April 11th, 2008

Reports of Windows’ demise are greatly exaggerated

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:43 am

Categories: Vista, Windows client, Windows Live, Corporate strategy, App Compatibility, Web 2.0, Channel, System builders, OEMs, Resellers, Virtualization, Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

I was planning to avoid posting about Gartner’s “Windows will collapse under its own weight” presentation from earlier this week because I felt it was a bunch of hype that didn’t provide any new insights or conclusions.

But given how many others are riffing — and riffing crazily — on Gartner’s findings, I’ve decided to throw my two cents in.

It’s not news that Windows is huge and unwieldy. Many (probably most) of Microsoft’s own Windows developers would agree with that premise. But to suggest that Microsoft is burying its head in the sand and hoping its problems just go away is ridiculous. And to pretend that online advertising revenues will be Redmond’s bail-out money for its Windows/Office franchises any time soon is a joke.

Some points to ponder:

* Windows currently contributes one-third of Microsoft’s revenues and two-thirds of its profits, I’ve heard company officials claim. Windows is installed on more than 90 percent of consumer and business desktops combined. That market share isn’t going to disappear overnight, no matter how much Web 2.0 pundits and online-services vendors want that to happen.

* Windows 7, from all accounts, is going to be a minor upgrade to Vista. It is not going to be the start-from-scratch, slimmed-down operating system that many believe Microsoft is building in a back room as a “Plan B.” Singularity, the Microsoft Research microkernel OS, also is not that brand new Microsoft operating system. However, I do believe Singularity is the core of what ultimately will become a brand-new distributed OS platform from Microsoft. Unlike Gartner, I’m not going to pick a date out of a hat (by 2011!) and claim that’s when such a platform will be announced.

* As has been reported previously, Windows 7 is likely to include a feature that, at least at one point, was called the “Component Delivery System” which is expected to allow users to install the pieces of Windows that they want and need in a more user-configurable way. This may not be identical to the modularized role structure offered in Windows Server 2008, but it is similar in its intention. This should help, to some extent, with Windows’ bloat — as should Microsoft’s expected move to use Windows Live to deliver non-core pieces of functionality to users.

* Windows 7 also is likely to include some kind of virtualization layer that will help ease backward compatibility, I’ve heard from various sources. Microsoft isn’t likely to a port of Hyper-V to Windows client. But it could take the form of a virtualization service like SoftGrid (Microsoft’s application virtualization offering) and/or hosted desktop virtualization (the new name/positioning for Microsoft Terminal Server, I hear).

Bottom line: Windows, as it exists today, is untenable. I agree with Gartner on that one point. Windows’ internal dependencies need to be reduced; it needs services hooks to make delivery of new features less cumbersome; and it needs a way to improve compatibility of the growing number of legacy drivers and applications. From what I hear, Microsoft is working to address all of these issues.

Microsoft’s continued unwillingness to talk Windows 7 and Windows futures shouldn’t be confused with a lack of plans for how to keep Windows and its successor(s) alive. I think there’s still a lot more fight left in Microsoft than folks seem to realize. And Windows is going to be a key part of Microsoft’s future arsenal, not just a remnant of its monopolistic past.

What do you think?