Posted on 11/14/2014 2:10:29 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Don't blink. Microsoft is starting to pick up speed as it starts to implement drastic changes in the way it does business. Open sourcing of server software with ports to other operating systems, increasingly aggressive service bundling, support for WebRTC, and free Windows for mobile devices are evidence that cloud first and mobile first aren't just hot air.
CEO Satya Nadella is shaking up Microsoft in a way that would have given Steve Ballmer a heart attack.
Announcing open sourcing of the .NET core framework with distributions for Linux and Microsoft OS X, as was done this week, would have had Ballmer's secretary dialing 911 and yelling for someone to perform CPR.
Microsoft is even incorporating code contributions from developers OUTSIDE of Microsoft.
Developers will now have a fully supported, fully open source, fully cross platform .NET stack for creating server and cloud applications, including compilers, runtime, and higher-level .NET web, data, and API frameworks.
Did you know Microsoft loves Linux? It sounds like the punch line to a joke, but Microsoft's Azure cloud has more than 20 percent of its virtual machines Linux based. There are five different Linux distributions officially supported on Azure. With an official distribution of .NET Core for Linux, a shout-out to the Mono community for its work on .NET and Linux, if there's not Microsoft love, there's a good like going on for Linux.
Who knows what Mac lovers will think of the .NET core port to OS X, but that's not something Ballmer or Jobs would have been very comfortable with either.
Moving from software to services, Microsoft announced a $199 year subscription Work & Play bundle this week, including Office 365 Home, Xbox Live Gold, Xbox MusicPass, and Skype Unlimited World and Wi-Fi. Office 365 gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a terabyte of online storage through OneDrive while the Skype bundle gives free unlimited calls to landlines in 63 countries, mobile callers in 8 countries, and access to 2 million Wi-Fi hotspots around the world with time payable in Skype credit on a per-minute basis. The Skype Unlimited World bundle alone would run about $168 per year if purchased at $13.99 per month, so there's a lot of value for $200.
WebRTC in Microsoft internet Explorer (IE) is on the way, with the only question being how soon IE will appear with integrated support. It also brings up the interesting question as to how deeply WebRTC will be supported in the cloud and in server software.
WebRTC provides clean interoperability for voice, video, and IM across browsers. Microsoft is all about interoperability these days so long as it gets more people into services and on its cloud, so expect to see all sorts of WebRTC-related announcements in the weeks and months to come. It's important to remember while Microsoft would prefer to have a Windows-mobile world, current management knows Android and iOS are the dominating players. WebRTC provides another bridge to those operating systems.
Free Windows licenses for smaller mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets under 9 inches, and less powerful laptops have been offered for some time, but adding on Internet of Things (IoT) devices to the list provides another hook for Microsoft to get people onboard Azure services collecting, storing, and analyzing big data problems.
Open source, industry standards, and free licensing have been successful practices within the software field for years and decades. Microsoft is leveraging the trifecta to provide more on-ramps to get customers moved into cloud services and subscription plans.
Microsoft goes open source.. be still my heart!
There’s a LOT of money to be made in FOSS... it’s called support contracts. FINALLY Microsoft is getting the point.
Assuming this is ‘real’, they should have done this 10 years ago.
Better late than never, I guess....
They are teetering on the verge of irrelevancy. Of course, that has been the case for years, but no one has come along to replace them. We’re reaching ‘peak innovation’ in the OS/Mobile Device space. Now they’re just cannibalizing and we’re gonna see price deflation. As with everything, someone is going to come up with something new that will breakout from the pack. I doubt it will be from Apple or Microsoft. If I HAD to guess, I’d think Google, but it will probably be someone we wouldn’t suspect.
Who knows.... Blackberry has actually been developing some great devices lately. A couple of years ago, I thought they were all but dead.
Microsoft knows business. That’s what they bring to the table. This will continue. The only question is about how.
Open sourcing Windows also would relieve them of the onus of having to fix every bug in Windows back to the beginning of time. Already they are kind of backtracking on the “will not maintain XP” position and sending out limited security updates.
Guessing Blackberry over Apple, which is increasing its dominance in smartphones, gaining shares in PCs while every other making is shrinking, dominates the tablet market, makes great wireless networking solutions, is the absolute leader in online sales of music, has a market leading TV streaming product, has the best mobile OS with the greatest security bar none, seems like a silly idea. Apple has simply made the best products in every category it enters. It does not always have the greatest market share but it always is profitable and usually the most profitable. And it innovates more than any other company. It is right there out in the open and has become the worlds most valuable company while most tech people seem to think it is a small gadget manufacturer. It is worth roughly the same as Google and Microsoft combined.
Apple has also gone proprietary in its own way. You cannot run MacOS on any old machine.
The market has a way of tearing away at such bundling. Windows runs on everything... Linux runs on everything.
Actually, call me daddy, but Microsoft was a VMS/Unix shop long before its DOS or Windows days. In fact, Windows was built using VMS systems.
VMS was ( I’m using the past tense because I haven’t worked with it for 7 years ) actually a GREAT operating system.
Robust and easier to use and understand than UNIX.
Last I heard, Hewlett Packard owns the OS.
I wonder how many companies are still using it...
I was working for a company that was MIGRATING AWAY from it.
How many Linux users register their systems when installing for being counted as Linux users? Not many at all, because the choice of registering causes a message to be sent over the Net from their computers with statistics about their install. People are too paranoid for even that, so there’s no way to count many of them. There’s really no personal risk in doing so (no critical private info sent).
Indeed MS has the corporate network Server market cornered. Active Directory & Exchange is so easily adaptable to virtually any business. Regarding virtualization, I still prefer VMware by far.
My current shop is mostly VMware running on HP hardware, hosting MS & Linux Servers, attached to EMC SANs for storage. With Cisco networking hardware(including wireless).
You can run Windows native on any current or two or three year old Mac if you like running bloated software that requires constant third party virus protection and has no coherent upgrade path.
Interesting. Will be interesting to see what develops.
VMS has been all but dropped so without support people are migrating. It served it purpose in many software houses and did very well. I always thought if it weren’t for UNIX being free, VMS would have dominated for years to come.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.