Tag Archives: microsoft

apple, laptops

Fast service at Microsoft store in San Jose

I made a brief visit to the Valley Fair mall in San Jose yesterday and took a quick look at the Microsoft and Apple stores.

Personally I like the Microsoft stores. It is probably not the cheapest place to buy a Windows machine, but you do get the Signature install which as Microsoft notes:

Many new PCs come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer down—removing all that is a pain, so we do it for you!

So much for the famous Windows partner ecosystem, eh! But I reckon this is worth the extra cost for most people.

Now, before looking at the following images, which were just snapped as I passed, note that:

1. It was a quiet Monday afternoon and none of the stores was busy.

2. I guess San Jose is Apple land; certainly I have not seen the Seattle store this quiet.

Nevertheless, there did seem to be a mismatch between the numbers of staff and customers. When I went in I was offered help three times and a free drink once.

The guy in yellow at the front left is protesting about some alleged Microsoft misdemeanour.

image

The Apple store was not exactly heaving and there were plenty of blue shirts, but a few more customers.

image

apple, google, microsoft, mobile, windows

Review: Digital Wars by Charles Arthur

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Subtitled Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the internet, this is an account by the Guardian’s Technology Editor of the progress of three tech titans between 1998 and the present day. In 1998, Google was just getting started, Apple was at the beginning of its recovery under the returning CEO Steve Jobs, and Microsoft dominated PCs and was busy crushing Netscape.

Here is how the market capitalization of the three changed between 1998 and 2011:

  End 1998 Mid 2011
Apple $5.4 billion $346.7 billion
Google $10 million $185.1 billion
Microsoft $344.6 billion $214.3 billion

This book tells the story behind that dramatic change in fortunes. It is a great read, written in a concise, clear and engaging style, and informed by the author’s close observation of the technology industry over that period.

That said, it is Apple that gets the best quality coverage here, not only because it is the biggest winner, but also because it is the company for which Arthur feels most affinity. When it comes to Microsoft the book focuses mainly on the company’s big failures in search, digital music and smartphones, but although these failures are well described, the question of why it has performed so badly is not fully articulated, though there is reference to the impact of antitrust legislation and an unflattering portrayal of CEO Steve Ballmer. The inner workings of Google are even less visible and if your main interest is the ascent of Google you should look elsewhere.

Leaving aside Google then, describing the success of Apple alongside Microsoft’s colossal blunders makes compelling reading. Arthur is perhaps a little unfair to Microsoft, because he skips over some of the company’s better moments, such as the success of Windows 7 and Windows Server, or even the Xbox 360, though he would argue I think that those successes are peripheral to his theme which is internet and mobile.

The heart of the book is in chapters four, on digital music, and five, on smartphones. The iPod, after all, was the forerunner of the Apple iPhone, and the iPhone was the forerunner of the iPad. Microsoft’s famous ecosystem of third-party hardware partners failed to compete with the Ipod, and by the time the company got it mostly right by abandoning its partners and creating the Zune, it was too late.

The smartphone story played out even worse for Microsoft, given that this was a market where it already had significant presence with Windows Mobile. Arthur describes the launch of the iPhone, and then recounts how Microsoft acquired a great mobile phone team with a company called Danger, and proceeded to destroy it. The Danger/Pink episode shows more than any other how broken is Microsoft’s management and mobile strategy. Danger was acquired in February 2008. There was then, Arthur describes, an internal battle between the Windows Mobile team and the Danger team, won by the Windows Mobile team under Andy Lees, and resulting in 18 months delay while the Danger operating system was rewritten to use Windows CE. By the time the first new “Project Pink” phone was delivered it was short on features and no longer wanted by Verizon, the partner operator. The “Kin” phone was on the market for only 48 days.

The Kin story was dysfunctional Microsoft at its worst, a huge waste of money and effort, and could have broken a smaller company. Microsoft shrugged it off, showing that its Windows and Office cash cows continue to insulate it against incompetence, probably too much for its own long-tem health.

Finally, the book leaves the reader wondering how the story continues. Arthur gets the significance of the iPad in business:

Cook would reel off statistics about the number of Fortune 500 companies ‘testing or deploying’ iPads, of banks and brokers that were trying it, and of serious apps being written for it. Apple was going, ever so quietly, after the business computing market – the one that had belonged for years to Microsoft.

Since he wrote those words that trend has increased, forming a large part of what is called Bring Your Own Device or The Consumerization of IT. Microsoft does have what it hopes is an answer, which is Windows 8, under a team led by the same Steven Sinofsky who made a success of Windows 7. The task is more challenging this time round though: Windows 7 was an improved version of Windows Vista, whereas Windows 8 is a radical new departure, at least in respect of its Metro user interface which is for the Tablet market. If Windows 8 fares as badly against the iPad as Plays for Sure fared against the iPod, then expect further decline in Microsoft’s market value.

 

cloud computing, microsoft, mobile, professional

System Center 2012, Windows 8 and the BYOD revolution

Yesterday I attended a UK Microsoft MMS catch-up session in Manchester, aimed at those who could not make it to Las Vegas last month. The subject was the new System Center 2012, and how it fits with Microsoft’s concept of the private cloud, and its strategy for supporting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), the proliferation of mobile devices on which users now expect to be able to receive work email and do other work.

The session, I have to say, was on the dry side; but taken on its own terms System Center 2012 looks good. I was particularly interested in how Microsoft defines “private cloud” versus just a bunch of virtual machines (JBVM?). Attendees where told that a private cloud has four characteristics:

  • Pooled resources: an enterprise cloud, not dedicated servers for each department.
  • Self service: users (who might also be admins) can get new server resources on demand.
  • Elasticity: apps that scale on demand.
  • Usage based: could be charge-back, but more often show-back, the ability to report on what resources each user is consuming.

Microsoft’s virtualization platform is based on Hyper-V, which we were assured now represents 28% of new server virtual machines, but System Center has some support for VMWare and Citrix Xen as well.

System Center now consists of eight major components:

  • Virtual Machine Manager: manage your private cloud
  • Configuration Manager (SCCM): deploy client applications, manage your mobile devices
  • Operations Manager: monitor network and application health
  • Data Protection Manager: backup, not much mentioned
  • Service Manager: Help desk and change management, not much mentioned
  • Orchestrator: a newish product acquired from Opalis in 2009, automates tasks and is critical for self-service
  • App Controller: manage applications on your cloud
  • Endpoint protection: anti-malware, praised occasionally but not really presented yesterday

I will not bore you by going through this blow by blow, but I do have some observations.

First, in a Microsoft-platform world System Center makes a lot of sense for large organisations who do not want public cloud and who want to move to the next stage in managing their servers and clients without radically changing their approach.

Following on from that, System Center meets some of the requirements Microsoft laid out as the start of the session, but not all. In particular, it is weak on elasticity. Microsoft needs something like Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk which lets you deploy an application, set a minimum and maximum instance count, and have the platform handle the mechanics of load balancing and scaling up and down on demand. You can do it on System Center, we were told, if you can write a bunch of scripts to make it work. At some future point Orchestrator will get auto scale-out functionality.

Second, it seems to me unfortunate that Microsoft has two approaches to cloud management, one in System Center for private cloud, and one in Azure for public cloud. You would expect some differences, of course; but looking at the deployment process for applications on System Center App Controller it seems to be a different model from what you use for Azure.

Third, System Center 2012 has features to support BYOD and enterprise app stores, and my guess is that this is the way forward. Mobile device management in Configuration Manager uses a Configuration Manager Client installed on the device, or where that is not possible, exploits the support for Exchange ActiveSync policies found in many current smartphones, including features like Approved Application List, Require Device Encryption, and remote wipe after a specified number of wrong passwords entered.

The Software Center in Configuration Manager lets users request and install applications using a variety of different mechanisms under the covers, from Windows Installer to scripts and virtualised applications.

Where this gets even more interesting is in the next version of InTune, the cloud-based PC and device management tool. We saw a demonstration of a custon iOS app installed via self-service from InTune onto an iPhone. I presume this feature will also come to Software Center in SCCM though it is not there yet as far as I aware.

You can also see this demonstrated in the second MMS keynote here – it is the last demo in the Day 2 keynote.

image

InTune differs from System Center in that it is not based on Windows domains, though you can apply a limited set of policies. In some respects it is similar to the new self-service portal which Microsoft is bringing out for deploying Metro apps to Windows RT (Windows on ARM) devices, as described here.

This set me thinking. Which machines will be easier to manage in the enterprise, the Windows boxes with their group policy and patch management and complex application installs? Or the BYOD-style devices, including Windows RT, with their secure operating systems, isolated applications, and easy self-service app install and removal?

The latter approach seems to me a better approach. Of course most corporate apps do not work that way yet, though app virtualisation and desktop virtualisation helps, but it seems to me that this is the right direction for corporate IT.

The implication is two-fold. One is that basing your client device strategy around iPads makes considerable sense. This, I imagine, is what Microsoft fears.

The other implication is that Windows RT (which includes Office) plus Metro apps is close to the perfect corporate client. Microsoft VP Steven Sinofsky no doubt gets this, which is why he is driving Metro in Windows 8 despite the fact that the Windows community largely wants Windows 7 + and not the hybrid Metro and desktop OS that we have in Windows 8.

Windows 8 on x86 will be less suitable, because it perpetuates the security issues in Windows 7, and because users will tend to spend their time in familiar Windows desktop applications which lack the security and isolation benefits of Metro apps, and which will be hard to use on a tablet without keyboard and mouse.

microsoft, visual studio

A little colour returns to Visual Studio 11 – but not much

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Microsoft has responded to user feedback by re-introducing colour into the Visual Studio 11 IDE. The top request in the official feedback forum was for more colour in the toolbars and icons.

image

Now Microsoft’s Monty Hammontree, who is Director of User Experience, Microsoft Developer Tools Division – it is interesting that such a post exists – has blogged about the company’s response:

We’ve taken this feedback and based on what we heard have made a number of changes planned for Visual Studio 11 RC.

That said, developers expecting a return to the relatively colourful icons in Visual Studio 2010 will be disappointed. Hammontree posted the following side by side image:

image

This shows Visual Studio 10 first, then the beta, and then the forthcoming release candidate. Squint carefully and you can see a few new splashes of colour.

image

You can also see the the word toolbox is no longer all upper case, another source of complaint.

Hammontree explains that colour has been added to selected icons in order to help distinguish between common actions, differentiate icons within the Solution Explorer, and to reintroduce IntelliSense cues.

Did Microsoft do enough? Some users have welcomed the changes:

You have to appreciate a company that listens to there [sic] users and actually makes changes based off feedback. You guys rock!

while others are doubtful:

with respect, I fear that the changes are token ones and that whoever’s big idea this monochromatic look is, is stubbornly refusing to let go of it in spite of the users overwhelming rejection of it.

or the wittier:

I’m glad you noticed all the feedback about the Beta, when people were upset that you chose the wrong shade of gray.

While the changes are indeed subtle, they are undoubtedly an improvement for those hankering for more colour.

Another issue is that by the time a product hits beta in the Microsoft product cycle, it is in most cases too late to make really major changes. The contentious Metro UI in Windows 8 will be another interesting example.

That said, there are more important things in Visual Studio 11 than the colour scheme, despite the attention the issue has attracted.

cloud computing, professional, software development, Web

Microsoft’s Visual Studio LightSwitch: does it have a future?

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A recent and thorough piece on Visual Studio LightSwitch prompted a Twitter discussion on what kind of future the product has. Background:

  • LightSwitch is an application generator which builds data-driven applications.
  • A LightSwitch application uses ASP.NET on the server and Silverlight on the client.
  • LightSwitch applications can be deployed to Windows Azure
  • LightSwitch apps can either be browser-hosted or use Silverlight out of browser for the desktop
  • LightSwitch is model-driven so in principle it could generate other kinds of client, such as HTML5 or Windows 8 Metro.
  • LightSwitch first appeared last year, and has been updated for Visual Studio 11, now in beta.

I have looked at LightSwitch in some detail, including a hands-on where I built an application. I have mixed feelings about the product. It was wrongly marketed, as the kind of thing a non-professional could easily pick up to generate an application for their business. In my opinion it is too complex for most such people. The real market is professional developers looking for greater productivity. As a way of building a multi-tier application which does its best to enforce good design principles, LightSwitch is truly impressive; though I also found annoyances like skimpy documentation, and that some things which should have been easy turned out to be difficult. The visual database designer is excellent.

The question now: what kind of future does LightSwitch have? Conceptually, it is a great product and could evolve into something useful, but I question whether Microsoft will stick with it long enough. Here is what counts against it:

  • The decision to generate Silverlight applications now looks wrong. Microsoft is not going to do much more with Silverlight, and is more focused on HTML5 and JavaScript, or Windows Runtime for Metro-style apps in Windows 8 and some future Windows Phone. There is some family resemblance between Windows Runtime and Silverlight, but not necessarily enough to make porting easy.
  • There is no mobile support, not even for Windows Phone 7 which runs Silverlight.
  • I imagine sales have been dismal. The launch product was badly marketed and perplexing to many.

What about the case in favour? Silverlight enthusiast Michael Washington observes that the new Visual Studio 11 version of LightSwitch generates OData feeds on the server, rather than WCF RIA Services. OData is a REST-based service that is suitable for consumption by many different kinds of client. To prove his point, Washington has created demo mobile apps using HTML5 and JQuery – no Silverlight in sight.

image

Pic from here.

Washington also managed to extract this comment from Microsoft’s Steve Hoag on the future of LightSwitch, in an MSDN forum discussion:

LightSwitch is far from dead. Without revealing anything specific I can confirm that the following statements are true:

– There is a commitment for a long term life of this product, with other versions planned

– There is a commitment to explore creation of apps other than Silverlight, although nothing will be announced at this time

Hoag is the documentation lead for LightSwitch.

That said, Microsoft has been known to make such commitments before but later abandon them. Microsoft told me it was committed to cross-platform Silverlight, for example. And it was, for a bit, at least on Windows and Mac; but it is not now. Microsoft was committed to IronRuby and IronPython, once.

For those with even longer memories, I recall a discussion on CompuServe about Visual Basic for DOS. This was the last version of Microsoft Basic for DOS, a fine language in its way, and with a rather good character-based interface builder. Unfortunately it was buggy, and users were desperate for a bug-fix release. Into this discussion appeared a guy from Microsoft, who announced that he was responsible for the forthcoming update to Visual Basic for DOS and asked for the top requests.

Good news – except that there never was an update.

The truth is that with LightSwitch still in beta for Visual Studio 11, it is unlikely that any decision has been made about its future. My guess, and it is only that, is that the Visual Studio 11 version will be little used and that there will be no major update. If I am wrong and it is a big hit, then there will be an update. If I am right about its lack of uptake, but its backing within Microsoft is strong enough, then maybe in Visual Studio 12 or even sooner we will get a version that does it right, with output options for cross-platform HTML5 clients and for Windows Phone and Windows Metro. But do not hold your breath.

apple, comment, mobile, smartphones, tablets

Which online storage service? SkyDrive is best value but lacks cool factor

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This week both Microsoft and Google got their act together and released Dropbox-like applications for their online storage services, SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively.

Why has Dropbox been winning in this space? Fantastic convenience. Just save a file into the Dropbox folder on your PC or Mac, and it syncs everywhere, including iOS and Android mobiles. No official Windows Phone 7 client yet; but nothing is perfect.

Now both SkyDrive and the new Google Drive are equally convenient, though with variations in platform support. Apple iCloud is also worth a mention, since it syncs across iOS and Mac devices. So too is Box, though I doubt either Box or Dropbox enjoyed the recent launches from the big guys.

How do they compare? Here is a quick look at the pros and cons. First, pricing per month:

  Free 25GB 50GB
Apple iCloud 5GB $3.33 $8.33
Box 5GB $9.99 $19.99
Dropbox 2GB   $9.99
Google Drive 5GB $2.49 $4.99 (100GB)
Microsoft SkyDrive 7GB $0.83
(27GB)		 $2.08
(52GB)

and then platform support:

  Web Android Black
berry		 iOS Linux Mac Windows Windows
Phone
Apple iCloud ✓ X X ✓ X ✓ Limited X
Box ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ ✓ X
Dropbox ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X
Google Drive ✓ ✓ X ✓ X ✓ ✓ X
Microsoft SkyDrive ✓ X X ✓ X ✓ ✓ ✓

Before you say it though, this is not really about price and it is hard to compare like with like – though it is obvious that SkyDrive wins on cost. Note also that existing SkyDrive users have a free upgrade to 25GB if they move quickly.

A few quick notes on the differences between these services:

Apple iCloud is not exposed as cloud storage as such. Rather, this is an API built into iOS and the latest OS X. Well behaved applications are expected to use storage in a way that supports the iCloud service. Apple’s service takes care of synchronisation across devices. Apple’s own apps such as iWork support iCloud. The advantage is that users barely need to think about it; synchronisation just happens – too much so for some tastes, since you may end up spraying your documents all over and trusting them to iCloud without realising it. As you might expect from Apple, cross-platform support is poor.

Box is the most expensive service, though it has a corporate focus that will appeal to businesses. For example, you can set expiration dates for shared content. Enterprise plans include Active Directory and LDAP support. There are numerous additional apps which use the Box service. With Box, as with Dropbox, there is an argument that since you are using a company dedicated to cross-platform online storage, you are less vulnerable to major changes in your service caused by a change of policy by one of the giants. Then again, will these specialists survive now that the big guns are all in?

Dropbox deserves credit for showing the others how to do it, Apple iCloud aside. Excellent integration on Mac and Windows, and excellent apps on the supported mobile platforms. It has attracted huge numbers of free users though, raising questions about its business model, and its security record is not the best. One of the problems for all these services is that even 2GB of data is actually a lot, unless you get into space-devouring things like multimedia files or system backups. This means that many will never pay to upgrade.

Google Drive presents as a folder in Windows and on the Mac, but it is as much an extension of Google Apps, the online office suite, as it is a storage service. This can introduce friction. Documents in Google Apps appear there, with extensions like .gdoc and .gsheet, and if you double-click them they open in your web browser. Offline editing is not supported. Still, you do not have to use Google Apps with Google Drive. Another issue is that Google may trawl your data to personalise your advertising and so on, which is uncomfortable – though when it comes to paid-for or educational services, Google says:

Note that there is no ad-related scanning or processing in Google Apps for Education or Business with ads disabled

Google Drive can be upgraded to 16TB, which is a factor if you want huge capacity online; but by this stage you should be looking at specialist services like Amazon S3 and others.

Microsoft SkyDrive is also to some extent an adjunct to its online applications. Save an Office 2010 document in SkyDrive, and you can edit it online using Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps have frustrations, but the advantage is that the document format is the same on the web as it is on the desktop, so you can also edit it freely offline. A snag with SkyDrive is lack of an Android client, other than the browser.

Conclusions

There are many more differences between these services than I have described. Simply though, if you use a particular platform or application such as Apple, Google Apps or Microsoft Office, it makes sense to choose the service that aligns with it. If you want generic storage and do not care who provides it, SkyDrive is best value and I am surprised this has not been more widely observed in reports on the new launches.

One of Microsoft’s problems is that is perceived as an old-model company wedded to the desktop, and lacks the cool factor associated with Apple, Google and more recent arrivals like Dropbox.

microsoft, mobile, professional, windows

Microsoft re-imagining client computer management for Windows 8

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I am surprised this post by Microsoft Program Manger Jeffrey Sutherland has not attracted more attention. It describes enterprise app deployment to Windows on ARM devices, now officially called Windows RT devices. These devices run Windows 8 compiled for ARM, which means high efficiency but a greater degree of lockdown than with x86. In particular, desktop applications cannot be installed, though Microsoft Office is pre-installed, but without Outlook.

The interesting aspect is that what Sutherland describes is not just a way of managing Windows RT computers, but a new approach which fits with the trend towards BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – where employees use their own devices for work as well as at home.

Quick reminder: in the old model, Windows clients are managed by being joined to a domain, controlled by Active Directory. Once domain-joined, the machine is subject to group policy administered by the domain, a fine-grained system for configuring settings and deploying applications.

Windows RT devices cannot be joined to a domain. However, there is a new option in Control Panel to “connect to your company network”.

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Note that the user must still be joined to the Active Directory domain. Since this is now joining the machine to the network and subjecting it to a degree of centralised control, Windows RT network joining is conceptually not far distant from domain joining, but it is a completely new approach.

The next step is to install a management agent which communicates with the Enterprise network.

Once network-joined and with the agent installed, the machine:

  • Is subject to a set of security policies covering password and logon rules (eg whether to allow picture logons)
  • Is audited for antivirus and antispyware status, drive encryption and auto-update; network connection can be refused if not compliant
  • Will lock encrypted drives if wrong password is entered repeatedly
  • can automatically set up a VPN profile for network access
  • enables access to a self-service portal (SSP), operated by the enterprise, for app deployment
  • can be deactivated which renders all SSP-deployed apps inoperable

The SSP can deploy custom or third-party Metro apps, but can also include links to the Windows store and web links to web application.

Microsoft envisages the above tools being used both for company-owned and employee-owned Windows RT devices. One advantage over domain-joining is that it is less intrusive to the user. When you domain-join a Windows PC, it creates a new user profile on the machine, which can be a nuisance if the user wants to use the machine for non-work purposes; they have to either switch profiles or use the work profile for home as well.

Metro-style apps are inherently better suited for intermingling business and home, since they are isolated from one another and from the operating system.

This new approach is not only for Windows RT machines but works on x86 as well:

We do support this functionality on x86. However, x86 also has a load more management functionality through Domain membership, Group Policy and existing tools like System Center.

says Microsoft’s Iain McDonald in the comments.

Although it is true that the old domain-joined model offers a higher degree of control, Windows RT should have security advantages thanks to the lockdown preventing desktop applications from being installed, which will restrict malware.

Windows computer domains are not going away, but BYOD and the trend towards cloud computing will gradually reduce the number of domain-joined machines. For example, a small business using Small Business Server will usually domain-join all its machines, but a small business using Office 365 will usually not do so.

I should add that although the approach outlined above is great for simplicity and flexibility, the fatal flaw for many organisations will be its dependence on Metro-style apps. If you have any Windows desktop apps to deploy, then it will not work.

microsoft, mobile, nokia

Nokia Lumia strategy needs time, may not have it

3 Comments

A quick comment on Nokia’s dismal results for the first quarter of 2012. Sales are down 26% quarter on quarter; Smartphone sales down 38% despite the introduction of the Lumia Windows Phone in Europe. Negative operating margin, heavy losses.

The reasons given?

  • competitive industry dynamics continuing to negatively affect the Smart Devices and Mobile
    Phones business units;
  • timing, ramp-up, and consumer demand related to new products; and
  • the macroeconomic environment.

Translation: the new Lumias are failing to compete effectively against Apple iPhone and Google Android devices.

I have a Lumia 800 and like it increasingly. It is elegant and nice to hold, it works well, and Nokia Drive makes an excellent SatNav, to mention three good things.

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Nevertheless, I am not surprised by the poor sales. When I first got the Lumia its battery life was poor; it is still not great, but was much improved by the last firmware update I installed (1600.2487.8107.12070), for which I had to use a manual process.

There was also an aggravating problem where if the phone ran out of power completely, it could not easily be charged. In other words, it was nearly a brick, though I managed to coax it back to life by repeatedly reconnecting the charger. The problem seems to be fixed with the latest update.

I do not think my experience is untypical, and can see that while in one sense it is a great phone, from another perspective it qualifies as buggy and problematic; I expect returns were above average.

The problems are fixable, but with hindsight Nokia should have worked that bit harder to ensure a trouble-free launch. The US launch of the Lumia 900 may be better since the company has had a little more time to improve quality, though there was a data connection bug.

Everything to prove

The bigger problem is that Windows Phone has everything to prove; iPhone and Android dominate the market, so the Lumia has to be sufficiently better to win customers over to a braver choice.

App availability is another factor. Windows Phone is not on the radar for most app vendors – because its market share is too small.

Despite a few lapses, I have been impressed with what I have seen of Nokia’s Windows Phone efforts. Nokia’s marketing and developer evangelism has been far better than Microsoft’s. At Mobile World Congress in February Microsoft had a large stand but was mainly doing silly “smoked by Windows Phone” demos, while Nokia’s stand was humming with activity.

Microsoft more to blame than Nokia

I also incline to the view that Microsoft is more to blame than Nokia – except insofar as Nokia could have made a different choice of partner.

Windows Phone 7 was nicely designed but badly launched, more than a year before the Lumia appeared. The launch hardware was uninteresting and Microsoft failed to line up strong operator or retail support for its devices. Microsoft focused on quantity rather than quality in the Windows Phone app store, resulting in a mountain of rubbish there.

The pace of development in the Windows Phone 7 operating system has also been rather slow, but the issues are more to do with marketing and partner support than with the OS itself.

Nokia has gone some way towards fixing the issues. Its devices are better, and so is its marketing. It is unlikely though that Nokia can succeed unless Microsoft also ups its smartphone game.

The future

Microsoft’s strategy for Windows Phone and Windows 8, as far as I am aware, does make some sense. We will see convergence of the operating system, improved tool support with an option for native code development, and a coherent cloud story.

This will take time to unfold though. It also seems likely that Windows 8 will have a rocky launch, with desktop users disliking the Metro-style elements imposed for the sake of tablet support. Nokia has indicated that it will be producing Windows 8 tablets as well as phones, but whether this will be an instant hit is at the moment uncertain.

Who knows, perhaps it will be Windows 9 before Microsoft really makes its tablet strategy work.

The problem is that Nokia does not have time to wait while Microsoft sorts out its mobile phone and tablet strategy. It needs quick success.

Two final thoughts.

First, Microsoft can hardly afford to see Nokia fail, so some sort of acquisition would not surprise me.

Second, how difficult would it be for Nokia to bring out some Android smartphones alongside its Windows range? Currently we are told that there is no plan B, but perhaps there should be.

cloud computing, database, microsoft, professional, software, windows

Microsoft results: old business model still humming, future a concern

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Microsoft has published its latest financials. Here is my at-a-glance summary:

Quarter ending March 31st 2012 vs quarter ending March 31st 2011, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Profit Change
Client (Windows + Live) 4624 +177 2952 +160
Server and Tools 4572 +386 1738 +285
Online 707 +40 -479 +297
Business (Office) 5814 +485 3770 +457
Entertainment and devices 1616 -319 -229 -439

What is notable? Well, Windows 7 is still driving Enterprise sales, but more striking is the success of Microsoft’s server business. The company reports “double-digit” growth for SQL Server and more than 20% growth in System Center. This seems to be evidence that the company’s private cloud strategy is working; and from what I have seen of the forthcoming Server 8, I expect it to continue to work.

Losing $229m in entertainment and devices seems careless though the beleaguered Windows Phone must be in there too. Windows Phone is not mentioned in the press release.

Overall these are impressive figures for a company widely perceived as being overtaken by Apple, Google and Amazon in the things that matter for the future: mobile, internet and cloud.

At the same time, those “things that matter” are exactly the areas of weakness, which must be a concern.

microsoft, professional, windows

Windows 8 to be called Windows 8, no Outlook on ARM

5 Comments

Microsoft has announced the range of editions planned for Windows 8, which is now the official name (previously it was a code name).

Here is what I found interesting. Windows on Arm (WOA) is now called Windows RT and ships with Office included. However, Outlook is not included, confirming my suspicion that Outlook may gradually get de-emphasised in favour of separate email, calendar and task managers built into the operating system but with strong Exchange support – a good move since Outlook is perhaps the most confusing and over-complex application that Microsoft ships.

Windows RT is missing some features which are in the Intel versions, not least the ability to install desktop software, but has an unique feature of its own: device encryption.

I consider Windows RT as critical to the success of the Windows 8 project, and the only edition that may compete effectively with the Apple iPad in terms of price, convenience, battery life and usability. That said, the market will see the Intel version as primary, since it is the one that can run all our existing apps, but all the legacy baggage will also weigh it down. Users will suffer the disjunction between Metro and Desktop, and will need mouse or stylus and keyboard to use desktop applications. The danger is that Windows RT will get lost in the noise.