Archive for September, 2008

Ballmer On the Separation of Software and Hardware

In another part of the recent the Churchill Club event I talked about a few days ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked for a bit on mobile phones and hinted at Microsoft’s strategy on competing with Google.

Well, okay, it’s more than a hint. Microsoft is depending upon being able to license its mobile OS to cell phone manufacturers to be able to beat out competitors Nokia, RIM, and Apple (and Palm if their new Linux-based OS ever arrives) just like it did to beat out IBM, Apple, and others. Using this strategy it was able to accomplish over 90% even now, many years later. I would agree to a certain degree that allowing its OS to mobile phone makers, Microsoft could create a potentially larger market for itself, however I’m not sure that the potential gains are worth the risk.

What makes the desktop market different than the mobile phone market? It’s quite simple: standards. If you give me two different phones from two different manufacturers, chances are the key layout is different, the power cord is different, the screens have different resolutions, and so on. Give me two different PCs from different manufacturers and I don’t necessarily have the same screen resolutions, but I have standards-based peripherals (keyboards, mice), internal components, and even network connection types. Often, on top of the differences in cell phone makers we have phones that have been customized to each provider.

So what benefits do keeping the software locked into a hardware and locked into a provider give us? This too is pretty simple, support and ease of use. The iPhone has been met with a significant amount of criticism since its only available for AT&T and only on the Apple hardware (unless unlocked, of course). But, at the end of the day when I call support because my phone doesn’t work the only questions I have to answer are whether it’s a first or second generation and what size. The developers, support personnel, and end users are never met with surprises. RIM’s Blackberry devices are close, though they have a much wider variety of devices for different types of users.

Why then should Microsoft take this stance and not lock its software to a piece of hardware? For the same reasons it was successful in the PC market. It doesn’t matter if I buy an HP, Dell, Lenovo, or whatever, more than likely it has Windows on it. Sure, nowadays we can buy PCs with Linux (a good move, I think) and occasionally (questionably) OS X, but that’s more of a recent trend in the mainstream market. Having a ton of phones with Windows Mobile on them makes it much easier for Microsoft to get its product in front of end-users. As we learned from the success of Internet Explorer, it doesn’t matter what’s a better product, it’s what comes on the device “out of the box” that most users will use. This also gives them the opportunity to push more users to its search engine and advertising market which really is what it’s all about.

Any company that takes the plunge and licenses its OS on any hardware also takes a risk in compatibility issues. Both Linux vendors and Microsoft have found this out the hard way on the desktop side. Linux has been plagued for years with driver issues since very few manufacturers make drivers for Linux for their hardware. Vista was hit hard with this especially in its first year. Most of the driver issues seem to be disappearing, but Microsoft had a lot of trouble dealing with hardware vendors right away and took a beating from Apple. They apparently have learned their lesson and are hoping to not make the same mistake again on Windows 7.

From either perspective, licensing a mobile OS to a non-standardized marketplace can be a risk. Microsoft has seen some success in the past, of course, but will it eventually win out using the same tactics of its day of old like Ballmer says? It’ll be interesting to see. Microsoft has had recent failures in keeping quality drivers and hardware support in consumers hands and Apple was right on their heels with its hardware-OS bundle and benefited from Vista’s shortcomings.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Sep 29th, 2008

Ballmer Picks on Competitors Over.. Cost?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently talked about Microsoft’s virtualization strategy for the next few years. In the video interview on ZDnet, Ballmer talks about democratizing virtualization.

He says that currently only 5% of servers are virtualized, and Microsoft has the key to making it more like 80%. Of course he took a shot at VMware, saying:

“If you want virtualization on 80 percent of servers instead of 5 percent of servers, you better not charge three times as much as the price of the server for the virtualization!”

Wait. What just happened here? I had to watch the video twice before I believed it. The CEO of Microsoft is going to give a lecture on over-priced software licenses? I almost fell off my chair when I heard him say that. Wow, I completely didn’t expect that. I expected some statement about how their software is better or something like that, but not that they were cheaper. Two things

1. Is Microsoft really going to bring up licensing costs as an argument for using their platform? Let’s say, for instance, that I want to upgrade my existing desktop from XP with Office 2003 to Vista Ultimate with Office 2007 Pro. Hardware upgrade costs aside, I can buy a Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade for $184.99 from Newegg. Then, I need to buy the Office 2007 upgrade. A professional version upgrade will cost me $289.99 on Newegg. That’s a total of $474.98. Now, let’s say I want to buy myself the upgrades for my Mac. I can spend $109.95 on the Leopard license from Newegg and iWork ‘08 for $68.99. Yes, we can clearly see that Microsoft is definitely in a position to brag about licensing costs. Anyway, that’s another argument for another day.

2. Is it really free? According to the documentation, in order for the clustering to work you have to use Windows Server Enterprise or Datacenter edition on the bare metal. Well, being the curious soul that I am, I decided to find the cost. You can buy an OEM copy of Enterprise edition (the cheaper version) for the low cost of $2,699.99 from Newegg. Now we’re over halfway to the cost of ESX server and with ESX you don’t have the performance and management cost of running a full-blow Windows OS underneath everything else. Plus, I can’t live-migrate my virtual machines across physical machines like Xen or VMware. I’m going to leave alone the fact that you can’t access the hypervisor features using “unsupported” OS’s, like you know.. not Windows or SUSE Linux.

In true Microsoft style, they are late to the game and feature-poor, yet they try to push their weight around and make ridiculous claims. I didn’t start this blog to become a Microsoft-basher, but they make it so difficult not to. Sadly, I’m projecting that Hyper-V will become fairly popular simply because it comes bundled within the Windows server OS, just like Internet Explorer is one of the dominating browsers simply out of convenience.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (2) : Sep 27th, 2008

In Quotes in Google Labs

I’ve always wanted a quick way to compare politicians without having to dig into news sites for hours and hours. Tonight I found In Quotes inside of Google Labs. For those of you not familiar, Google Labs is Google’s playground for trying out new ideas and getting feedback. I’m not sure why they don’t just put “beta” on it like every other application, but.. that’s another story (stay tuned).

In Quote allows you to compare quotes around where candidates stand on several isues. You can pick several categories such as abortion, economy, environment, oil, and Iraq. Then you can scroll through what each candidate has said about those issues. The source and date of the quote is listed below the quote so you can check out the context surrounding the quotes should you desire. I’m sure this could easily become skewed in one direction or another (after all, we are talking about politics), but it appears to be a great way to get candidates’ view on topics with a quick glance.

I’m going to avoid sharing my political views like the plague, but the way technology is playing a role in this year’s election is amazing. It had an important role in the election even as early as July when the McCain used a web spider to detect changes in Obama’s viewpoints and then governor Palin’s email account being broken into just recently. This technology is nice, though I don’t think I’ll be making as many decisions based upon it as much as I do sucks-rocks. :)

Filed under News : Comments (0) : Sep 26th, 2008

VMware Hits One Out of the Park.. Almost

I decided today to upgrade VMware server on my desktop to the new version 2.0 (after all I got the email that it was released over 24 hours ago!). I had used the beta and knew that the new version of the software was web-based and was very welcome to the change. One of my biggest annoyances with VMware was the lack of server console for the Mac. It’s fine that I have to run the server software on a Linux box, but I’d really like to be able to manage it straight from my machine (a Mac). I was thinking “Wow, this will be great.. Now that VMware is web-based it’ll be OS-agnostic and I can run it from anything.” Sadly, not so.

Once I had the server upgraded from a 1.0x release and running (which is nothing on my Ubuntu 8.04 system), I hopped over to my MacBook and went to the web interface. The management is great. It’s pretty similar in functionality to the old console, which I would expect. It definitely has some nice improvements and added features. Unfortunately, there’s no way to run the virtual machine console from a Mac. I realize this is a free product, but.. If VMware is trying to use portray itself as this ‘cloud computing’ enabler and pushing their new “DataCenter OS”, then why don’t we see a trend towards becoming OS agnostic from a management standpoint? Perhaps we are caught in the cross-fire between one of the world’s largest virtualization software maker and the only OS (to my knowledge) which explicitly prohibits virtualization of the OS in the EULA. The product is great (though the JavaScript seems a bit buggy), don’t get me wrong, but it’s the little things that make the difference.. like manageability.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Sep 25th, 2008

The Real iPhone Killer: Apple?

Ever since the release of the iPhone, other cell phone companies have been trying to catch up. There have been dozens of phones deemed as iPhone killers, but they’ve all been just a regular cell phone with a fancy interface and a touch-screen. There are also smart phones that try to compete, but let’s face it, no other phone has the SDK, sleek interface, and easy one-stop-shop for applications for the phone. Of course, most non-smart phones don’t have the advantage of the open platform. Google has of course released its new phone OS which so far, reports have been somewhat negative towards the phone. It’s very similar and obviously meant to directly compete with the phone.

So, with this head start and momentum in the market, what could possibly stand in the iPhone’s way? The answer is simple: Apple itself. Apple controls what applications can be placed in the App Store on iTunes. While the platform is mostly open, the App Store is the only supported way to install applications. You can of course jail-break the device, but that’s not something I want to get into. Having Apple as the gateway to the App Store is a great way for Apple to achieve some sort of quality of service for the device, thus enhancing the user experience. However, just like every other solution, this has a downside.

Apple reserves the right and has used this right to reject applications submitted to the App Store. Apple has strict guidelines for what applications can be added and as of late, it seems like there’s also a secret check-list. Several well-known applications got rejected recently which caused quite a commotion and some backlash. Recently, rejected developers have revealed that Apple has placed all rejection notices under an NDA so no one can disclose why the application was developed. Even if the applications that are rejected are done so for valid reasons, how are other developers going to avoid the pitfalls that others have fallen in? Just like the famous saying, history is bound to repeat itself, especially if that history is forbidden to be shared. Without clear and concise criticism of applications that get rejected, what serious developer is going to put any time into an application that may or may not be accepted? Heck, even Steve Ballmer knew the secret years ago to extending a platform: developers.

I would imagine that a good majority of developers will follow, but at least one iPhone developer has made a stand already and it’s all over the blogosphere. How long will Apple continue down this path? I’m an Apple fan, but let’s be real here. I’m not sure that even its arch-nemesis Microsoft would get away with this. This closed doors policy is definitely a classic Apple move, but the smart phone industry could be at stake here. What possible future could an “open platform” device have if no one develops for it? When Apple unveiled the new iPhone they claimed that the only thing that could beat the iPhone was the iPhone.. I’m not sure that they meant it quite like this.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (4) : Sep 24th, 2008

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