Peter Christy

Windows 7

Underneath all the fun stuff at PDC, you just can't ignore the importance of Windows 7. GM doesn't get a chance to sell Volt electric cars if they can't succeed selling Chevy's, and the same is true for Microsoft, so Windows 7 was very much in the discussion. In one of the PDC keynotes, Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows and Windows Live Division, gave some interesting overview comments about building Windows. Two that stuck in my mind: first, the challenge of taking a new college grad and helping them make the transition from writing code for homework assignments to "checking in code for 100 million users." Creating a release of Windows is a unique and daunting engineering challenge, and there is a very interesting side story about how Sinofsky and Jon DeVann fixed the Windows engineering process so the different programs came together better and faster than had been the case with Vista (Sinofsky and DeVann had conspired earlier to perform similar tricks in Office). I'm hoping someday Microsoft will tell this more publicly. Sinofsky's other really interesting comment was about the feedback they got from with Windows 7 beta process, which included the configurations used. It turns out that over 50% of the Beta users had XGA (1024 x 768) displays, while the engineers typically use dual HD displays. Seeing these configurations is a real wakeup call as to what "compatibility" really means, especially if you consider that Windows 7 beta users are hardly technical Luddites. If you're a Windows 7 programmer not only do you have to create code for 100 million users, but you also have to make it work on their computer as well as yours.

VMW VDI and Windows 7

In the earlier days, Diane Green predictably spoke contemptuously of Microsoft, sort of like Khrushchev at the UN pounding his shoe on the podium and yelling "we will bury you" (for those of you who are old enough to know what the UN is). The new, wiser VMware is a lot more aware of what's going on in the rest of the industry (good!) but still a little bit psychitzo when it comes to MS. VMW recognizes that Windows 7 may well unleash a major upgrade wave within enterprise customers (all those who never did Vista but are running out of headroom and support with XP) and that this upgrade wave is an ideal time to call the question on remote application delivery alternatives (smart marketing). But it seems that many at VMW still find it distasteful to even speak the word "Windows" without spitting so this strategic argument comes out wrapped in condescension and denigration. VMware needs to think a little more about why people would adopt Windows 7 now in the first place (‘because they are idiots' is probably the wrong answer) and more to the point carefully look at all the things in W/7 that make VDI less valuable (sorry VMW, Microsoft hasn't stood still). Part of the maturation process I guess.

Microsoft PDC Overload

There was an amazing amount of interesting new stuff at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) in LA last week. Microsoft had cancelled the planned 2007 version because the time wasn't right (PDC is held episodically when major technology introductions are ready) but there was more than enough this time including deep dives into the cloud infrastructure (nee "Red Dog" and now formally Windows Azure), Windows 7 and of course the infamous Oslo.

Windows 7

 Steven Sinofsky gave a very upbeat introduction to Windows 7. Windows 7 of course is the version of Windows that comes after Vista, and Vista of course is one of Microsoft's biggest business embarrassments. Vista isn't at all a bad system today, what with the platform hardware catching up and with the SP1 fixes. In retrospect, Vista was just much too much stuff, all pulling in different directions. Remember that Vista was the version of Windows that (1) converged the client source tree with the Server and changed device models; (2) introduced a whole new application model (Dot Net); (3) introduced a new UI model that leveraged GPU hardware; (4) was reengineered to provide much better security; and so on. Possibly it was just too much, but certainly it was too much for Microsoft to wrangle successfully into something that was ready for the marketplace and that the marketplace was in turn ready for. When you talk to insiders, there was no shortage of contributing problems. But the causality of the Vista debacle isn't really the issue; the issue is the brand damage that occurred. Windows 7 is an entirely different beast. With the possible exception of multi-touch integration (which is very much optional), it isn't really a different or new operating system -- rather it's a much refined and better system in a lot of little ways. Julie Larson Green, who drove the UI improvements in Office 2007, has been hard at work with Windows 7 with similar results -- significantly better usability and a more pleasing user experience. And Windows 7 intends to be smaller and faster as well which will be welcome too. It took a lot of hard work by people like Sinofsky and and Jon DeVann (who we are told gets a lot of credits for herding the many engineering pieces back into a team). The product team seems to be doing a great job building on Vista and remedying the things that went wrong there. At some point soon the marketing team gets the more difficult challenge of reestablishing the brand.