[Infowarrior] - Windows Vista the last of its kind

[Richard Forno]

25 August 2006
Windows Vista the last of its kind

By Matthew Broersma, Techworld

http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=6718

Vista will be the last version of Windows that exists in its current,
monolithic form, according to Gartner.

Instead, the research firm predicts, Microsoft will be forced to migrate
Windows to a modular architecture tied together through hardware-supported
virtualisation. "The current, integrated architecture of Microsoft Windows
is unsustainable - for enterprises and for Microsoft," wrote Gartner
analysts Brian Gammage, Michael Silver and David Mitchell Smith.

The problem is that the operating system's increasing complexity is making
it ever more difficult for enterprises to implement migrations, and
impossible for Microsoft to release regular updates. This, in turn, stands
in the way of Microsoft's efforts to push companies to subscription
licensing.

The answer, according to Gartner, is virtualisation, which is built into
newer chips from Intel and AMD, and has become mainstream for x86 servers
through the efforts of VMware. "Once Windows includes virtualisation at its
core, we expect OS development to change direction from integration to
modularisation," the analysts wrote.

Virtualisation is best known as a way of running multiple server instances
on a single hardware platform, but it can also be used to run individual
operating system functions or applications. The technique isolates the
various components from one another, making them easier to manage. Gartner
believes Microsoft will use virtualisation to divide the Windows client into
a "service partition", controlling system functions such as management and
security, and one or more application partitions. Such a path is already
being followed in the x86 server world, Gartner said.

"The combination of the service partition and the ability to deliver
horizontal functions in software appliances provides the key for unbundling
the Windows OS," the analysts wrote. Such an architecture would allow
Microsoft to make major development changes to Windows without worrying
about disrupting dependencies across the entire operating system. This, in
turn, would mean the company could release regular updates, and would make
backward compatibility easier.

Next-generation Windows-based partitions "could run in parallel to
partitions running kernels with the Vista/NT code base," wrote Gammage,
Silver and Smith. They said Microsoft doesn't agree with this vision, saying
it's identified problems with integrating data across partitions and
creating a consistent user experience. "However, we regard these concerns as
only partially founded, and anticipate a key role for virtualisation in the
required unbundling of the Windows OS," the analysts said.

Gartner expects a significant update to Vista in late 2008 or 2009 that will
add virtualisation (in the form of a component called a hypervisor) and a
service partition. The hypervisor will allow more frequent updates, and will
make the Software Assurance subscription scheme effectively mandatory for
Windows from around 2010, Gartner said. To date, Microsoft's main effort to
simplify Windows development, in 2004, was to rebuild Windows into a stack
of more than 50 layers, Gartner said.

"Upper layers could have dependencies on lower layers, but lower layers
could not be dependent on upper ones," the analysts wrote. "This would allow
it to lockdown lower layers when complete and worry less about compatibility
changes as it worked up the stack." But this redesign is not enough to ease
Microsoft's ongoing development and delivery problems, or the deployment
difficulties of enterprises, Gartner said.