[Infowarrior] - Windows is 'collapsing,' Gartner analysts warn

[Richard Forno]

Windows is 'collapsing,' Gartner analysts warn
Gregg Keizer
 http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&art
icleId=9076698

April 10, 2008 (Computerworld) Calling the situation "untenable" and
describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday
said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or
risk becoming a has-been.

In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts
Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the
market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions,
and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make
Windows moot unless the software developer acts.

"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is
untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled
"Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve."

Among Microsoft's problems, the pair said, is Windows' rapidly-expanding
code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new
version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when
Microsoft -- frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development
effort on the new operating -- hit the "reset" button and dropped back to
the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.

"This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily
incremental improvements," they said. In turn, that became one of the
reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. "Most users do
not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being
better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of
migration worthwhile."

Other analysts, including those at Gartner rival Forrester Research Inc.,
have highlighted the slow move toward Vista. Last month, Forrester said that
by the end of 2007 only 6.3% of 50,000 enterprise computer users it surveyed
were working with Vista. What gains Vista made during its first year, added
Forrester, appeared to be at the expense of Windows 2000; Windows XP's share
hardly budged.

The monolithic nature of Windows -- although Microsoft talks about Vista's
modularity, Silver and MacDonald said it doesn't go nearly far enough -- not
only makes it tough to deliver a worthwhile upgrade, but threatens Microsoft
in the mid- and long-term.

Users want a smaller Windows that can run on low-priced -- and low-powered
-- hardware. And increasingly, users work with "OS-agnostic applications,"
the two analysts said in their presentation. It takes too long for Microsoft
to build the next version, the company is being beaten by others in the
innovation arena, and in the future -- perhaps as soon as the next three
years -- it's going to have trouble competing with Web applications and
small, specialized devices.

"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a
different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which
makes application development, support and the user experience all more
difficult," according to Silver and MacDonald.

"Windows as we know it must be replaced," they said in their presentation.

Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the
software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and
virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where
virtualization -- specifically a hypervisor -- is standard on client as well
as server versions of Windows.

"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be
much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set
should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional
Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module
installed."

Backward compatibility with older applications should also be supported via
virtualization. "Backward compatibility is a losing proposition for
Microsoft; while it keeps people locked into Windows, it also often keeps
them from upgrading," said the analysts. "[But] using built-in
virtualization, compatibility modules could be layered atop Win32, or not,
as needed."

Silver and MacDonald also called on Microsoft to make it easier to move to
newer versions of Windows, re-think how it licenses Windows and come up with
a truly modular operating system that can grow or shrink as needed.

Microsoft has taken some new steps with Windows, although they don't
necessarily match what the Gartner analysts recommended. For instance, the
company recently granted Windows XP Home a reprieve from its June 30 OEM
cut-off, saying it would let computer makers install the older, smaller
operating system on ultra-cheap laptops through the middle of 2010.

It will also add a hypervisor to Windows -- albeit the server version -- in
August, and there are signs that it will launch Windows 7, the follow-on to
Vista, late next year rather than early 2010.