Category Archives: windows 7

cloud computing, microsoft, professional, sharepoint, windows, windows 7

Server and Tools shine in Microsoft results – so why is Bob Muglia leaving?

Microsoft released quarterly results yesterday:

Quarter ending December 31 2010 vs quarter ending December 31 2009, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Profit Change
Client (Windows + Live) 5054 -2139 3251 -2166
Server and Tools 4390 412 1776 312
Online 691 112 -543 -80
Business (Office) 5126 612 3965 1018
Entertainment and devices 3698 1317 679 314

Microsoft highlighted strong sales for Xbox (including Kinect) as well as for Office 2010, which it said in the press release is the “fastest-selling consumer version of Office in history.”

Why is Office 2010 selling better than Office 2007? My hunch is that this is a Windows 7 side-effect. New Windows, new Office. I do think Office 2010 is a slightly better product than Office 2007, but not dramatically so. SharePoint Workspace 2010, about which I mean to post when I have a moment, is a big disappointment, with a perplexing user interface and limited functionality.

Windows 7 revenue is smaller than that of a year ago, but then again the product was released in October 2009 so this is more a reflection of its successful launch than anything else.

What impressed me most is the strong performance of Server and Tools, at a time when consolidation through virtualisation and growing interest in cloud computing might be reducing demand. Even virtual machines require an OS licence though, so maybe HP should worry more than Microsoft about that aspect.

I still think they are good figures, and make Server and Tools VP Bob Muglia’s announced departure even more puzzling. Just what was his disagreement with CEO Steve Ballmer?

Server and Tools revenue includes Windows Azure, but it sounds like Microsoft’s cloud is not generating much revenue yet. Here is what CFO Peter Klein said:

Moving on to Server and Tools. For Q3 and the full year, we expect non-annuity revenue, approximately 30% of the total, to generally track with the hardware market. Multi-year licensing revenue which is about 50% of the total, and enterprise services, the remaining 20%, should grow high-single digits for the third quarter and low double-digits for the full fiscal year.

This suggests that 80% of the revenue is from licensing and that 20% is “enterprise services” – which as I understand it is the consulting and enterprise support division at Microsoft. So where is Azure?

Online services, which is Bing and advertising, announced another set of dismal results. Another part of Microsoft’s cloud, Exchange and SharePoint online, is lost somewhere in the Business segment. Overall it is hard to judge how well the company’s cloud computing products are performing, but I think it is safe to assume that revenue is tiny relative to the old Windows and Office stalwarts.

Windows Phone 7 gets a mention:

While we are encouraged by the early progress, we realize we still have a lot of work ahead of us, and we remain focused and committed to the long-term success of Windows Phone 7.

It looks like revenue here is tiny as well; and like most corporate assertions of commitment, this is a reflection of the doubts around Microsoft’s mobile strategy overall: how much of it is Windows Phone 7, and how much a future version of full Windows running on ARM system-on-a-chip packages?

Still, these are good figures overall and show how commentators such as myself tend to neglect the continuing demand for Windows and Office when obsessing about a future which we think will be dominated by cloud plus mobile.

microsoft, sharepoint, windows 7

Fixing slow access to SharePoint mapped drives in Windows 7

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I’ve heard recently from a couple of people who found that accessing SharePoint folders via mapped drives in Windows Explorer had suddenly become very slow – even taking several minutes to open a folder. This is in Windows 7, but the same might (or might not) apply to other versions of Windows.

SharePoint folders in Windows Explorer use WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) under the hood, so although it looks like just another shared drive it is actually using HTTP calls to list the files. It is useful if you are out and about, because you can get at documents on your internal network over the internet, using SSL to secure the connection.

The fix that has worked in both cases is a mysterious one. You open Internet Explorer (even if you use a different browser), go to Tools – Internet Options – Connections, click LAN settings, and uncheck Automatically detect settings.

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I am not sure why this works but presumably with this option checked there is some sort of useless auto-detection going on which times out and then repeats.

No promises; but making this change can dramatically improve performance.

.net, apple, google, microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software development, windows 7

Talk of Windows 8 on an smartphone shows Microsoft’s mobile confusion

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During a conference call to discuss Intel’s latest financials, CEO Paul Otellini raised the possibility of putting the full Windows OS onto a smartphone, running a low power Intel SoC (System on Chip). The matter came up with Otellini was asked about the impact of Windows on ARM, announced at CES earlier this month:

The plus for Intel is that as they unify their operating systems we now have the ability for the first time: one, to have a designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don’t have today. And secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors running Windows 8 – or ‘next-generation Windows’ – into phones, because it’s the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us.

The reasoning seems to be: if Windows 8 is designed to run well on mobile devices with ARM, it will also run well on mobile devices with an Intel SoC, which will let us put it on phones.

Note the point he highlighted: Microsoft unifying its operating systems. No more full Windows vs Windows CE; one OS from mobile to desktop.

Although that sounds compelling, the snag is that Windows is not well suited to low-power mobile devices, which is why Windows CE was invented in the first place. Microsoft can fix this to some extent by fixing the things that make it unsuitable, but it carries a heavy compatibility burden.

It also throws up the question: just what are Microsoft’s long-term plans for Windows Phone 7, which is built on Windows CE, has its own GUI mostly written in native code, and a development platform based on .NET – Silverlight and XNA – plus a native code SDK that only mobile operators and device manufacturers get to use?

At CES Microsoft Steven Sinofsky sort-of denied that Windows will encroach on Windows Phone 7 territory. “Windows Phone 7 is uniquely focused on the small form factor that Windows doesn’t focus on,” he said.

Nevertheless, the company’s decision not to use the Windows Phone 7 OS for tablets may make that inevitable. What is the difference between a smartphone and a small tablet? Does Microsoft expect developers to write apps designed for Windows on a small tablet and then rewrite them for Windows Phone 7 using Silverlight?

It does not make sense; and despite the Windows Phone 7 promotion included in CEO Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote, I was left wondering whether Microsoft’s new mobile OS really has a future.

That said, Silverlight abstracts the OS, so in principle Microsoft could use it to form a consistent mobile development platform irrespective of whether the underlying OS is Windows CE or full Windows. I am not getting that sense from the company though, and I’d expect the primary Windows SDK to remain based on C++.

I am struggling to understand how Microsoft expects this to work. App compatibility is the obvious benefit of full Windows; but two big issues are that most Windows apps are not touch-friendly and are not designed for small screens. Putting Windows on a tablet with a decent screen size and the dreaded stylus works to some extent, but will never compete with Apple’s iPad for usability. On smaller screens most existing apps will not work properly; and if Windows on small devices sprouts a completely new touch-friendly GUI, or borrows the one from Windows Phone 7, then app compatibility with desktop Windows will be limited.

It feels as if Microsoft’s Windows team is saying one thing, the Windows Phone 7 and developer teams saying another, and partners like Intel saying yet another. Windows Phone 7 was meant to be the thing that made belated sense of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, but even that now looks doubtful for the reasons stated above.

Microsoft is still a long way from having a coherent strategy for mobile devices, and that lack is damaging the company and helping Apple and Google to establish their competing operating systems.

Update: Mary-Jo Foley writes about Microsoft “Jupiter” which is a rumoured new user interface and application model designed for Windows 8 and its app store:

Jupiter is going to be a new user interface (UI) library for Windows, built alongside Windows 8. It will be a thin XAML/UI layer on top of Windows application programming interfaces and frameworks for subsystems like graphics, text and input. The idea is Jupiter will bring support for smoother and more fluid animation, rich typography, and new media capabilities to Windows 8 devices.

Is Jupiter a .Net technology, or XAML adapted for native code, or both? Is it one and the same as, say, Silverlight 6? That is not stated, though Senior VP Soma Somasegar helpfully (or not) said that:

some of the information in this post is not right and out of date, not reflecting Microsoft’s current thinking.

That seems to tacitly confirm that it fairly represents Microsoft’s thinking at some time in the not-too-distant past.

It would make sense to me if Microsoft used Silverlight to unify its application platform as mentioned above, and combining the XAML presentation layer with native code could address performance and memory usage concerns with .NET. This is the kind of news that would really give confidence to Silverlight developers, rather than the damage limitation PR that Microsoft has put out since PDC late last year.

On the other hand, I believe Somasegar when he says the information is out of date, so for the time being it is just another dose of uncertainty.

.net, microsoft, php, professional, software development, Web, web authoring, windows, windows 7

Microsoft WebMatrix released: a simple editor for ASP.NET Razor and more, but who is the target user?

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Microsoft has released WebMatrix, a free tool for creating web sites for Microsoft’s web server. It uses the Web Platform Installer and installed smoothly on my Windows 7 64-bit box. What you get is a cleanly-designed tool which lets you start web sites from templates or from standard installs of popular applications including WordPress, Drupal and Moodle.

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Yes, you can use PHP and MySQL as well as .NET web applications, though the common factor is that all are configured for IIS, Microsoft’s web server.

With many ISPs already offering instant installs of apps like WordPress, it is more interesting to look at the site templates in WebMatrix, though the selection is smaller.

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What is interesting about these is that they create sites based on Razor, an alternative view engine for ASP.NET. Microsoft VP Scott Guthrie describes Razor here. It is odd though: Razor is a feature of ASP.NET MVC 3, currently in release candidate phase, but you cannot create ASP.NET MVC sites in Web Matrix.

Once a site is created, you can modify it in the WebMatrix editor.

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You can run the site on IIS Express with one click. WebMatrix will show you all the requests as you run, which could be handy for tracing problems. There is also a database management workspace which uses SQL Server Compact Edition, a reporting workspace which will analyse your site for problems, and the ability to publish a site using  FTP or Microsoft’s Web Deploy.

I like the clean look of WebMatrix, and that it is lightweight and fast; but who is the target user? It appears to be aimed at non-professionals; but this is a techie product that will not appeal to users looking for an easy to use web site builder. There is no visual editor; users are just chucked in at the deep end editing raw HTML and C#. There is not even any intellisense code completion. Clicking Online Help just brings up a Microsoft search form. There is no debugger to speak of; you are expected to upgrade to Visual Studio. Which raises the question, why not just get Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, which is also free, and has a better editor and debugging features? Of course you could use the two together; but Web Matrix is not adding much value. Features like the SEO analysis seem to be be based on the existing Search Engine Optimization Toolkit, which you can install without Web Matrix.

WebMatrix has been available in beta for six months, but its forum is relatively quiet.

Still, if nothing else Web Matrix is a handy way to take a look at Razor, which deserves attention. Shay Friedman has a technical introduction here.

Guthrie has a detailed look at the WebMatrix beta here.

adobe, development, google, microsoft, mobile, windows, windows 7

NVIDIA Tegra 2: amazing mobile power that hints at the future of client computing

Smartphone power has made another jump forward with the announcement at CES in Las Vegas of new devices built on NVIDIA’s new Tegra 2 package – a System on a Chip (SoC) that includes dual-core CPU, GPU, and additional support for HD video encoding and decoding, audio, imaging, USB, PCIe and more:

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The CPU is the ARM Cortex-A9 which has a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture and a 32-bit instruction set. It also supports the Thumb-2 instruction set which is actually 16-bit. How is 16-bit an upgrade over 32-bit? Well, 16-bit instructions means smaller code, even though it gets translated to 32-bit instructions at runtime:

For performance optimised code Thumb-2 technology uses 31 percent less memory to reduce system cost, while providing up to 38 percent higher performance than existing high density code, which can be used to prolong battery-life or to enrich the product feature set.

The GPU is an “ultra low power” (ULP) 8-core GeForce. In essence, the package aims for high performance with low power consumption, exactly what is wanted for mobile computing.

Power is also saved by sophisticated power management features. The package uses a combination of suspending parts of the system, gating the clock speed, screen management, and dynamically adjusting voltage and frequency, in order to save power. The result is a system which NVIDIA claims is 25-50 times more efficient than a typical PC.

According to NVIDIA, Tegra 2 enables web browsing up to two times faster than competitors such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 or Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 – though of course these companies also have new SoCs in preparation.

Tegra 2 is optimised for some specific software. One is the OpenGL graphics API. “The job of the GPU is to implement the logical pipeline defined by OpenGL”, I was told at an NVIDIA briefing.

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I asked whether this meant that Tegra 2 is sub-optimal for Microsoft’s Direct X API; but NVIDIA says it is sufficiently similar that it makes no difference.

Nevertheless, Tegra 2 has been designed with Android in mind, not Windows. There are a couple of reasons for this. The main one is that Android has all the momentum in the market; but apart from that, Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm for Windows Phone 7, which runs on Snapdragon, shutting out NVIDIA at the initial launch. NVIDIA is a long-term Microsoft partner and the shift from Windows Mobile to Android has apparently cost NVIDIA a lot of time. The shift took place around 18 months ago, when NVIDIA saw how the market was moving. That shift “cost us a year to a year and a half of products to market”, I was told – a delay which must include changes at every level from hardware optimisation, to designing the kind of package that suits the devices Android vendors want to build, to building up knowledge of Android in order to market effectively to hardware vendors.

Despite this focus, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 8 running on Tegra during Steve Ballmer’s keynote, so this should not be taken to mean that Windows or Windows CE will not run. I still found it interesting to hear this example of how deeply the industry has moved away from Microsoft’s mobile platform.

Microsoft should worry. NVIDIA foresees that “all of your computing needs are ultimately going to be surfaced through your mobile device”. Tegra 2 is a step along the way, since HDMI support is built-in, enabling high resolution displays. If you want to do desktop computing, you sit down at your desk, pop your mobile into a dock, and get on with your work or play using a large screen and a keyboard. It seems plausible to me.

During the press conference at CES we were shown an example of simultaneous rich graphic gaming on PC, PlayStation 3, and Tegra 2 Smartphone.

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Alongside Android, Tegra 2 is optimised for Adobe Flash. NVIDIA has been given full access to the source of the Flash player in order to deliver hardware acceleration.

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Actual devices

What about actual devices? Two that were shown at CES are the LG Optimus 2X:

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and the Motorola Atrix 4G:

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Both sport impressive specifications; though the Guardian’s Charles Arthur, who attended a briefing on the Atrix 4G, expresses some scepticism about whether HD video (which needs a large display) and the full desktop version of FireFox are really necessary on a phone. Apparently the claimed battery life is only 8 hours; some of us might be willing to sacrifice a degree of that capability for a longer battery life.

Still, while some manufacturers will get the balance between cost, features, size and battery life wrong, history tells that we will find good ways to use these all this new processing and graphics power, especially if we can get to the point where such a device, combined with cloud computing and a desktop dock, becomes the only client most of us need.

NVIDIA says that over 50 Android/Tegra 2 products are set to be released by mid-2011, in tablet as well as Smartphone form factors. I’m guessing that at least some of these will be winners.

.net, microsoft, mobile, professional, silverlight, software development, windows, windows 7, xbox

Steve Ballmer at CES: Microsoft pins mobile hopes on Windows 8

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave the keynote at CES in Las Vegas last night. It was a polished performance and everything worked, but was short on vision or any immediate answer to the twin forces of Apple iPad and Google Android which are squeezing out Microsoft in the mobile world – smartphones and tablets – which currently forms the centre of attention in personal computing.

That said, CES stands for Consumer Electronics Show; and Ballmer did a good job showing off how well Kinect is performing, claiming sales of 8 million already. He showed more examples of controlling Xbox through speech and gesture, and said that Kinect is also boosting sales of the console; clearly it is now taking it beyond the hardcore market of first-person shooters.

We saw some fun new Windows devices, such as Acer’s dual-screen Iconia laptop.

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There was also a demonstration of the updated Microsoft Surface which now runs full Windows 7 and does not require hidden cameras, so that it can now be used in more scenarios, such as for interactive digital signage.

All well and good; but what about mobile? We got a Windows Phone 7 demo, but no sales figures, nor any mobile partners on stage; I’m guessing they are too busy promoting their new Android devices. Ballmer did say that the phone is coming on Verizon and Sprint in the first half of this year. Application availability is improving, but how will Microsoft win attention for its smartphone? My local high street is full of mobile phone shops, none of which even stock it as far as I can tell. There is a tie-in with Xbox Live which may help a little.

The problem though is that Microsoft does not seem to be wholeheartedly behind the Windows Phone 7 OS, which is based on Windows CE with a new GUI and Silverlight/XNA runtime for applications. Rather, Microsoft is signalling that full Windows is its future mobile operating system. At CES it announced Windows on ARM, the processor of choice in mobile, and during the keynote we saw the next version of Windows (though with the Windows 7 GUI) running on various ARM devices.

The power available in new System on a Chip packages like NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 leaves me in no doubt that full Windows could technically run on almost any size of device; but that does not make it the sensible choice for all form factors. Note also that while it was not mentioned at CES, NVIDIA has said that Tegra 2 is optimized for Android.

Microsoft could plausibly have released a tablet based on the Windows Phone 7 OS, which is built for touch control, this year. Instead, it will be at least 2012 before we see a Windows 8 tablet, and we are taking it on trust that this will really work nicely with touch and not need a stylus dangling at the side. By then Apple will, I presume, be releasing iPad generation 3.

Putting this in a developer context, what is Microsoft’s mobile development platform? Silverlight and XNA? The full Windows native API? Or HTML 5? Each of these is very different and it seems to me a muddled story.

.net, adobe, amazon, apple, cloud computing, flash, intel, iphone, java, microsoft, mobile, nokia, open source, oracle, professional, silverlight, software development, Sun, visual studio, Web, web authoring, windows, windows 7

Ten big tech trends from 2010

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This was an amazing year for tech. Here are some of the things that struck me as significant.

Sun Java became Oracle Java

Oracle acquired Sun and set about imposing its authority on Java. Java is still Java, but Oracle lacks Sun’s commitment to open source and community – though even in Sun days there was tension in this area. That was nothing to the fireworks we saw in 2010, with Java Community Process members resigning, IBM switching from its commitment to the Apache Harmony project to the official OpenJDK, and the Apache foundation waging a war of words against Oracle that was impassioned but, it seems, futile.

Microsoft got cloud religion

Only up to a point, of course. This is the Windows and Office company, after all. However – and this is a little subjective – this was the year when Microsoft convinced me it is serious about Windows Azure for hosting our applications and data. In addition, it seems to me that the company is willing to upset its partners if necessary for the sake of its hosted Exchange and SharePoint – BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), soon to become Office 365.

This is a profound change for Microsoft, bearing in mind its business model. I spoke to a few partners when researching this article for the Register and was interested by the level of unease that was expressed.

Microsoft also announced some impressive customer wins for BPOS, especially in government, though the price the customers pay for these is never mentioned in the press releases.

Microsoft Silverlight shrank towards Windows-only

Silverlight is Microsoft’s browser plug-in which delivers multimedia and the .NET Framework to Windows and Mac; it is also the development platform for Windows Phone 7. It still works on a Mac, but in 2010 Microsoft made it clear that cross-platform Silverlight is no longer its strategy (if it ever was), and undermined the Mac version by adding Windows-specific features that interoperate with the local operating system. Silverlight is still an excellent runtime, powerful, relatively lightweight, easy to deploy, and supported by strong tools in Visual Studio 2010. If you have users who do not run Windows though, it now looks a brave choice.

The Apple iPad was a hit

I still have to pinch myself when thinking about how Microsoft now needs to catch up with Apple in tablet computing. I got my first tablet in 2003, yes seven years ago, and it ran Windows. Now despite seven years of product refinement it is obvious that Windows tablets miss the mark that Apple has hit with its first attempt – though drawing heavily on what it learnt with the equally successful iPhone. I see iPads all over the place, in business as well as elsewhere, and it seems to me that the success of a touch interface on this larger screen signifies a transition in personal computing that will have a big impact.

Google Android was a hit

Just when Apple seemed to have the future of mobile computing in its hands, Google’s Android alternative took off, benefiting from mass adoption by everyone-but-Apple among hardware manufacturers. Android is not as elegantly designed or as usable as Apple’s iOS, but it is close enough; and it is a relatively open platform that runs Adobe Flash and other apps that do not meet Apple’s approval. There are other contenders: Microsoft Windows Phone 7; RIM’s QNX-based OS in the PlayBook; HP’s Palm WebOS; Nokia Symbian and Intel/Nokia MeeGo – but how many mobile operating systems can succeed? Right now, all we can safely say is that Apple has real competition from Android.

HP fell out with Microsoft

Here is an interesting one. The year kicked off with a press release announcing that HP and Microsoft love each other to the extent of $250 million over three years – but if you looked closely, that turned out to be less than a similar deal in 2006. After that, the signs were even less friendly. HP acquired Palm in April, signalling its intent to compete with Windows Mobile rather than adopting it; and later this year HP announced that it was discontinuing its Windows Home Server range. Of course HP remains a strong partner for Windows servers, desktops and laptops; but these are obvious signs of strain.

The truth though is that these two companies need one another. I think they should kiss and make up.

eBook readers were a hit

I guess this is less developer-oriented; but 2010 was the year when electronic book publishing seemed to hit the mainstream. Like any book lover I have mixed feelings about this and its implications for bookshops. I doubt we will see books disappear to the same extent as records and CDs; but I do think that book downloads will grow rapidly over the next few years and that paper-and-ink sales will diminish. It is a fascinating tech battle too: Amazon Kindle vs Apple iPad vs the rest (Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble Nook, and others which share their EPUB format). I have a suspicion that converged devices like the iPad may win this one, but displays that are readable in sunlight have special requirements so I am not sure.

HTML 5 got real

2010 was a huge year for HTML 5 – partly because Microsoft announced its support in Internet Explorer 9, currently in beta; and partly because the continued growth of browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, and the WebKit-based Google Chrome, Apple Safari and numerous mobile browsers showed that HTML 5 would be an important platform with or without Microsoft. Yes, it is fragmented and unfinished; but more and more of HTML 5 is usable now or in the near future.

Adobe Flash survived Apple and HTML 5

2010 was the year of Steve Jobs’ notorious Thoughts on Flash as well as a big year for HTML 5, which encroaches on territory that used to require the services of a browser plug-in. Many people declared Adobe Flash dead, but the reality was different and the company had a great year. Apple’s focus on design and usability helps Adobe’s design-centric approach even while Apple’s refusal to allow Flash on its mobile computers opposes it.

Windows 7 was a hit

Huge relief in Redmond as Windows 7 sold and sold. The future belongs to mobile and cloud; but Windows is not going away soon, and version 7 is driving lots of upgrades as even XP diehards move over. I’m guessing that we will get first sight of Windows 8 in 2011. Another triumph, or another Vista?

microsoft, Uncategorized, windows, windows 7

25 years of Windows: triumph and tragedy

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I wrote a (very) short history of Windows for the Register, focusing on the launch of Windows 1.0 25 years ago.

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I used Oracle VirtualBox to run Windows 1.0 under emulation since it more or less works. I found an old floppy with DOS 3.3 since Windows 1.0 does not run on DOS 6.2, the only version offered by MSDN. In the course of my experimentation I discovered that Virtual PC still supports floppy drives but no longer surfaces this in the UI. You have to use a script. Program Manager Ben Armstrong says:

Most users of Windows Virtual PC do not need to use floppy disks with their virtual machines, as general usage of floppy disks has become rarer and rarer.

An odd remark in the context of an application designed for legacy software.

What of Windows itself? Its huge success is a matter of record, but it is hard to review its history without thinking how much better it could have been. Even in version 1.0 you can see the intermingling of applications, data and system files that proved so costly later on. It is also depressing to see how mistakes in the DOS/Windows era went on to infect the NT range.

Another observation. It took Microsoft 8 years to release a replacement for DOS/Windows – Windows NT in 1993 – and another 8 years to bring Windows NT to the mainstream on desktop and server with Windows XP in 2001. It is now 9 years later; will there ever be another ground-up rewrite, or do just get gradual improvements/bloat from now on?

I don’t count 64-bit Windows as a ground-up rewrite since it is really a port of the 32-bit version.

Finally, lest I be accused of being overly negative, it is also amazing to look at Windows 1.0, implemented in fewer than 100 files in a single directory, and Windows 7/Server 2008 R2, a platform on which you can run your entire business.

cloud computing, microsoft, mobile, software, windows, windows 7, xbox

The cloud permeates Microsoft’s business more than we may realise

I’m in the habit of summarising Microsoft’s financial results in a simple table. Here is how it looks for the recently announced figures.

Quarter ending September 30 2010 vs quarter ending September 30 2009, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Profit Change
Client (Windows + Live) 4785 1905 3323 1840
Server and Tools 3959 409 1630 393
Online 527 40 -560 -83
Business (Office) 5126 612 3388 561
Entertainment and devices 1795 383 382 122

The Windows figures are excellent, mostly reflecting Microsoft’s success in delivering a successor to Windows XP that is good enough to drive upgrades.

I’m more impressed though with the Server and tools performance – which I assume is mostly Server – though noting that it now includes Windows Azure. Microsoft does not break out the Azure figures but said that it grew 40% over the previous quarter; not especially impressive given that Azure has not been out long and will have grown from a small base.

The Office figures, also good, include Sharepoint, Exchange and BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which is to become Office 365. Microsoft reported “tripled number of business customers using cloud services.”

Online, essentially the search and advertising business, is poor as ever, though Microsoft says Bing gained market share in the USA. Entertainment and devices grew despite poor sales for Windows Mobile, caught between the decline of the old mobile OS and the launch of Windows Phone 7.

What can we conclude about the health of the company? The simple fact is that despite Apple, Google, and mis-steps in Windows, Mobile, and online, Microsoft is still a powerful money-making machine and performing well in many parts of its business. The company actually does a poor job of communicating its achievements in my experience. For example, the rather dull keynote from TechEd Berlin yesterday.

Of course Microsoft’s business is still largely dependent on an on-premise software model that many of us feel will inevitably decline. Still, my other reflection on these figures is that the cloud permeates Microsoft’s business more than a casual glance reveals.

The “Online” business is mainly Bing and advertising as far as I can tell; and despite CTO Ray Ozzie telling us back in 2005 of the importance of services financed by advertising, that business revolution has not come to pass as he imagined. I assume that Windows Live is no more successful than Online.

What is more important is that we are seeing Server and tools growing Azure and cloud-hosted virtualisation business, and Office growing hosted Exchange and SharePoint business. I’d expect both businesses to continue to grow, as Microsoft finally starts helping both itself and its customers with cloud migration.

That said, since the hosted business is not separated from the on-premise business, and since some is in the hands of partners, it is hard to judge its real significance.

apple, development, microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software, software development, web authoring, windows, windows 7

Understanding the Silverlight controversy

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There has been much discussion of the future of Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin since Server and Tools President Bob Muglia’s statement in a PDC interview that “Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted”, and spoke of HTML as the “only true cross platform solution”.

The debate was even reported on the BBC’s web site under the headline Coders decry Silverlight change.

It is unfortunate that headlines tend to think in binary; alive or dead. In other words, if Microsoft is repositioning Silverlight then it must be killing it.

That is not the case. Muglia did not say that Silverlight has no future, nor that it was unimportant. He affirmed that there will be another version of Silverlight for Windows and Mac, as well as highlighting that it is the development platform for Windows Phone.

Speaking personally for a moment, I have reviewed Silverlight favourably in the past and still regard it as a great achievement by Microsoft: the power of the .NET runtime, the elegance of C#, the flexible layout capabilities of XAML, integrated with a capable multimedia player, and wrapped in a lightweight package that in my experience installs quickly and easily.

Silverlight forms an excellent client for cloud services such as those delivered by the Azure platform which we heard about at PDC.

Perhaps it is the case that IE9 maestro Dean Hachamovitch tended towards the gleeful as he demonstrated features in HTML and JavaScript that previously would have required Silverlight or Flash. At the same time, IE9 is not yet released, and even when it is, will not match the capabilities or the tooling and libraries available for Silverlight.

The Silverlight press generated by PDC must have been disappointing and frustrating for Microsoft’s Silverlight team. I am reading reports of Developer VP Scott Guthrie’s remarks at the DevConnections conference this week.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated … I have more people working on Silverlight now than any time in Silverlight history … don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

I have great respect for Guthrie; you need only see the speed and manner with which he reacted to the recent ASP.NET security scare – not trying to diminish its importance, delivering practical advice, answering comments, and working with his team to come up with workarounds and a proper solution as quickly as possible – to appreciate his commitment and that he understands the needs of developers.

So were posts like my own Silverlight dream is over unfair and inaccurate? Well, there is always a risk of being misunderstood; but the problem, as I perceive it, is not primarily about Silverlight’s progress on Windows and Mac. The problem is that those two desktop platforms no longer have sufficient reach; or rather, even if they have sufficient reach today, they will not tomorrow. We have the rise of iOS and Android; an explosion of non-Windows tablets in the wings; we have a man like James Gardner, CTO at the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions, writing of Windows 7 that:

Personally, I think it likely this is  the last version of Windows anyone ever widely deploys

See also Cliff Saran’s comments at Computer Weekly.

In other words, Guthrie’s team can do a cracking job with Silverlight 5 for Windows and Mac – it could even merge Silverlight with WPF and make it the primary application platform for Windows – but that would still not address the concerns raised by what happened at PDC. If Silverlight remains imprisoned in Windows and Mac, it cannot deliver on its original promise.

What could Microsoft do to restore confidence in Silverlight? Something along these lines would make me change my mind:

  1. Announce Silverlight for Android.
  2. Nurture Silverlight for Symbian.
  3. Follow through on commitments for Silverlight on Moblin/MeeGo.
  4. Either implement Silverlight for Linux, or enter a deeper partnership with Novell’s Mono so that Microsoft-certified Silverlight runtimes appear on Linux in a timely manner alongside Microsoft’s releases.
  5. Come up with a solution for Silverlight on iOS. One idea is to follow Adobe with a native code compiler from Silverlight to iOS. Another would be a way of compiling XAML and C# to SVG and JavaScript. Neither would be perfect; but as it is, every company that starts deploying iPads or their successors is a customer that cannot use Silverlight.

Do I think Microsoft will implement the above? I doubt it. My interpretation of Muglia’s remarks is that Microsoft has decided not to go down that path, but to reserve Silverlight for Windows, Mac, and Windows Phone, and to invest in HTML for broad-reach applications.

That may well be the right decision; it is one that makes sense, though Microsoft was perhaps unwise to highlight it before IE9 is released. Further, cross-platform is not in Microsoft’s blood, and the path that Silverlight has taken is in line which what you would expect from a company built on Windows.

Silverlight is not dead, and for developers targeting Windows, Mac and Windows Phone it is as good as ever, and no doubt will be even better in its next version. But failing another change of heart, it will never now be WPF Everywhere; and PDC 2010 was when that truth sank home.

Update: this is pretty much what Guthrie says in his latest post:

Where our strategy has shifted since we first started working on Silverlight is that the number of Internet connected devices out there in the world has increased significantly in the last 2 years (not just with phones, but also with embedded devices like TVs), and trying to get a single implementation of a runtime across all of them is no longer really practical (many of the devices are closed platforms that do not allow extensibility).  This is true for any single runtime implementation – whether it is Silverlight, Flash, Java, Cocoa, a specific HTML5 implementation, or something else.  If people want to have maximum reach across *all* devices then HTML will provide the broadest reach (this is true with HTML4 today – and will eventually be true with HTML5 in the future).  One of the things we as a company are working hard on is making sure we have the best browser and HTML5 implementation on Windows devices through the great work we are doing with IE9.