Continuing from my last post, all this lack of change has not necessarily been a bad thing. 75% of the Internet browsing population are using XP, and in business XP is pretty much standard across the worlds corporate desktops.
In terms of standardisation, training, ease of support etc, this has been a great thing compared to the turmoil in previous years which saw IT departments supporting a mix of 95 / 98 / NT4 and 2000. Every machine sold in the last 4 years is easily capable of running basic Windows XP at a good speed (although games are another story), with plenty of room to store documents, music and photos.
However, times are changing in this space as well. The rapid rise of Linux as a viable desktop operating system, combined with decent free office software (such as openoffice) have closed the gap significantly with Microsoft in the last 5 years. The new Apple operating systems, which are also Unix based, are ahead of Windows in many respects and the upcoming Vista Operating System from Microsoft is only just starting to bridge the gap.
Corporate customers, who quite often pay a yearly upgrade fee to Microsoft (called Software Assurance) are asking themselves why they keep paying, when Microsoft has hardly released any upgrades in the last 5 years. Microsoft is now playing catch up, and has a massive number of products on the horizon over the next year or so, including new versions of Windows Desktop, Office, Windows Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, dotnet framework, Live Communications server, SMS, MOM ... the list goes on and on. They are also shortening the upgrade timescale to two years between new versions to encourage corporate customers that change is worthwhile.
So we are moving from a long period of stability to a period of rapid change. On the one hand, we have stable, reliable, uniform software. On the other, vast spend in research and development on 'improvements'. Which is going to be better for business, only time can tell.
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2 comments:
Sounds like Microsoft have realised that they're slowly dropping the ball and are suddenly rallying to catch up.
However, we all know that Microsoft is far sneakier than this and not one to drop the ball. Do you think it could be all in their gameplan? Let rival companies spend out on R&D, test the playing field, find out what consumers want and then, after a five year gap, MS steps up with the ultimate OS and supporting software and re-corners the market? It's not a bad strategy, seeing as they've easily sat on their previous market lead for the last five years.
It would certainly have been a brave ploy to get all its corporate customers to sign up to a 3 year deal, with all upgrades included and then not release anything new. Wait until they don't subscribe to updates the next time, and then charge them through the nose for the next round of major changes.
Personally, I think they did drop the ball, but you are right in being suspicious of a company that is as big and clever as Microsoft.
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