When a bag of chips ain't all that.
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Topic: Calamity
We've never really talked about hardware in all this discussion about VCSY software. VCSY has only one hardware patent we know of and that's the Cruz fiber optic patent for transmitting moving images through a single fiber. This will provide an untold capability to speed information transport once fleshed out in computers and chips.
But, what of VCSY software patent effect on hardware, particularly computer infrastructure and processing chips?
The power of VCSY taught virtualization and arbitration leading to an effective SaaS platform alone offers a rapidly shifting landscape for chipmakers of any kind as it portends the demise of the Desktop PC domination over business and perhaps consumer hardware at the point of use at a period of large scale obsolescence and upgrade.
The currently recognized SaaS (Software as a Service) and CaaS (Computation as a Service) concepts teach mainframes and large manageable server banks will increasingly be the norm and the families of of existing and new desktop PCs will give way to an increasingly smaller footprint in processing power required, electrical power needs and cost per unit user.
The desktop phenomena took off with the introduction of the IBM Compatible concept a couple decades ago and has steadily increased with no apparent end in sight. Chip makers depended on this incremental growth in processor speed and power demands to forecast their manufacturing expenditures over the coming years. IBM appears poised to reset the technology, bringing the power back from the desktop to the mainframe and server banks, Where Microsoft skunked IBM by foreseeing the dominance of the operating system on individually distributed computers, IBM appears intent on calling the shots this time.
While the traditional chip building industry continued to see the desktop power curve as a road to riches, IBM has concentrated their chip making expertise in processors better able to serve many users on a chip. Along with serving many with fewer hardware units, the IBM strategy appears to have added the ability for software to also control the chip ecology, offering the ability to virtualize the hardware for repurposing on demand and providing a means of controlling the chip infrastructure with software. This is a fundamental component to IBM's POWER strategy for more efficient and more 'green' computing as scales become more massive.
As IBM learned a long time ago, errors in prediction come back to haunt the unfortunate with a vengeance.
Unlike software manufacturers who can do most of their product building with few physical assets beyond development software and the computers needed to carry out software construction and testing, chip manufacture requires huge outlays in expensive equipment and trained staff in order to produce their products.
Software manufacture is not a very predictable science as is indicated by the many build/rebuild set/reset phases some software houses go through. Take Vista's shipping 'schedules' for instance. Originally slated for shipment in 2004, the delays in bringing out a useful build on Vista challenged the computer chip industry to continually revise their projected schedules to produce articles capable of running the more massive operating system while trying to predict and balance the demands of the hardware production lines which would produce the required desktops and server frames.
Chip manufacture is a science with a bit of mental artistry thrown into the architectural phases of concept and mask cutting. But, after the masks are cut, chip manufacture is predominantly an assembly line production under somewhat predictable guidelines. Things move along at a predictable rate unless outside uncontrolled influences impact that process.
Scheduling those chip shipments to coordinate with new motherboard designs, for instance, is a monumental task often upset by the smallest unforeseen hiccups.
Cause those chips to be somehow tied to the introduction of a new technological paradigm and the artistry in one industry can bring chaos and loss to the assembly line sciences.
Unfortunately for chip manufacturers, software is the most difficult commodity for which to predict shipping cycles. That would not be such a terrible thing if the software is not evolutionary requiring a new set of processing capabilities. But, when a processing chip line is predicted and put in place to accommodate the increased sophistication of software packages such as a 'next generation' operating system, and said OS doesn't make it out the door... the impact is massive on the chip supplier.
In an arena such as x86 processor chips where there are multiple manufacturers (dominant in the industry are Intel and AMD) the competition also shaves the predictables down to who can deliver first with the most and therefore increases the consequential detriments deriving from any product problems from upstream and downstream.
With all that in mind, Vista must have been a real bear for chip makers like Intel and AMD to plan on. As Vista is best used on a 64 bit processor, new fabrication techniques and manufacturing capabilities had to be in place early to produce such products at the same time as the requisite operating system product was to be delivered. Delays in the software manufacturing process may well have been a 'so what?' affair as their was little capital and asset loss... but chip manufacturers were faced with delaying installation on machinery and fabrication suites or mothballing the assets until such units were needed. We will likely never know as most errors are buried in the large manufacturing infrastructures.
In the case of planning for Vista, the original shipment schedules of 2004 slipping into 2005, 2006 and 2007 meant the chip manufacturers had to juggle an increasingly unpredictable schedule with increasing unrecoverable costs to the bottom line.
Even then, when Vista was finally ready to ship, the production pace set by expectations was subject to the whims of buyers who would or would not buy the operating system and the prerequisite hardware necessary to wring out the maximum use of the software product.
Vista has likely been a huge disappointment and a source of consternation and befuddlement for chip suppliers who once foresaw a golden age where every desktop would be replaced to take advantage of incredible OS capabilities... only to find the product was not really ready for prime time (the capabilities of Vista won't be fully realized until the remaining pieces like Longhorn are shipped) and the community of users really didn't need more powerful machines because they didn't need what Vista provided.
As backup for these thoughts, here are a few blurbs from a timely article by Joe Wilcox. The post doesn't tell us anything new. It simply tells us what folks have been saying ever since Vista was released will actually be the new reality for those counting on selling their wares to a hardware hungry crowd who are about to go on a crash diet in their upgrade cycles.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/some_enterprises_will_delay_new_pcs_for_vista.html
By Joe Wilcox
excerpts:
Enterprises already planning new PC deployments, as part of regular cyclical upgrades, are likely to delay them for 12 months or more because of Windows Vista.
"Corporations were likely to delay the upgrade cycle a year or more," Lao said of In-Stat's finding. "If planning to buy 1,000 machines, I'm still going to buy them, just a little later."
...the findings are good for Microsoft, which is assured of Vista deployments on most new PCs in the current upgrade cycle. The situation could be less rosy for some portions of Microsoft's channel.
Microsoft missed a major corporate upgrade cycle starting in mid 2004 and ending about two years later. This larger number of businesses is unlikely to upgrade to Windows Vista right away.
The In-Stat survey supports my earlier contention that Vista shipped too late. Microsoft needed to get the operating system into the market no later than holiday 2005 to catch the curl.
Consistent with other studies, consumers aren't rushing out to buy new PCs because of Vista.
"The average consumer is looking at a second, third or fourth PC purchase," Lao said. Referring to the survey results, he added: "The motivating factor was 'I need another PC for my kid to use,' not Vista."
Related Posts:
IT Organizations: Cautious Vista Testing and Deployment, Microsoft Watch, May 8, 2007
Uh-Oh, Vista! PC Sales Levels are Normal, Microsoft Watch, April 11, 2007
Vista Missed Its Cue—Now What?, Microsoft Watch, March 23, 2007
Snapshot: IT Vista Deployment Plans, Microsoft Watch, March 21, 2007
CIOs: Vista Will Need Heftier Hardware, Microsoft Watch, Dec. 5, 2006
How New a Day?, Microsoft Watch, Nov. 30, 2006
More at URL
End Article
The evolving consensus appears to say PC sales are normal, meaning any anticipated and planned for increase in business has not materialized. Chip makers in particular are not seeing the inrush expected to justify the money needed to tool up to a new set of processing capabilities.
On top of this sag in expectations versus reality in PC sales, the industry is facing the looming specter of thin client erosion of the desktop market over the period of this coming delay induced wait. Corporations holding out for a more power desktop over the coming months and years will be offered an increasingly viable alternative in less expensive thin desktops with all the processing power and hassles at the other end of the network connection... not at the desktop.
As always the lingering question regarding a performance by Microsoft that put software OEMs, chip makers, hardware builders and IT services in an increasingly uncomfortable position from 2004 onward: Why couldn't they ship something, anything, sooner? Why was Longhorn emasculated so? Why was WinFS demonstrated so enthusiastically up to 2004 only to have planners remove the one component that would have allowed Vista to be used in the current server farm automation scenario even without all the other capabilities and items.
WinFS offered the opportunity to provide the operating system parameters outside the OS for consumption by management personnel and systems and thus provide significant cost saving opportunities for hardware control before that subject was so thoroughly dominated by recent announcements by IBM?
As the evolving SaaS/CaaS scenario unfolds and matures, cutting WinFS may come to be viewed in hindsight as having been the most significant blunder by Microsoft management because it cut Vista's first and most significant deliverable to OEMs at a time when competitors were planning and executing for just such uses.
WinFS could have arguably changed the face of the server farm landscape by providing management systems with ways to increase OS utilization and performance via external systems.
As it stands now, such capabilities will not be available on Microsoft machines for the foreseeable future and the chip makers and OEMs will still be depending on Microsoft making good on shipping what is obviously a very difficult execution for Microsoft.
We shall see.
Posted by Portuno Diamo
at 2:11 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 28 May 2007 12:52 PM EDT
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