Microsoft pricing, mobile, support needs new song and dance

Ron Barrett

It's no secret I like Microsoft products. But that doesn't mean I think Microsoft is flawless. I would like to see Microsoft improve its consumer pricing, mobile products and self-help support.

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Ron Barrett

It's no secret I like Microsoft products. But that doesn't mean I think Microsoft is flawless. I would like to see Microsoft improve its consumer pricing, mobile products and self-help support.

Find out what Cisco could improve upon.

Microsoft's pricing strategy often has me scratching my head. I am befuddled by Microsoft's ability to give away tremendous amounts of software in some of the partner programs like the Action Pack subscription, yet individual users are still paying through the nose for Windows and Office. It amazes me that a full version of Windows 7 Ultimate is $319 retail while a 10-user CAL version of Server 2008 Standard retails for $1,209 (or $120.09 per user). Wouldn't it be better if Microsoft wooed the consumer market with more competitive pricing?

When it comes to baffling, I cannot figure out how Microsoft can be the desktop and messaging giant it is and yet struggle at another key market: mobile. Mobile devices are the cornerstone of social media and realtime collaboration. While Microsoft makes many promises, Windows Mobile time and again looks like the cousin you are forced to take to the prom. It's not terribly bad looking but no one wants to dance with it. I would like to see an innovative Windows Mobile 7 product, not an imitator. For instance, let's see it make some strides in the areas of mobile speech recognition and speech-to-text translation.
As for support, I feel sorry for anyone who needs to use Microsoft's Web site to find technical support. While many of Microsoft's sites are user friendly – try the Office Communications Server Web site, Microsoft Downloads, or even Microsoft Research – the company's online technical repository is one of the worst out there for resolving issues. I recently spent hours looking for a solution to a Server 2003 issue while the site kept sending me an irrelevant knowledgebase article on Windows NT 4.0.

While I'm on support, Microsoft could beef up its technical certification resources. I'm not unhappy with TechNet Learning, in fact I quite enjoyed writing reviews for the virtual labs a few years back and think this is a great resource for IT professionals. I have also enjoyed the Microsoft Learning Snacks very much. However, I would like to see more resources to help IT pros with certification, including actual practice exams. I'd also like to see some sneak peeks to help an IT pro ascertain if a specific course was needed before signing up and discovering it wasn't the right fit.

Barrett is a former IT director of a large financial institution and is currently an independent trainer, author and consultant.

Can Microsoft open its arms to FOSS?

By Mitchell Ashley

Microsoft has gone through a lot of changes since Bill Gates' departure. In the old days Microsoft was brash and over-the-top and thought it could bully users into using Microsoft, and only Microsoft, wares. Today's Microsoft is searching for its next identity in an upside down, open source, cloud-centric world, with competitive threats coming from every direction -- from old enemies such as Apple and Oracle to relative newcomers such as Red Hat and Google.

Ironically, Microsoft has changed the most and the least when it comes to open source software. Redmond can no longer ignore the fact that the lion's share of the Internet is built on Linux and the open source LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). Some enterprises still have a Microsoft-centric environment based on ASP.Net, but mixed environments are far more prevalent and in those, open source is the rule rather than the exception.

Microsoft is tip toeing into a new relationship with open source, but still in very measured, self-serving ways. It's most notable actions were the contribution of Hyper-V drivers to the Linux kernel under the GPL license, improved support for PHP apps running on Windows Server 2008 and in Microsoft's emerging cloud services, and the opening of file formats for Office documents and Outlook .pst files. Microsoft also surprised everyone by forming the CodePlex Foundation, a non-profit open source organization. While the latter is still struggling for legitimacy, taken together, all of these moves are groundbreaking for the king of proprietary software.

More telling is Microsoft's change of heart in acknowledging non-Microsoft products. The company is supporting competitors like VMware and Citrix Xen in System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and Firefox and Opera browsers as legitimate SharePoint clients, especially in SharePoint 2010 and Office Web Apps. It even went as far as announcing a SharePoint client for the Apple iPhone. Microsoft also announced bilateral testing with Red Hat to ensure Red Hat Linux and Windows Server would function under each other's KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) and Hyper-V hypervisors.

Those may be revolutionary steps for Microsoft, but to gain legitimacy in the online world, ruled as it is by free open source software, the company will have to go much further. Microsoft must actively participate and contribute to open source projects that benefit more than just itself. It should, for example, transition some existing free products, such as Live Essentials, into open source projects. But it seems like it will be a long time before we begin to see Microsoft truly embrace open source.

Ashley is founder of several start-ups and is principal consultant at Converging Network LLC.

Don't be arrogant: size matters

By Michael Surkan

Microsoft faces many challenges in the coming years. Not only is technology changing, but business models and tough macro-economic realities will put severe pressure on the company, and there is no silver bullet that will ensure it will emerge triumphant.

The bare fact is the culture Microsoft created, which has successfully delivered some of the most profitable products in history, won't necessarily work in new growth areas. The very way Microsoft is structured in terms of job functions and engineering and marketing disciplines makes it exceedingly difficult for success in fields that require new ways of divvying up roles and responsibilities.

For example, it is unlikely that Microsoft will ever become a leader in mobile devices, as its struggles with Zune prove, or that it will become a Goliath in advertising and search with Windows Live/Bing, or that it will own a prominent position in consumer video as the failed Soapbox service shows. Meanwhile, software upgrades are liable to slow dramatically as buyers opt to keep systems far longer than manufacturers ever imagined.