A Tweak from the Guy and a Public Address to Same
Mood:
celebratory
Topic: VCSY
Vista: what is the Big Secret which Microsoft is afraid of exposing?
by Guy J Kewney | posted on 17 November 2006
http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/3037
You'd expect Microsoft's IT Forum this year to have been the top headline on Google. After all, Vista fever is now in full swing. Frantic developers are jamming the Microsoft servers with download requests, and an insane frenzy applies to the whole of Microsoft, as the new OS ships to corporate subscribers.
And I bet you never knew. Not surprising, when only Google says only 81 reports have Vista AND Microsoft AND IT Forum in common!
Normally, there's one thing you have to say for Microsoft: it may not waste too much of its time on the Press, perhaps, but when it does go for the headlines, it traditionally knows how to do it.
Most years, this major convention is attended by thousands of tech delegates, and hundreds of journalists swarm all over it, interviewing senior Microsoft staff. It generates headlines galore.
But this isn't a normal year! - with Windows Vista announced the Friday before the forum with "Windows Vista Is Here" and "This day marks Microsoft's most compelling operating system release in over a decade..." all over the Microsoft Developer Network web pages, yours truly was keen to share the raz-ma-taz.
So, when The Register rang up and said: "Can you cover the show?" I accepted promptly. Regular Register blogger Martin Banks had signed up for the slot, and then come down with the flu, so all Microsoft had to do was change the labels on the badge.
"We don't have the budget," said a flack.
It is, of course, a serious problem. Once the convention hits town, if you aren't a guest of Microsoft, then finding a hotel is a real challenge. But, surely, if Mr Banks was cancelling, all they had to do was give me his key?
"We don't have the budget."
Well, I can help there. I'm happy to pay for my own lunch. I mean, I understand that a small, struggling startup like Microsoft can't be expected to fund my lavish life-style; but what other budget?
"Flights," said the flack.
How much does it cost to get to Barcelona? British Airways is advertising a 29 pound one-way ticket. But if you don't like that, you can fly to Girona for 25 pounds, and take a seven-Euro bus to Barcelona. If Microsoft can't afford my lunch (understandable) and if they don't want to suffer the humiliation of seeing me pay for my own air fare, what's so hard about a 25 quid flight? What's so hard about rebooking the room in the name of Kewney, not Banks?
So, is Microsoft really short of the wherewithall to find a couple of hundred quid? Or is there something of a problem with Vista, which they're hoping nobody will spot? Or are we simply dealing with a junior PR flunkey who decided there was too much work involved in changing a booking? And if the last, does that explain why so few people went?
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Hello Guy. You probably don't remember me but we crossed paths a few years ago talking about Orange and how Hutchison skunked the early results of the GlobalOne demise.
I won't correspond with you in private, as there would not be enough transparency for my taste, so I am using this blog (aggregate blog, actually - me littel gang number statistically near a hundred although there are heros and thieves in the mix so I can't know who's who without a program which I have but I try to not open it much - leads to creases, don't you know. Maybe more.).
Given your experience seems to jive with other anecdotes I suggest you follow a trail to pry apart what Microsoft is clamping shut between their cheeks... as it were. It's called WinFS. The architecture is supposed to take information from the Windows NT File System (NTFS) relational database and apply it through XML middleware or engine to the internet stream for consumption and interoperable action.
Granted it's not in the wireless realm where you are but it is a software concept that will greatly impact wireless in execution and it's something we all want to see but SOMEbody says it's "too hard" so the entire industry has been giving them a pass since 2001. Now IBM is rising out of nowhere with huge SOA muscle and MSFT has SOA atrophy to the point their ribs are sticking out. "We" (there's that word again) believe IBM is using patented information that "we" happen to own parts of and would like to know where our parts went.
It's all been kind of like missing a chicken leg at a picnic. You know how upsetting that can be.
Microsoft Marketing can't afford to truck you to Barcelona and Microsoft Technology says XML is too hard. IBM has SOA in profitable serfitude and now we see Microsoft forgot SOA at the last gas station. Google got AJAX from MSFT apparently unintentionally kinda sort of in March 2005. A clumbsilly handled first swing. Microsoft was asked to join IBM and SAP in killing UDDI in December 2005. A critically timed second swing. Swing three was WinFS. Somehow Microsoft became SOA crippled relative to IBM in only one year.
WinFS got killed in June 2006. The outline is still on the pavement - WinFS got knifed out of Vista just before they were supposed to make the grand entrance together. MSFT says it would take "too much time" and WinFS is supposed to now be pushed into future projects.
We know what time is to Microsoft, don't we?
We believe IBM intends to kill Microsoft (cut them in pieces by occupying the gap between their technologies) and that's all well and good. But MSFT is not VCSY's fight unless the VCSY CEO knows a bit more about Microsoft's tactics in this IP struggle. If it's a ledger thing? MBA's are the first to be eaten in any republic. If Microsoft deserves carving, slice away. We'll all sit back and watch.
Anyway, Sorry to be so cryptic and direct at the same time. I can't help it. My nature. It's what spacemen do. I'm not the Urban Spaceman because he doesn't exist. I'm his little brother that decided to tag along to see what Urban Spacemen don't get a chance to see.
Cheerios.
Posted by Portuno Diamo
at 2:58 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, 6 December 2006 6:47 PM EST