Rich Sharples' Blog » microsoft

Tab Sweep – JBoss

sharps — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:20:07 +0000

I’ve found it difficult to keep up with blogs in between travel hell so I’m being lazy and combining a whole bunch of items that really deserve longer entries, opinion and elaboration.

Bob McWhirter has been playing with JBoss and Rails integration; clearly he’s made a lot of progress – to the extent where he can start to eat his own dog food. His new work related blog (OddThesis) is running in a hosted environment on Rails on JBoss – great stuff.

I’ve already mentioned Jopr a couple of times but this wink demo caught my eye and I’m sure it will be a pretty important feature for the millions of Hibernate users out there – Monitoring Hibernate from Jopr. For what it’s worth – the name Jopr still isn’t working for me – my fingers want to type Jorp.

Max announced that JBoss Developer Studio (JBDS) 2.0 beta is available for free – you just have to sign up for an evaluation. Go here for more info. or here to register for the free eval.

Gavin King has an essay on how he thinks Web Beans needs to integrate with Java EE 6; it’s also a good explanation of what Web Beans is (and isn’t) and why it’s essential to EE 6.

Microsoft aren’t known for their commitment to openness, interoperability and providing customer choice; but the announcement that they’re joining the AMQP working group maybe demonstrates that a leapoard can change its spots. More importantly and practically – there is hope for simple and efficient interoperability with the world of Microsoft – assuming thet actually adopt AMQP in their platform.

Breaking News – Vista is still dead.

sharps — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:37:49 +0000

Some good commentary on Microsoft’s Vista flop on SeekingAlpha – interestingly Windows XP sales are booming. This creates an interesting situation for Microsoft. As I’ve mentioned before – they’re increasingly competing against some fast moving competitors (Linux and OS/X) with some very old, quickly decaying technology (Windows XP). So while selling XP might make short term-sense – it’s creating a much larger problem for Microsoft in the future.

What’s worse is that the new NT 6.0 kernel (the kernel that powers Vista and Windows Server 2008) isn’t competing strongly either. According to SearchEnterprise.com – Windows Server 2008 is a real power-hog compared to RHEL; a poor sign when just about every vendor in the industry is pushing efficiency and power savings. Even Microsoft’s friends at Intel IT have decided to ignore Vista – declaring that they won’t be upgrading some 80,000 desktops – that’s pretty significant.

Microsoft – welcome to the Web

sharps — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:54:07 +0000

Ray Ozzie gets the Web. Which is a start – now he just needs to overcome the huge burden of Microsoft’s revenue base. That’s going to be the hard bit.

It’ll be interesting to see how far Microsoft go to adopt standards and interoperability and open source – these were fundamental in the rapid growth and acceptance of the web and will continue to be in the future.

btw, I still don’t get the Yahoo bid – it seems wrong at so many levels. Maybe Yahoo consuming Microsoft’s assets into its ecosystem might be more effective but I can’t see that actually happening – the Yahoo DNA just won’t survive.

Microsoft’s Dilema

sharps — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:56:05 +0000

We (continue to) live in interesting times. It will be intersting to see how Microsoft fare over the next five years; the knives are drawn - Gartner claims that Microsoft’s troubles are a result of their past success – ie they’re overly burdedned by their installed base in a classic example of the Innovator’s Dilema. In addition – they are increasingly being disrupted by the web – something they’re still trying to “embrace”.

The masses of people NOT moving to Vista presents a great opportunity for the competion (eg. Linux, Mac, the Web) – ie. you don’t really have to compete with Vista – you merely have to compete with Windows2003 (on the server) and XP (on the desktop) and give people a reason to move (cost, escape vendor lock-in).

Interesting times.

Neelie Kroes has balls

sharps — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:01:01 +0000

The EU just fined Microsoft $US 1.35bn for failing to comply with a previous anti-trust ruling. IMO – that seems a bit low for a company with oodles of cash (2007 NET income was $US 14bn and equity of over $US 30bn). I just don’t see how this will change Microsoft’s behavior.

Still – Neelie Kroes has shown that she has the balls to take on the world’s most powerful criminals – unlike some countries.

Microsoft and Metcalfe’s Law

sharps — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:00:00 +0000

Microsoft have finally figured out that Metcalfe’s Law applies to them as much as the next software company – despite their huge footprint. To quote Microsoft’s CEO and CMM (Chief Mad-Monkey) Steve Balmer :

“In a more connected, services-oriented world…one of the greatest value-adds in some sense is what people do on the other end of the wire”

Bang-on Steve – couldn’t have put it better myself. Let’s see how wide the Kimono opens before Balmer get’s shy. Ick – that’s a poor choice of metaphor – sorry if I’ve spoiled your lunch.