RSSWhat Microsoft + Novell Means Going Forward
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 3, 2006, 6:14 PM
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What is Microsoft's impetus behind making this deal? What does the company behind Windows stand to gain from Linux?
What has it always stood to gain, in every deal Microsoft has ever made? When Windows NT was first introduced to the enterprise, analysts predicted some form of the new operating system would inevitably succeed, not because it was good, and not because it was functional, but because at some level, customers needed to run Microsoft Office. For that, they needed Windows. So even if Microsoft were to lose money selling Windows, they concluded, Microsoft could eventually succeed, because Windows is the platform for Office.
But that's not necessarily true any more. Yesterday, Novell CTO Jeff Jaffe threw out a word to the crowd without actually defining it: para-virtualization. Essentially, this refers to the capability for an application running on an operating system that is itself being hosted virtually by another operating system, to know who its own virtual host is. So a Windows app running on Linux would know it's on Linux.
What's the point of that? Conceivably, a future "para-virtualized" version of Microsoft Office could include applications that detect whether they're running in a virtualized environment, on top of Linux. And if they're running on Linux...correction, if they're running on SUSE Enterprise Linux, then conceivably, they could integrate such features as drag-and-drop, clipboard sharing, and file compatibility with Linux applications on the desktop.
The result: Office runs on Linux. What has Microsoft ever stood to gain? Market share.
"What Microsoft is saying is they're going to work to make sure that OpenXML and OpenDocument formats are compatible with Microsoft's new XML-based formats," reports NPD Group's Chris Swenson. "That's a big deal, because it means that you might see more people adopt open source office productivity applications like OpenOffice."
"What's driving this deal from Microsoft's perspective," Swenson continued, "is, if they can get someone in the open source community, especially one that's a Zen backer, to make sure that versions of Windows can run effectively on Zen, it's only going to help Microsoft's bottom line. Let's say someone's running Linux on a server running Zen, they want to virtualize the servers. Microsoft is still going to make the server sale if it's compatible, and works well with Zen."
But how will the end user be concerned? Suppose this end user, proposed Swenson, downloaded a PowerPoint presentation using the new Office 2007 format (.PPTX). "In my Linux, if I drag-and-drop onto the Linux desktop, a) am I going to be able to do that; b) is it going to be able to now be opened in my OpenOffice suite, or if I'm doing any sort of collaboration server, is it going to be able to handle those files effectively, any sort of document management, enterprise content management systems?"
"I think that's why they threw in the document format capabilities, because it's not just [that] I'm going to be working on files within this virtual machine. I might do something outside the virtual machine on the Linux box, and I want to make sure things work nicely. Conversely, if I'm using OpenOffice inside a Linux virtual machine on a Windows box, am I going to be able to take that work and integrate it with Microsoft Office?"
"If you strip away all of the packaging of this announcement, it really is a virtualization play," added Info-Tech's Carmi Levy. "It's a play by both of these vendors to be at the front of the pack as virtualization cements its place in the data center architecture. The more walls that Microsoft and Novell can pull down, and the more seamless they can make that experience for the data center manager, the more likely they will be to sell product into that space."
"There's also a recognition that...the kernel of an operating system is a fairly commoditized thing," Levy continued. "And the Linux kernel is fairly small, efficient, very well-structured and architected. And I think, longer-term, Microsoft is looking at that and thinking, 'Hmm, could there be an opportunity to leverage that Linux kernel with the Microsoft administrative environment on top of that, which is also considered best-of-breed?' So Microsoft might see opportunity in re-allocating some of its server development resources into areas that add more value to the business, as well as to its bottom line. Shareholders want Microsoft to engage in activities that drive differential revenue, that differentiate the company from its competitors, and continued investment in a kernel that is differentially not better than the competition, might not be the way that Microsoft needs to go."
"It really speaks to Ballmer's strategy for going to his opponents and burying the hatchet," remarked Swenson. "Steve Ballmer has systematically gone to every single company that filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, [saying], 'How can we work together? How can we bury the hatchet? How soon can we go forward? How can we help both our customers?' And it's such a brilliant strategy, in my mind, that it's really effective."
At least one lady, however, remains both unhappy and unconvinced. "Novell has found a way to block redistribution, they think," remarked Groklaw's Pamela Jones, "or Microsoft did and Novell either didn't notice or didn't care. So Linux ends up like Unix, essentially written by individual volunteers and then hijacked by the corps. That seems to be the plan."
If there's any agreement to be found today among the experts, it's that Linux today is a much more commercial operating system than it appeared to be last week. And if anyone stands to benefit from this, it's ironically the party that even some of its own proponents had once feared may be left out in the cold.
"As long as the environment is conducive to Microsoft making and selling stuff and making money, then Microsoft is happy," Carmi Levy stated, "and as long as Microsoft still has the ability to control the direction, the trajectory, the pace of that market -- which, clearly, it will through partnerships like this one with Novell -- then Microsoft loses nothing. Microsoft can release its engineers to work on projects that will allow it to be differentially better than its competitors, and it will still have a very strong position in the data center, which is what it's wanted all along."
I beleive this discussion invokes the North Carolina Equine Paradox, which states:"Vyaretherezomanymorehorzesazzesthantherearehorzes."
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|good work MS, like what's happeneing in the world of microsoft at the moment, they started listening to customers, wise move! this is all blatently a move to bury the hatchet, in Apple's face! score! apple sucks!
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|Hi, im a windows user, have been for 15 years. I want to go to a flavor of linux shall i choose? :P
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|What most posters are missing here is the perspective of the "Joe Business" end user. They THINK that if they run MS office on the desktop they NEED Windows server as a server. Right or wrong (and until the most recent versions of MS Office mostly wrong) that is their perception and that is what drives sales. MS office and Windows also represent security, not technological security but warm fuzzy I-made-the-right-choice for my business security. End users want that feeling. The old adage decades ago was "No one ever got fired for buying or recommending IBM"; today that is virtually true of MS.
Don't get me wrong I am a Linux/FOSS supporter and have it installed at some clients. But ask "Mary Small Business Owner" or even "Jack CIO/CEO" about using "free software" to run their business critical functions and they are skeptical. After all what do we tell consumers? "If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is." What this agreement ultimately does is legitimize Linux (at least SUSE Linux) for businesses of all sizes. I can go to a client who is wavering and say "look MS says if Linux meets your needs they recommend SUSE Linux. Oh and here is a voucher for a free year of technical support" That is a compelling sales argument and that is what it is about in the end, for us small IT services firms and Novell and MS.
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|Microsoft is going down in flames in terms of innovation. It's no wonder they are turning to some flavour of Linux for security and innovative ideas. As a technician, I have freely advised 1000's of customers to use the free Open Office suite instead of any version of Microsoft Office. And after they found out they were saving a whopping $349.00 do you know what they said? They said, "Oh my god, why would you pay for Microsoft Office knowing that this Open Office is soo good and sooooo free....". I know, I know... It's awesome..! The right to free travel, freedom of speech, and Open Source, are practically synonymous.
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|INNOVATION???? What innovation? MS has NEVER been a company capitalizing upon innovation! I agree with that observation!
MS is a MARKETING company straddled with trying to develop and maintain a legacy Windows product designed for a standalone (non-networked) work environment strapped with maintaining legacy compatibility and yet closing fundamentally fatally flawed collaborative security holes such as ActiveX! First last and always. But it seems most here fail to realise that MS is a BIDNESS(sic).
MS's strategic positioning to take advantage of a quality Linux niche - especially one that has the potential to capitalize upon the Novell integrated legacy network directory structure within Linux is a great move.
For all of those who think MS must live or die with Windows, all I have to say is that you folks are - with all due respect- short-sighted at best and fools at worst. It is MS' responsibility to analyze the marketplace and to position itself so that it can most effectively leverage the maximum return on all viable markets. And this is a brilliant market positioning - especially in light of Novell's recent (mis)management problems despite having a Very strong product offering - as both SUSE Linux (as they OWN the 64 bit Linux market and have for over 10 years!) and the legacy Network Directory structure are both best of breed products - and a great alternative to RedHat and Oracle - a choice which is a poison pill regardless of which one might opt for!
I am not a MS fan, but I have to take my hat off to the astute MS business strategists responsible for this decision! Kudos MS! Seldom am I compelled to acknowledge such a smart strategic business strategy while at the same time dreading a decision that would lead me to actually subscribe to their 'solution' given MS's***ory of kludgy solutions!
MS has covered the bases. Let Oracle and RedHat fight it out.
The 100 ton elephant continues to be IBM - the world's leading developer of Linux solutions who has been the main supplier to all of the various Linux variants. With their support systems and potential to market their own version of Linux while simultaneously porting much of the Much higher level AIX technology to the architecturally constrained Linux (Linux is fundamentally limited from scaling to an AIX level product), IBM is the sleeping giant whose time is quickly approaching. I would expect them to move into this arena during the next year or so.
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|Apparently, your thousands of customers (gosh your a busy man) all live in their own little bubble. In 15 years with a desktop on my desk, I have never opened any office related document attachment other than one from a current version of Microsoft Office as A) it would not likely make it past IT security and B) as garbled plain text, I would ask the sender to resend in a current MS Office format that I could use (and they would).
Simple and to the point, $349 is squat for productivity. Squat. Please study the true costs associated with giving todays high paid profesionals poor tools before you spread this blather anymore.
Real people in real businesses laugh quite loudly at all these comments. They have no factual foundation in the real world. Businesses today share information in a common manner or they are doomed and that format is MS Office.
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|I have to agree with dwall72 on the whole Office thing. Office may be a big reason why Windows is on the desktop but it has pretty much NOTHING to do with Windows on Servers.
The whole "Windows to be compatible... Linux to be efficient" statement is also a pretty biased statement subject at least to strong debate.
I don't think I buy Levy's theory on the kernel as a commodity either. The superiority of the Linux kernel of the NT based kernel is NOT a given as he seems to imply.
This whole article looks like something you'd find by a random poster on Slash Dot, not what I'd expect from BetaNews.
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|If you think Office resides only on the desktop, you are greatly misinformed.
Office is a collaborative product. Microsoft Outlook and its parent application Exchange Server require a Windows Server setup. From a business perspective, Office is a server oriented product, which is why Microsoft sells it that way.
Access, InfoPath, Excel -- these all have server components now. Groove, which is in Office 2007, is a server-based collaborative application.
Do you not know what SharePoint is? Yep, it's a server product that is part of Office.
How about checking your facts before flaming.
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|Access is pretty much the only application from Office which runs on a server, and even then it is usually a backend database. Excel, Word, etc are not designed to work on server archicture. I'm a .NET programmer and it is a big no no to attempt to run Word (Excel) from a server machine (this is well documented in white papers from MS). SharePoint until 2007 was not even part of Office. Sharepoint services is on a standard install of Server 2003 (SharePoint Portal Server is also a separate product).
Where do you get that "Office is a server oriented product, which is why Microsoft sells it that way."?
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|Exchange and Sharepoint are not traditionally considered parts of Office. Only recently has Sharepoint been branded as part of Office and that's more of a Marketing thing then anything else. It's a CMS system and it's content could just as easily be non-MS oriented files. I don't believe even now Exchange is branded as an Office component.
I'll give you the 2007 versions of Office are much more server oriented. This does nothing to help the artiles author's claim that business uses Windows Servers because of Office. They were using Windows Servers far before there were Server components to Office. His claim is frankly absurd and your attempt at a defense depends heavily on only the newest and upcoming versions of the software.
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|A little bit behind the times are we? SharePoint was pitched as an Office product starting in 2000 when it first came out. In fact, it was demoed heavily at the Office 2000 launch events.
And yes, Excel is designed to work in a server architecture:
http://msdn2.microsoft.c...s/library/ms582023.aspx
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|Most businesses that run Outlook company-wide also run Exchange. Exchange is sold primarily for this purpose. SharePoint has been included with and demoed alongside Office since 2000.
This has nothing to do with the "newest versions" of Office. Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint and other Office Web services have existed for over half a decade.
Microsoft wants businesses to be part of the Windows ecosystem, plain and simple. And the best way to do that is to tie server products to desktop applications such as Office.
Here's some good reading:
http://www.microsoft.com...mpare/market_share.mspx
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|Just because most companies that run Outlook also run Exchange doesn't make Exchange part of Office. Nor does demoing a product (Sharepoint) alongside Office. Exchange, SQL Server, etc. are NOT what is typically considered Office. Sharepoint in 2000 was also not considered part of Office, only recently has it been inculded in Office branding. There are increasingly more server components included in Office branding but these can hardly be claimed as THE reason companies are running Windows on their servers. These Office server components are relatively new (in relation to when companies started adopting Windows systems as servers.)
We can continue to debate back and forth what is and is not part of Office but at the very least when posting a public article such as this if you're reaching to the level that you are by calling Exchange and I guess SQL Server and heck even the OS part of Office (they're demo'd together too and most people who run exchange run the Windows OS so that makes it Office by your definition right?) then you should probably explain that to some degree so people have some idea how wide you are casting the net. I have no doubt that the vast majority of people, right or wrong, when seeing the name Office think of the desktop applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc. They do not automatically think of server OS's, SQL Server, Exchange, etc.
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|Yes, SharePoint really was considered "part of Office" back then. From a PC World article in 2001:
"For a service that's touted as an integral part of Office XP, SharePoint also misses some obvious opportunities for integration with the suite's apps."
http://www.pcworld.com/a...047-page,1/article.html
But the article above never does claim Office is the only reason businesses run Windows Servers -- read it again. It only notes that businesses say they need at least one Windows Server because of their Office infrastructure.
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|Umm, the link you provided is for Office 2007...
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|Dude, read your own article.
"First, a definition: SharePoint isn't an Office application. Rather, it's a set of Web-based services you use in conjunction with the regular applications in Office."
Second paragraph.
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|You are debating different issues!
You can treat Office as a standalone package, or you can look at Office as a collabortative tool!
Debating which it is, is - well, it simply illustrates a myopic point of view ignorant of the other legitimate market niches for which Office is being targeted!
In an enterprise environment MS is up against Lotus Notes (and I don't care if you like it or not!) - where they must compete with the collaborative functionality of Lotus.
If you are running a home office or if you are a student where collaborating is either impractical due to lack of infrastructure or it is considered cheating, you will not be using it as a collaborative tool!
So the various pieces and parts are appropriate and necessary depending upon your environment and use! DUH!
And this "it is - it isn't' debate is insane. And it simply displays an ignorance which renders any opinion expressed just a little less worthwhile...
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|As jshurst quotes from your own reference SharePoint was NOT "part of Office." 2001 wasn't exactly the beginning of the Windows Server adoption by business either.
As for what this article states, and I quote:
"For years, THE REASON businesses have said they install Windows anyway, even on just some of their servers if not the entire domain (or forest), is because they MUST run Microsoft Office." (emphasis added)
You'll note it says THE REASON, not A reason, not ONE reason, THE REASON. Seems pretty clear to me. It doesn't say anything about infrastructure as you have. It simply says "MUST run Microsoft Office" and then goes on to talk about the importance of the documents.
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|First of all, I can argue anything I want to. Who are you, the betanews moderator?
Second, I'm mainly arguing about the differences in Office 2003 versus Office 2007. According to the SharePoint seminar I went to last month at Microsoft (http://www.developersgui...g/Default.aspx?tabid=40) it is now part of Office, where as before it was not.
My point is that Office applications (like Excel, Word, etc) were, before 2007 desktop applications, not meant for installations on a server. Document exchange could be handled by a separate piece, not included with Office, called SharePoint.
Office 2007 has a different architecture - out of the box.
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|In the statement "You are debating different issues", the word 'you" is used in plural! It is not just about YOU - but everyone debating the issue.
And who cares about Office 2003 vs 2007. The distinctions you mention almost miss the point of the differences in architecture, as both could absolutely be server based! That is not a defining distinction!
But with your aptly demonstrated inability to interpret the English language, one wonders what use you would even have for Office - let alone a collaborative version of the Suite.
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|I almost stopped at "many reputable sources say it's actually more expensive for businesses to own and maintain than Windows." because those reports are generally commissioned by Microsoft, and are a very specific configuration and workload. They also generally do not calculate downtime due to patches and virus outbreaks, or additional software and administrative costs to properly protect Windows servers. Since this is all arguable, I kept reading.
I stopped at "For decades, the reason businesses have said they install Windows anyway, even on just some of their servers if not the entire domain (or forest), is because they must run Microsoft Office."
How long do you think Microsoft Office has been dominant, and what does it have to do with servers? Microsoft Office is a desktop product. You obviously do not know the industry, or what you are talking about, so stop submitting articles with a bunch of inaccurate information, leading others to believe your misinformed views.
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|Office is a collaborative product. Microsoft Outlook and its parent application Exchange Server require a Windows Server setup. From a business perspective, Office is a server oriented product, which is why Microsoft sells it that way.
Access, InfoPath, Excel -- these all have server components now. Groove, which is in Office 2007, is a server-based collaborative application. These are the features designed for enterprises and what brings Microsoft the big bucks. The desktop user running Word from Office Student and Teacher Edition is not where the revenue lies.
Do you not know what SharePoint is? Yep, it's a server product that is part of Office.
How about checking your facts before flaming.
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|Microsoft + Novell Means Going Forward...ONE OF THEM, and backward everybody else.
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