Only Bill Gates Can Change Microsoft: MSFT needs to give up its Windows-era strategic obsessions

Wall Street Journal ^ | 08/28/2013 | By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Interesting - can you expand a bit? What tools or technology exist for GUI management, versus what - script driven management - and how is this strategic? What is moving the market in the direction you outline?

[tacticalogic]

Windows server management has been moving steadily to the command line, implemented as Powershell command line and scripts, for the last 5-6 years. The first major infrastructure designed to be managed primarily from the command line was Exchange 2007. The management GUI still exists, but only provides a subset of management capability, and is intended for day-to-day ad-hoc maintenance by low-level techs that have come to be known as "button monkeys".

This is a strategic change because it eliminates the tradional Windows thick client-server RPC communication, and replaces it with a SOAP based HTTP protocol that's lightweight, resilient to network latency, and works on dedicated ports that are easily controllable in the firewall.

I think the driving force behind this is the move toward cloud based architecture and virtual servers that can be provisioned on demand. The lightweight, resilient nature of the protocol enables management "through the keyhole" of limited bandwidth and/or high latency from the command line. The advanced scripting capabilies of the language enable you to implement multi-threaded automation of configuration, management, and provisioning of servers.

IMHO

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Got it! Thanks. I need to add “Powershell” to my lexicon and google it up to learn a little more about it. In some sense, this time IMHO, the history of windows has been that it arose as a GUI wrapper around DOS and has steadily been evolving to be more unix like as the ensuing decades have rolled on. I could cite example after example but I don’t think I really need to. When it’s all said and done will windows do in the end what apple has already done and just wrap their own nice looking GUI around a solid unix or linux kernel? Or in some sense, have they even already done so? Would we know it if they had?

[tacticalogic]

Powershell is unix-like in some respects, and even implements some of the more common unix commands like ls as aliases of the powershell equivalents. It is fundamentally different in that it is obejct-oriented (based on .net), rather than purely text based.

[longtermmemmory]

dump the cloud BS. (it is just rented server space with so so security to prevent industrial and governmental industrial snooping)

restore xp support to buy time.

1/2 all win 8.1 prices to lower tablets to below the price of androids.

dump the monthly fee model for office.

[EVO X]

I think I may have pinpointed the problem. If your IT tech needs to "find a vendor" - that's no tech.

Specialized lab equipment interfaces can be a real hassle to deal with. If the vendor goes out of business or quits supporting it after a period of time the best thing to do is have an identical cloned computer ready to go. I know of equipment that is still running and controlled by NT4 SP5.

[pluvmantelo]

Outside of those who inherited their wealth, Balmer is the least deserving billionaire in the world.

[TexasRepublic]

“Retirement was not the fate many customers likely would have chosen for Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. Something unpleasant involving wolverines would have been more like it”

Don’t get mad, get Linux.

[Notary Sojac]

I may have misread your original post. When you mentioned an "IT tech" working on this project I assumed that to mean that your wife's company had a reasonably savvy IT person on staff. If that's not true, then I can understand why fixing the problem took as long as it did.

I agree with you that relying on third party vendors basically sucks. Which is why in-house expertise is a golden commodity.

[Wonder Warthog]

"When you mentioned an "IT tech" working on this project I assumed that to mean that your wife's company had a reasonably savvy IT person on staff. If that's not true, then I can understand why fixing the problem took as long as it did."

Well, part of the problem is geography. Headquarters are in Houston, which is where the IT resides, and her division is in Washington (state), so communication sometimes breaks down.

Plus I think this particular IT type is more "network savvy" than overall "computer savvy", and not much at all in understanding computers that directly control hardware. That is kind of a specialized sub-field. I find that those techs that can understand and do the "machine control" end can also do the network stuff, but very often not vice versa.