The Ashimmy Blog

We should all be this bad - Microsoft is dead, long live Microsoft!

I have written before about what a joke I think it is when people write that Microsoft’s best days are behind it and that their corporate grave is already being dug.  Google is going to usher in a new age of net centric computing and topple the once and future king. Yeah sure.  Don Dodge had a good article up the other day about Microsoft’s recent end of FY numbers.  The Redmond rockets racked up over 60 billion (yeah with a b) in revenue last year, an 18% increase over the year before!  They dropped 17.6 billion (again with a b) to the bottom line.  To give it some perspective, Yahoo all told only does about 7 or 8 billion in gross revenue a year.  Microsoft grew 9 billion in revenue last year.  That is they grew organically more than a whole Yahoo.  You can check out Don’s article for more financial facts and figures.

I ask you ladies and gentlemen, does this sound like the numbers of a company on the way down?  If you were a betting person, would you be betting against this monster?  I would not be.  Do you think by 2011 things are going to fundamentally change? Next time someone tells you how open source, Linux, Google or anyone else is going to kill Microsoft try to put some of these numbers in prospective.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is no Nobel economic laureate

You have to both admire and laugh at zealots and extremists no matter what guise they come in. Whether it be religion, politics or technology they find God's hand guiding you towards their position in every event, good or bad. A perfect example was brought to my attention by Michael Farnum. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, the resident Cyber Cynic and Linux zealot at ComputerWorld, has taken the current state of our economy as a message from God that Linux is on a messianic mission to save us from high gas prices, high food prices, the mortgage and credit crisis and those satan's in Redmond. Vaughan-Nichols says that by switching to Linux and other open source products you could save your company, your job and be more secure to boot!

Michael who is no Microsoft fan boy points out some obvious pitfalls with Vaughn-Nichols strategy. I am far from a Microsoft shill myself (now my friend Mitchell might be another story). I personally think it is ludicrous. One thing obvious is the cost of the switch. Economic cycles being what they are, by the time you actually planned and implemented this switch the economy would probably be back on the upswing and the economic reasons for undertaking this drastic a move would be gone. Than you would have the expense of moving over including training and downtime. I think by the time you are done with doing all this, if the economy hasn't killed your company, the cost of switching will!

I guess that is why Vaughan-Nichols is just a fanatic on ComputerWorld and no one has nominated him for any Noble prizes or confused him with John Kenneth Galbraith.

The Microsoft Bloggers Network

My podcast co-host and friend Mitchell Ashley started a bloggers network for people who write about anything Microsoft. It is not just security related, but anything to do with Microsoft. If you do, the Microsoft Bloggers Network If you would like to join the network, you need to send Mitchell and email here. I am joining today.

Something in the latest Windows update is hosing my laptop

Readers of this blog know that I am not a Microsoft basher. So when I complain about something regarding Microsoft I am not doing it to just kick dirt on them. But something in the latest Windows update is killing my laptop. I downloaded the latest update as part of the automated update a few days ago. It said I had to restart the computer for the updates to take effect. I waited to restart since I was on the road and just hibernating my computer.

Since coming home this weekend I rebooted and the problems have started. First of all when I have Outlook running at the same time as IE they seem to be interfering with each other and the computer just freezes with "not responding" messages in both title bars. As much as that sucks, eventually it seems to work its way out and the page refreshes. However, another fatal error happens consistently now where the cursor just freezes, the screen locks and there is nothing I can do to shake it lose without powering down by holding the power button. Then of course on reboot I have to go through dreaded Outlook "check the file for problems" check which chews up another 15 minutes.

This is getting really tired now. Thankfully I am out in Colorado tomorrow and will have our IT folks have a look. But having my computer lock up is not fun. If it is indeed due to the latest hotfix I am going to be really upset. There is just no excuse for this. Those Power Macs are starting to look might good!

That didn't take long

Over the weekend I wrote an article about what a Yahoo shareholder would do with a copy of Steve Ballmer's letter to Jerry Yang. Well, it didn't take very long for a class action law suit being filed, led by two pension funds. Attorneys for the pension funds said, "The actions taken by Yahoo's CEO this past weekend confirm that the company's board of directors pursued all manner of value-destructive third-party deals to fight off Microsoft's bid". The attorneys further claim that Yang never negotiated with Microsoft in good faith.

Not everyone thinks this way about the deal though. Steven Vaughan-Nichols over at ComputerWorld thinks that business textbooks in 2025 will show that Microsoft's slow collapse will be accelerated by Steve Ballmer blowing the Yahoo deal. I think he is wrong. I think business classes will look at Yang's failure to lock this deal up for such a premium over current price will be studied as not only a blunder but a classic case letting ones pride and ego get in the way of what is best for the shareholders. I think in addition to the lawsuits, look for Wall Street to now start punishing the stock as well. I stick with my prediction, Yahoo has no where to go but down. They will wind up getting acquired for significantly less within 24 to 36 months.

What would you do with Ballmer's letter if you were a Yahoo shareholder

As you probably know Microsoft has officially withdrawn their offer for Yahoo.  I had a look at the letter Steve Ballmer sent to Jerry Yang officially withdrawing the offer and offering his reasons why. Must say that it is rare that a document like this is made public.  I must also say that if I were a Yahoo shareholder, it would be a key piece of evidence when I sued Jerry Yang and the rest of the Yahoo board and management for not accepting Microsoft's generous offer.

What I found particularly disturbing (as did Ballmer and Microsoft evidently) was Yahoo's threat to basically outsource their search advertising to Google if Microsoft pursued proxy fight takeover.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!  That would be suicidal for Yahoo, but just goes to show you that Yang and gang had a no Microsoft at any cost strategy.

With the passage of time I think this will be looked on as a terrible mistake by Yahoo and at some point in the next 24 to 36 months they are going to be acquired for a lot less money.  They cannot compete with Google alone, they have not executed well for years and this will force Microsoft to do something else to become more competitive in search. 

Microsoft buys Xobni?

Back in February I wrote about how much I liked Xobni for Outlook. Now Fred Wilson reports thats Microsoft has bought Xobni. Fred is linking to this Techcrunch article on it. Though it is still sketchy at this point, I think it would be a great pick up for Microsoft. After using it for a few months, I find it very useful. I think picking it up now, while still in beta is a cheap deal for Microsoft and will save them a ton of money having to buy it later!

Congrats to the team at Xobni for building a product that had obvious appeal.

A better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows

Anybody remember that slick marketing line?  You are a winner if you picked OS/2. OK I will admit it, I was an OS/2 user. I liked it much better than Windows 3.1 and used it even after Windows 95 came out. I still think it was a superior product to anything that the guys from Redmond put out.  Why don't we all run OS/2 today instead of Windows?  Good question, I ask myself that all the time.  Some say it is because Microsoft used strong arm tactics to persuade ISV's from developing apps for OS/2.  That may be true, but for me the real problem was IBM's strategy was instead of fighting the fight to get OS/2 apps developed, they said go ahead and run Windows and DOS apps on OS/2, we can run them better.  They could, but at the end of the day they were still Windows and DOS apps and this gave Microsoft an inherent advantage that could not be overcome.

I was reminded of this today while reading an article in eWeek by Joe Wilcox on how Microsoft is in so much trouble and how nobody is using Vista (better not tell the 100 million or so users of Vista that). Joe points out the recent Gartner report that says Microsoft is headed for a train wreck around 2011 or so because Windows is vulnerable (to competition that is, not necessarily to vulnerabilities.  Well actually it is vulnerable to those too, but that is for another blog).  Not to be outdone by the G-men, straight off the shrimp boat the Forest-er Gump crew come out with a pair of reports (here and here), that detail Vista's adoption issues.  The net of one is that while tech folks see the benefit of upgrading to Vista, it is a tough sell to the CIOs and CFOs of the world.  Many according to the article are saying they will wait for Windows 7, whenever that comes out.  I don't buy this myself. I remember similar talk when XP came out. 

Where I really disagree with Wilcox though is his comments regarding Mac OSX replacing Windows in the enterprise:

I disagree that Mac OS X is no alternative, particularly when businesses must swap out hardware anyway and Exchange-supporting Office 2008 is available. Mac OS X nicely plugs into Active Directory. I don't expect massive conversions to Mac OS X, but I strongly disagree with contention that it's "simply not a viable option."

What will enable this Mac revolution? Virtualization according to Wilcox and those who believe as he does. This is where they step in the footsteps of OS/2 before them.  If OSX is a better OS, fine. But don't fool yourself. If you are going to rely on Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft AD and other Microsoft server products plus Microsoft applications and you are going to run your Mac hardware running Windows in a virtual hypervisor on top of it, you are just a "better Windows than Windows" but you still run Windows.  Microsoft will use its stranglehold on the applications to make sure that they run better, faster, cheaper on the real Windows.

Gartner, Forester and Joe Wilcox miss the point here.  Windows will not be in serious danger of losing its preeminent position on the desktop until there are enough applications that run natively on another OS and don't run on Windows.  I don't see many application developers willing to walk away from the Windows market for that to be a reality.  That makes desktop Linux, Mac OS and the rest just more OS/2s.

Microsoft cares about blogging

Among the many appointments yesterday was a quick lunch roundtable hosted by Microsoft about blogging.  Some of the folks from the Microsoft research team wanted to better understand the art of blogging. Who better to ask than some members of the Security Bloggers Network.  Several of us had a chance to talk about why blog, what we think makes it successful and what Microsoft can do to make their blogs successful and useful. We will see what becomes of it.

The point for me is that Microsoft, the monolithic empire is really seeking to understand blogging and how to do it right.  This is a very different company and attitude from the we know everything attitude many of us saw from Microsoft years ago.  It almost makes you want to pull for them to succeed!  Lets see how it works out.

If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it must be NAP

I had an interesting meeting with Microsoft on NAP the other day.  While, I think you would have to pretty delusional to not realize that eventually NAP will dominate pre-connect health checks of devices, I was surprised at the "Microsoft-ease" they still speak about around NAP. First of all they insist that NAP is not a product or even in deference to my friend Hoff, a feature. Instead NAP is a platform. Implying that other products will run on top of it. Next they again reiterated what we have heard before, that NAP is not a security tool, but just a real estate play.  Enabling devices to be up to spec.

My take on this is I don't know if the Microsoft folks are being disingenuous regarding these two points or just are they that naive?  My gut tells me that Microsoft is usually not naive.Yes, third party vendors can show that they can add more tests than NAP will have. Yes, you can use SHVs and SHAs, but how much are people really going to value them?  You can take the information it generates and do some reporting around it. But lets be clear the NAP "platform" is most certainly going to be used as a product. 

It will be used as a product, it will be a security product at that.  Configuration management could be said to be borderline security by some.  But when you add the ability to deny access to those not up to snuff on configuration, I think you have clearly crossed the line into security.  I think Microsoft would come of better saying that NAP is not meant to keep out the determined hacker, but saying it is not a security tool just doesn't ring well.

So what is the rest of the NAC vendor world to do?  Should we all pack up and follow Vernier and Lockdown to the next cool thing?  No, not at all.  I think there are exciting opportunities at hand with NAP. Yes it is a security product, but it also is an enabler for more NAC features. The successful NAC vendor has to figure out what those are and capitalize on them.  Also NAP is all about health checks.  Post-connect, identity based NAC and other NAC  features can be used here to enhance the health checks.  Overall NAP will drive the NAC market to move beyond just health checks and that will be a good thing for the NAC market and customers.  But guys lets be real, it is a security product!