or running apps locally.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[TWX]

You seem to miss that at least two tablet OSes are basically highly-tailored Linux distributions, locked-down to prevent the end-user from getting to the guts, as a tradeoff trying to maintain a disciplined approach to how applications are to run and interact with the user on the platforms. I'm speaking of Android and ChromeOS.

The vast majority of end users never really needed the down-in-the-trenches approach that early personal computing offered and even arguably required. I suppose that helped contribute to Apple's penetration into the educational market with early Macintoshes, the lack of transparency and ability to tinker with the OS was a downside for computer enthusiasts, but was an advantage to those who didn't care how the underlying device worked, they just wanted to open a program and have it work right. Granted, eventually pre-OSX MacOS got pretty messed up by the end, but for a long time the approach seemed to work well enough.

When I see a tablet, I see the natural evolution of that model for how personal computing works. Hell, tablets even have screens similar in-size to many of those early Macintoshes. There's no digging into the OS, but most people don't want to do that anyway.

I've used Linux for my desktop operating system for the better part of twenty years but I can see why it would be the less desirable option for most people. Even for me it's a headache sometimes as the community fights over things or where development in some major projects stalls or goes off the rails. I put up with it mostly because it was not really any harder than Microsoft's approach back in the day, and because I don't like paying for basic software. For awhile I played with an old Chromebook and Crouton to run a Linux/X11 chroot environment, and it worked pretty well actually. I just wanted more/better than the Chromebook's hardware had to offer, so back to Debian I went.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[TWX]

Home users don't need Office. They need Wordpad.

At work the only time I have to use Office is for a particular spreadsheet template for mileage reimbursement that's so strangely implemented that it doesn't want to work right in Libreoffice. Even pivot tables work properly in Libre, I've done a lot of complex spreadsheets in that program that are entirely interoperable with Excel.

Re:What does this mean?

[TWX]

No, it means that perhaps Microsoft is starting to recognize that Windows as a server only really makes sense when someone is sitting down at that server and running desktop applications on it. In a cloud environment where server instances are virtual-machines spun-up and spun-down on a demand-basis there's no advantage in the overhead of even a virtual machine GUI running, as the model for managing the VM is based on computer-to-computer interaction and templates rather than on user-to-computer interaction.

The Novell Netware approach suddenly actually makes more sense. When one would set up a Netware server, only the most minimal functions were done on that server itself, before connecting a workstation to the network and using the management tools on that workstation to finish setup. The server was essentially headless, all management was done from an end-user node.

In the cloud environment, where cloud applications are written for the specific environment, the nature of the configuration of the virtual machines does not need someone directly interacting with that VM as a user, they interact with management software, which then interacts with the VM or the templates for spawning VMs. GUI doesn't apply.

Terminal Computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Clould computing is another way of saying. Mainframe computing. Turning over your data for some honest company to manage. Yes lets all go back to dumb terminals. No I don,t think so.
Long live stand alone computing.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Stormwatch]

Sailfish OS and Tizen (rather obscure, I know) are also mobile systems based on Linux.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Streetlight]

This sounds like the plan Ken Olsen of Digital had in mind with terminals connected to a central computer system - a VAX using a smart terminal. His famous statement in 1977 was, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." This of course could be expanded to the workplace. The question will be what kind of smart terminal will be necessary to use Microsoft's Azure or any other similar system at work or even ro do computing at home? The only local storage might be just enough to enable the boot up of the terminal and enough RAM to run multiple apps simultaneously. The app software and the OS bits might not even be stored on the terminal. Is this a full blown PC or a less capable smart terminal with a graphical user interface? This suggests conversion to a true computing as a service paradigm, not just software as a service, but for the whole ball of wax.

Re:What does this mean?

[Junta]

It really just means they recognize that no matter how well they do or how poorly they do, the role of the Windows OS in the marketplace is pretty well set. They tried massive investment and dramatic changes, they didn't break into new markets like they hoped. They inadvertently pissed off the userbase several times, never made a dent.

So the business call is to just start coasting. don't waste money trying to grow, and don't think that continued innovation is really required to hold on to their market. For their future evaluation of potential products, the question is easy: can this product be rented instead of purchased? If they can't figure out a way to rent the product or use the product to drive people to rent something, they would rather direct their efforts elsewhere.

"Most people don't want to do that anyway"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

There's no digging into the OS, but most people don't want to do that anyway.

This is one of the biggest concerns I have about current trends in tech. Making systems simpler, easier to use and more secure is all good, but we're also losing the ability for average users to explore and automate and make their computers into tools and not merely platforms to run software that someone else wrote.

I've seen the look on the face of someone who isn't a "programmer" but has just learned some basic scripting that let them turn a regular all-morning job into a regular ten-minute job. It's a delight. But it only works if they have the ability to write those scripts and a basic understanding of how computers work so they can see what to do.

How is the next generation going to learn what computers can really do and how to take advantage of it to achieve benefits we haven't even thought of yet, if their computer has more power than anything any of us learned with and fits in their pocket, yet has no readily available programming tools so they can experiment and learn?

Computers can do far more to help us than just accessing social networks and watching Netflix, but we're in danger of dumbing them down and locking them down so much that this is all a whole generation will see.

Re:"Most people don't want to do that anyway"

[TWX]

I agree with you, but also bear in mind that a lot of corporate environments want processes that aren't reliant on a single staff member to care-for. Inefficient processes may also be processes that others in the same group or department can perform, while dealing with a script might not. I get to hear about data-importation problems that even our seasoned programmers have to contend with, data from fairly limited datasets from specific sources that even years into the use of products still requires manual massage in order to get importation to work properly en-masse.

Sometimes the best compromise approach is for the company to choose software tools that have their own scripting options built-in, so that savvy users can do said scripting and where the nature of what they've created is more easily reviewed by their IT staff and by those in-charge of the systems upon which the scripts run. Unfortunately getting a company to buy software with that feature or to purchase that module if it's an independent expenditure can be a problem.

I've run across resistance myself, they want to buy central configuration storage software for our network equipment to the tune of probably $20,000, instead of having me work on Expect/TCL scripts to pull down configs and archive them by-date, or to attempt to dump them into some kind of database where they're more easily associated with a location or asset tag. Their argument is that I am the only one that would understand this system if I implement it, which is kind of dumb argument when I'm writing in an open-source language using books readily available on Amazon and where probably a third of the lines in the script are comments describing how it works, but that's where it is.

Re:"Most people don't want to do that anyway"

[datavirtue]

Full .NET stack is available to end users from the command line. Its called PowerShell.

Re:"Most people don't want to do that anyway"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And I agree with you in turn, but I think that also creates opportunities for smaller, more flexible organisations to do better. Corporate IT thinking it's there to be in charge is a recurring failure mode in large businesses, and they deserve everything they get if they don't fix that problem.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Billly Gates]

Is it Concur? That program uses some VBA glue that talks to their servers to populate the data.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Billly Gates]

LOL. It has been going back to this since 1997 with the start of the early web and Novel Netware and ethernet.

Yes the Mainframe is the computer. The difference is Amazon and MS are the new mainframe gods you use to connect to your systems. People baulked at the cost of the IBM mainframe and switched to VAX or even mainframe-less environments to cut costs for simple things like spreadsheets, email, and word processing.

Funny is the needs of a large centralized system never went away. These simple tools and files became essential and managers needed a way to manage them viola a netware and later NT file mapped drive. Active directory, and last now this to manage.

What goes around comes around. What is interesting is the cloud was a way to manage websites originally. Not PC programs or operating systems. It grown into that.

Windows may no longer be a cash cow..

[MpVpRb]

..but it's an essential part of computing infrastructure

It must be preserved and updated

If MS doesn't want to do this, they should release it to the open source world

Re:Windows may no longer be a cash cow..

[gtall]

Windows must be put out of our misery, with prejudice.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Kjella]

We need Workstations where we can do real work. For the fun stuff we have consoles, and tablets, and mobile devices.

The statistics don't really support that, if you look at the platform comparison at StatCounter it's 52% mobile, 44% desktop and 4% console/tablet web browsing. And the last one is down from about 5% last year. At work we don't need workstations, but laptops sure. My parents need their 24"+ monitors because their vision is getting poor. I need my gaming box for gaming. There's lots of people that won't be properly served by smartphones and a tablet. The problem is that there's nobody really making a push for it, either they want you to stay on proprietary platforms or move to the cloud. Which would make Linux just an open source client/shell while all the data/processing moves out of your control, it's like out of the frying pan and into the fire. It's the independent, local computer that's dying, everything else is moving to become tentacles of centralized services.

Re: What does this mean?

[javaman235]

Cloud in most cases is all a huge bet against basic ideas of CS, like caches. The correct model keeps power close to the user, it's edge tech with cloud augmentation. The autistic control freak model requires approval from Microsoft for every thing you do, it's the cloud. I think there's huge money at this point in going the opposite way, and giving companies control over their data and actions instead of trying to remote control.

We're doing it

[DogDude]

We're doing it. We're a small business that uses some in-house servers. But, we'd rather not have to manage them and deal with (very very very rare) hardware problems. We're moving our business rule software into Azure, with local redundant servers for when the Internet goes down. It also eliminates the need to tie all of our locations together via (occasionally fragile) VPN's.

Re:We're doing it

[JustNiz]

So your whole argument for adding another critical depdency on a known untrustworthy company plus all the extra issues associated with now having all your most important shit in the cloud, is just because you're basically too lazy manage a few boxes and deal with what even you describe as very very very rare HW problems? wow.

.

The cloud is yesterday's future....

[berchca]

If raising their market cap is all they're after, they should just start a crypocurrency. Worked for everyone else.

Re:The cloud is yesterday's future....

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yay, M$ Coin ICO coming soon!?

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[cayenne8]

MS Azure is an immature environment, especially on the government side.

If you are a pure MS shop, then it may work better for you, BUT, if you have RHEL or other linux servers, get ready for a bit of hell trying to get things to work.

If you must go to the cloud, and use anything besides MS windows, you should probably consider AWS if that is a choice you can take.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[i286NiNJA]

e problems like the latest version not available in the repos even for distro version barely 2 years old.

You know there are distros other than debian right?

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we no longer need Desktop PC's. We need Workstations where we can do real work.

They're the same thing. A workstation is a desktop in a corporate environment. There are hundreds of millions of people using desktop computers in small businesses or at home. I use one to write up contracts and estimates and bills, to produce diagrams for work, to edit photos and pages for my website...

  Anyone who merely does as much as working occasionally with office software needs a desktop because nothing else is ergonomically suitable. You *can* edit photos and write docs on a phone. That doesn't make it a replacement for a fullscale computer.

Windows Loot Box Edition

[BLToday]

Why do I get the feeling that there will be a “fun” version of Windows with loot boxes. There’s already one with micro transactions (ie. Solitaire).

the cloud is brittle

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that this doubling down by Microsoft on the cloud comes right after recent legislation that is the driving companies like Reddit (closing down subreddits), Microsoft (cracking down on skype free speech), Amazon (shutting their music storage service down, even for music you legitimately bought through them), Facebook, etc. to scatter their bits and bytes to the wind. And, as a result it is making users less trusting of cloud and remote services. An argument can be made that they shouldn't have trusted them in the first place, though.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Streetlight]

Thanks for your comment.

Perhaps this is what's going on in the computing paradigm for K -12 education in the US. Google's efforts in this area with the Chrome OS and very inexpensive laptops and now Apple's iPad initiative. At least Chrome machines have a keyboard attached. Both efforts have or will have the support back end with Web based servers, software tools for content generation and other management requirements. Some folks with minimal computing and communication needs have also adopted the Chrome OS paradigm. It's not a short leap to imagine this jumping to much more powerful systems for heavy duty sophisticated business and home computing. Computing as a service is on its way.

Re:What does this mean?

[ThosLives]

Rent-seeking: great if you're the property-owner, terrible for absolutely everyone else.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[ArmoredDragon]

I don't know if I'd count tizen. Tizen is an k-6 school project to see if they could design the most insecure mobile OS. Or at least it must be, because of how it's written.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[ArmoredDragon]

Which is what most companies do.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[aaarrrgggh]

I agree with you 100%. I keep trying to get people at work to just use the gmail webmail, but the lack of real folders kills them.

It really creates an incentive to drop gmail and switch email to o365. If Skype for Business wasn't such complete crap as a webex replacement, Microsoft would be unstoppable.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Stormwatch]

A widely misunderstood quote. Olsen was talking about home automation -- a computer controlling the home.

Microsoft has been saying this at least since 2010

[dpbsmith]

In 2010, Nancy Gohring reported in Infoworld, Ballmer bets Microsoft's future on the cloud.. "'Seventy percent of the 40,000 people who work on software at Microsoft are in some way working in the cloud,' CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday at the University of Washington. 'A year from now, that will be 90 percent,' he said.... 'Our inspiration, our vision ... builds from this cloud base,' he said. 'This is the bet, if you will, for our company.'"

I think there was similar rhetoric years earlier than that.

The Microsoft "Kin" phones lacked features normally implemented locally on phones, and Microsoft said that was going to be fine because modern-day young phone users were comfortable with relying on the cloud....

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[ElGuapo2872]

Actually guys I was joking. I am a solid windows user in a love/hate (more hate) relationship, but I need it for the ecosystem.

Microsoft announces...

[Chris Mattern]

..."We've found a way to make you pay again for Windows every month!"

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Streetlight]

I didn't know that about the Olsen quote. Maybe Olsen was very, very way ahead of his time. I'm thinking of the HUGE increase in the use of Internet of Things technology that seems to be ubiquitous. Most of these devices aren't used for general computing, though they all probably have some kind of computing (microprocessor?) hardware in them and some have video graphics displays. I mean, they aren't used for word processing or spreadsheet generation. Oh, wait..., many IOT devices have a voice interface and could easily be used for text generation. Spreadsheets might take some more time.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[datavirtue]

Tizen is obscure like IoT is obscure

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[datavirtue]

If you can't abstract your systems away from a particular cloud provider you have no business in the cloud.

OpenStack and CloudFoundry come to mind. If it can't be deployed on Pivotal Cloud Foundry in a few minutes send your devs back to the drawing board.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Li

[kurkosdr]

Nobody cares about "rolling release" bleeding-edge distros, and redhat is not immune despite EPEL. Meanwhile I can run VLC on my 7-year old Windows 7 netbook.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[datavirtue]

So you haven't built yourself a workstation? I don't like messing with barriers and problems, that is why I build my workstation from scratch and run bleeding edge Windows 10. No tinkering required.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[datavirtue]

Try a 40" 4K 60Hz TV for a monitor. They will love it. I have been running a 49" TCL Roku TV 24" from my face and it has eliminated any visual strain. Highly suggest touch screen if you can swing it. I would love to play Age of Empires 3/4/Definitive on a large touch screen. A workout.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[datavirtue]

Home users can hop on shitty Google Docs and bang our stuff for free.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[datavirtue]

Yeah. Somebody has to get Skype together. It is still playing out like your typical Microsoft acquisition of old. Languishing under technical issues and ease of use.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Billly Gates]

Thanks for your comment.

Perhaps this is what's going on in the computing paradigm for K -12 education in the US. Google's efforts in this area with the Chrome OS and very inexpensive laptops and now Apple's iPad initiative. At least Chrome machines have a keyboard attached. Both efforts have or will have the support back end with Web based servers, software tools for content generation and other management requirements. Some folks with minimal computing and communication needs have also adopted the Chrome OS paradigm. It's not a short leap to imagine this jumping to much more powerful systems for heavy duty sophisticated business and home computing. Computing as a service is on its way.

The argument from how I see it is not that hey I am a home user as I don't need this complexity. The early PCs were a form of this in the office where someone just needed work done on Lotus 123.

The problem is both the data and software is scattered and is complex. Google Docs made collaboration and stored information from Google a reality. Office 2016 and then Office 365 followed suit. True not everyone needs sharepoint or exchange online. But you use data off someone elses box anyway is how I see it.

So MS is saying you can have that too and can manage more if you pay us rather than charging for Windows which know one pays for anymore. Even k - 12 LOVE Chromebooks for collaboration.

Re:Did anyone else read that headline

[datavirtue]

I feel like I need to go underground and join this odd Creimer cult to find out what is really going on around here. At first it was funny. Funny as hell. But after a while it just got weird.

FAIL

[sproketboy]

ntr

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[sproketboy]

> They need Wordpad.

They need more than that since M$ prevents any spell checker from being used.

Yeah.... Windows XP

[BrianMarshall]

Don't want something like Windows XP to happen again... a terrible thing to happen to M$.

It's working...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

The Open University (large distance Ed. uni in the UK) recently shifted all its student and faculty accounts from Google Docs to MS Office. I'm assuming that most faculty don't want to learn to use anything other than MS Office and whichever domain specific software they use, e.g. SPSS, InVivo, and/or R. Google Docs is probably too much of a change in UI/UX for them to tolerate so it makes sense to stay with MS Office and use essentially the same thing online and stop buying/renewing MS Office licences for however many thousands of desktop and laptop PCs/Macs they're using. I wonder how many other large organisations/institutions are switching?

I'm a (Linux) Grsync and LibreOffice user so none of this affects me. Restoring backups from a USB3 HDD is easier and faster than cloud backup. Also bear in mind that it's wise to keep local backups in case you somehow lose access to your cloud account or your provider decides to change the fees and/or rules against your interests. Makes cloud backups/storage look a bit expensive and redundant in this light.

"The Cloud" is SHIT

[Rick Schumann]

It's a con-job and you're dumb if you fall for it.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[TWX]

Heh. My most recent purchase is a Dell XPS 13, equipped the same as the Developer Edition models but bought through Costco 'cause it was like $500 less than buying a factory-loaded Developer Edition model. Got the one with the extremely high res touchscreen and everything. I had looked into the Apple Macbook Pro, but if I wanted the model with all of the USB-C ports then I had to have that stupid touchbar with no more physical escape key. That was unacceptable. When I was using an older MacBook I used it like I use Linux boxes, which is to have a lot of terminal windows open. I was not about to lose having a physical escape key.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[TWX]

It's possible to use labels in a fashion similar to folders.

I'm promoting Windows for LULs

[newdsfornerds]

and Windows for Waman.

Re:I'm promoting Windows for LULs

[ebvwfbw]

Wasn't that Vista?

Welcome to the club

[CptLoRes]

"Microsoft has actually been moving away from Windows and more towards the cloud, analytics and AI for the past ten years,"

Welcome to the club buddy, you are not the only one moving away from Windows. Not so sure about that cloud thing tho.

Re: Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Lin

[aaarrrgggh]

Close, but some actions like archiving old data and nested folders don’t work cleanly.

Oh boy.

[SeaFox]

Finally the unwashed masses will be able to legitimately blame their Internet provider for their computer not being able to boot up.

six characters

[ThosLives]

IP law

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Stormwatch]

Looking at market share, any mobile system that is not Android or iOS counts as obscure.

Re:What does this mean?

[wyattstorch516]

What it means is that Microsoft need a major new revenue stream and since nobody else is challenging AWS they are giving it a shot. Good to hear since we need competition in this space.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[jellomizer]

But in terms of an OS there need to differentiate between the two. Windows, OS X and Gnome have been focused on personal use, with real work as a side effect. A workstation OS is about being efficient and getting the most out of the computer.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[ebvwfbw]

I do really well on predicting things over the past 40 years. I predict Windows on the desktop will go away and Linux will take over. It's inevitable. Windows is crap and they can't secure it because of the underlying OS. Even network I/O is at least half as efficient as a Linux stack. They're simply outclassed and they know it. It's band aids on top of bubble gum on top of rubber bands... and so on. She's going to blow! I think Nedella realizes this and wants to just dump that crap. Move it over to Linux like they should have done 20 years ago when I predicted it. They should have sold the Windows OS to IBM for say a billion, ported office over to Linux and left IBM holding the bag like they did with OS2. Trust lawsuit goes away, everyone is happy except IBM, again.

Re:Does this mean 2019 is finally the year of Linu

[Tony Isaac]

at least two tablet OSes are basically highly-tailored Linux distributions

And THIS is an illustration of why Linux, per se, will never be a mainstream desktop OS.

What is it that sets these two successful OSes apart from standard Linux distros? It's not the technology! They really don't offer much that you can't do on a Linux distro.

The difference is polish and packaging, along with plenty of marketing.

Face it, Linux distros are not as highly polished as a commercial OS. This will never change, because Linux fans want lots of options, they want to be able to customize their system to work according to their own preferences (Emacs vs. Vim anyone?) This is exactly what technically challenged people DON'T want. They just want it to work.