A friend of mine asked me about a recent move made by the Redmond wooly mammoth (aka M$), including virtualization in its forthcoming Vista release.
I still say that while M$ is beginning to figure out that the value of the PC is diminishing, they won't go quietly. Web2.0 and SaaS are staunch adversaries, that will be very difficult to defeat.
Lots a stuff at play here..
At a fundamental level, Longhorn (aka Vista) will not appear on the seen until at least 1st Qtr '07.
Even when it appears, who will install it? It's unlikely that there will be a huge upswell at department stores.
There also seems to be pretty exotic hardware requirements to allow the avg user to run the vaporware known as Vista.
XP seems to be fairly stable and will probably have SP3 before Vista's release. Most enterprises will not budge. Heck, Ford just installed XP on most machines last year. Actually, there are still a large number of W2K installs.
What about this thing called Virtualization?
Ahh. Sweet science. M$ is very worried about the potential of losing out to companies like VmWare and RedHat (Xen virtualization pkg is included with its enterprise distro). Developers simply _love_ to run more than one OS on a box. M$ understands this too. Gates and Co. believe that if they can offer a competitive product that would allow them to wedge their platform into the mind of any Open Source developer, and potential enterprise customers.
There are a number of advantages:
1) Minimal cost of entry - If I wish to earn a living building Linux or M$ apps, having a machine that can emulate the other platform is a boon.
2) Reduced hardware cost - One machine instead of 3 machines for different test platform environments
3) Great support for thin-clients - If I run a purely Linux shop and I've got a few clients that wish to run a proprietary pkg, virtualization of M$ environment.
4) Buy only one M$ license - Gets a little dicey here. You could purchase one license and virtualize your desktops for thin-clients.
IMHO, there really is no need to _ever_ spend money on a M$ license.
Bottom line, the Redmond wooly mammoth, is in search another revenue stream. They are hemorraging now.
There is no more cash to be collected from the desktop, M$ Office is there last stonghold. It too is being threatened by Open Office and other Web2.0 solutions. As we see the intelligence moving away from the desktop, out to the periphery of the network (ie Smartphones, Tablets, SaaS - Software as a Service, (see Zimbra and Google), I'm not sure where the next value stream will appear.
I assert that these new Web2.0 companies offer applications that rival the richness of the typical desktop software.
Take a look at Google's new collaboration calendar system.
Hmm. Maybe it's the DRM strategy? Better yet, maybe they'll be come a Web2.0 company with the release of Live.com . As usual, they're very, very late to the game.
Alfred, are you kidding me? Do you REALLY think you are going to do everything you need to do in a web browser? I think you need to change your blog reading habbits or something. It is nothing more than a fad that is going around the net right now.
So let me ask you this. You are on a plane and want to check your calendar, how are you going to do it? You're not. You don't have internet access. Or the companies web site is down and you need to write a term paper as a college student? How are you going to do it? How are you going to sync the data with your mobile device? Umm, probably a CLIENT SIDE APPLICATION THAT YOU HAD TO INSTALL!
See my point?
This whole web 2.0 (which really is just services wrapped around javascript) has been around for a long time. But, someone gave it a name and everyone (including yourself is all horny over it). Everyone needs to stop trying to use it for everything and use it like adding pepper to a good stew.
The value of the PC isn't diminishing, it just keeps getting better and better in my opinion. Take Media Center for example. Love it. Great use of a PC, media and the internet.
If you are so slanted on having a PC, then why do we need Linux as on operating system? According to you PC's are dead and the web 2.0 is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So that means we don't need an OS right?
Oh wait, then there is the virtulizaton thing. Wait. I thought web 2.0 was going to replace that? Am I missing something?
Are you saying that everyone should just stop developing these trivial open source apps for linux and write Ajax apps that run on a web browser? (which the last I checked require an operating system and a PC but that's something they'll have to figure out on their own)
I'm confused.
Keith:
Perhaps, I should've chosen my words more carefully. I wasn't implying that the PC is useless and is going away. To the contrary, I do understand its value. In fact, I use one everyday ;)
However, I do believe that there is a proliferation of 'smart devices' that need scaled down and agile OSes. Yes, Linux is important and fills this void quite nicely. I concur that all of those AJAX apps are going to be developed on a desktop OS. So, the PC won't be going away anytime soon.
My argument is that the folks at Redmond are doing everything possible to remain relevant and survive the onslaught of Web2.0. If it means adding virtualization tools to their OS (for free), they'll do it.
Obviously, I don't have all the answers, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
BTW: Web2.0 isn't a fad. Actually people said the same thing about Linux, Perl, and PHP several years ago. Now we know how that story ended.