What users want from Microsoft

If customers had any doubt as to Microsoft's dominance in the server and desktop markets they need look no further than the latest numbers from IDC.

The research showed Microsoft accounted for a 49% share of the 5.7 million new server operating system licenses shipped worldwide in 2001, an increase of 7% over the previous year. The nearest competitor was Linux at 25.7%. And Microsoft took home a whopping 95% of the desktop market, a 1% increase over the previous year.

To get a sense of what this huge collection of customers would like to see next from Microsoft, we polled a cross section of them. These were their top issues:

Patch management

Users say there is no excuse for releasing software that needs patching as much as Microsoft's. But if they have to live with that inevitability, Microsoft should at least offer a good system for managing patches that now arrive in a variety of formats to be applied with different automated tools. Patch management has been an art, not a science.

"Microsoft can develop an Internet browser so integral a part of their operating system that to remove it would detract greatly from the value of the [operating system], per the recent antitrust case, but they can't make patch management just as integral a part of the [operating system]?" says Jeff Allred, manager of network services for the Duke University Cancer Center in Durham, N.C.

Allred calls Microsoft's current efforts "lip service" and not anywhere close to what Microsoft should be capable of producing. Users say Microsoft must get patch management right to form a foundation for other advancements.

"The next step will be to tackle more challenging systems management problems such as performance monitoring, reporting and management," says Al Williams, director of distributed systems group at The Pennsylvania State University in State College.

Security

Without answers to the patch problems, security will always suffer. Microsoft earlier this year announced its Trustworthy Computing Initiative to develop secure code, but users call it only a small step.

"My wish list includes some type of Microsoft security organization that has branding, services and products that are security conscious and adaptive. Kind of the 'Intel Inside' scheme but under the trustworthy ideals," says Ken Winnell, CEO of Econium in Totowa, N.J., which develops XML-based applications based on Microsoft .Net and Java/Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition technology. He says the scheme could include products that range from identity and access management to reliability and hackproof code.

Training

"Two weeks to become a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer?" asks Doug Spindler, project coordinator for Active Directory at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. "Ask any educator how much information the average student retains; maybe 1%?"

Spindler says as an employer, and an MCSE himself, that he feels cheated. "Certification should be more like a two-year degree program. The certification classes are focused more on passing the test than on learning the technology." Spindler says he can't think of one other certification that can be obtained in two weeks for anything that is as critical as computer systems are for the health of a business.