Q&A: Microsoft's Allchin on Vista and beyond

Jim Allchin, Microsoft ’s group vice president of platforms, delivered a two-hour-plus keynote Tuesday, the opening day of Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference. Afterward, he sat down with Network World Senior Editor John Fontana and talked about client software, IT pros, ship dates (and the lack thereof), storage technology and workflow.

What is Vista now after all the feature changes since you introduced it as Longhorn?

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Jim Allchin, Microsoft ’s group vice president of platforms, delivered a two-hour-plus keynote Tuesday, the opening day of Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference. Afterward, he sat down with Network World Senior Editor John Fontana and talked about client software, IT pros, ship dates (and the lack thereof), storage technology and workflow.

What is Vista now after all the feature changes since you introduced it as Longhorn?

We have not tried to explain it to the world yet, we really haven’t. We’ve said there are different ways to look at it. We have talked about the three “C’s” - clarity, confidence and connected - and we’ve explained how the different components of what we are doing all add up to those. In terms of a value proposition, I like to talk about audiences. The thing we are doing for IT professionals, the information worker, consumers, the thing we are doing for developers and OEMs. And there are an incredible number of features in all of those areas. We have not come out and said “ta-daaaaaa.” We are still gearing up for that.

So what do you see as key for IT professionals?

There will be more in this release then they have seen since Windows 2000. New [operating system] imaging capabilities that we have which will let them reduce the number of images that they have to manage, compress the size. Today, corporations may have hundreds of images they have to manage - images that are mapped to a particular hardware environment, a particular app load - and each of those images is completely independent. In Vista, that all changes; you create images that share DLLs so the size drops down. You can do offline servicing. The ability to use those images for deployment is much, much simpler. Just that area is very, very deep in Vista, contrasting that with Windows XP. If you look beyond that, the [reduction in the] number of reboots, the dramatic improvements in security, network access protection or user access protection. Just think about that last feature. How many corporations today would like to run a standard user?

With all the delays and changes, what has this taught Microsoft about building a next-generation operating system?

We changed mid-stream the way we build an operating system. We re-engineered our engineering process. We stopped and reviewed, and added resources from the research group, including tools to better automate the way we build the product. The engineering is significantly different than we used in the past. That is one thing that we learned. Another thing is transparency - trying to let people know where we are going. The Community Technology Previews (CTP) give us feedback. When you are going where nobody has gone before it is good to get feedback along the way before you get to the end. It has also taught us to do it right the first time. We still have to be transparent so customers will see our work, make mistakes and correct those.