Google was born on the Web and is increasingly giving Microsoft fits by forcing the decades-old software giant to compete on Google's terms. Like open source. Like cloud computing.
Microsoft may shore up its fortunes in the short term with a successful Windows 7 launch. But in the long term, its very success with outdated "desktop" products threaten to cede the market to Google.
We'll have all of it, please
It's not really fair to Microsoft. Microsoft is a victim of its own success, needing to cater to its existing clientele with each new release, in true "Innovator's Dilemma" fashion. Hence, Microsoft continues to make a lot of money, but its last two quarters have seen traditional strengths like Windows become a drag on earnings as enterprises spend more money with Google, Red Hat, and others.
Google's lack of legacy frees it to innovate rapidly and broadly, as Genentench CIO Todd Pierce, a Google Apps customer, suggests:
The rate of innovation at Google is - well I mean, the Oracle, SAP and Microsoft product cycle is five years; Google's product cycle is five days. It's incremental. In five days you're not going to be able to cancel your Microsoft Office license, but in five years, you won't have Microsoft Office.
Microsoft, for its part, is so concerned with "backward compatibility"--"Is this product/feature compatible with our ability to continue to monetize our 1980s-style desktop monopoly?"--that it continues to struggle to embrace the Web. CNET blogger Dave Rosenberg points out that Windows 7 should have been Microsoft's launchpad to cloud computing, but isn't.
There are a lot of "should have beens" for Microsoft when it comes to the Web.
Meanwhile, no one is slowing down for Microsoft. Let's stick with cloud computing for a minute. VMware dominates virtualization and has a strong claim on cloud computing, though open-source rivalry from Eucalyptus and VMops threatens to challenge both VMware and Microsoft as they seek to dominate cloud computing.
And then there's Google, which provides an increasingly wide array of cloud-based services to enterprises looking to untether themselves from the desktop. In an interview with CNET News, Google CEO Eric Schmidt argues that "The browser can be both enterprise- and consumer-capable. The architecture is driven from the browser. That is the story of enterprise IT today."
In other words, the desktop is simply the means by which a user loads a browser. It's a gateway. The value is not in the desktop anymore. It's in the browser, which is the new desktop, in terms of real functionality delivered.
Microsoft's big opportunity to stymie the threat from Google and others is SharePoint. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has described it as Microsoft's new operating system, but it's in a recent interview with Forrester that he makes this meaningful:
In my own mind I compare (SharePoint) to the PC, the PC started off life as a spreadsheet machine, then became a programming machine, a word processing machine, (SharePoint is) a general purpose infrastructure that connects people to people and people to information....
I think SharePoint is considered a very serious development platform for rapid application development (by IT architects and developers).
SharePoint is Microsoft's best attempt to connect desktop applications like Office with centralized, cloud/cloud-like collaboration and storage. Yes, Microsoft has other initiatives like online Office, but none marries so well its legacy profit centers with future innovation. And, given that SharePoint is already a $1 billion and frenetically growing business, it has momentum that other initiatives don't.
SharePoint, then, may be Microsoft's best hope for marrying its legacy to the future of Web-based computing.
Microsoft needs something like this. It is losing in mobile, and not simply to Apple. Google's Android momentum is almost astounding, with AdMob data pegging Android smartphone penetration in the U.K. at 10 percent, as but one example.
If we assume that mobile will increasingly be the client platform of choice, then we see Google squeezing Microsoft from the top (cloud) and the bottom (client).
In both areas, open source is Google's weapon of choice, and it's one that Microsoft is going to have to figure out quickly if it wants to be a player on the Web. The Web is too big for Microsoft to control it, and the Web is overwhelmingly open source, as Lotus founder Mitch Kapor states:
The accomplishment of open source is that it is the back end of the Web, the invisible part, the part that you don't see as a user.
All of the servers, pretty much, they run Linux as the operating system; they run Apache as the basic Web server on top of which everything else is built. The main languages out of which Web applications are built - whether it's Perl or Python or PHP or any of the other languages - those are all open source languages. So the infrastructure of the Web is open source ... the Web as we know it is completely dependent on open source.
Kapor further suggests that Microsoft's war with open source is over, or should be over: open source has won. It's essential infrastructure now, and hence something that Microsoft needs to embrace, not fight. This isn't about open-source religion. It's about pragmatism. Pragmatism that Microsoft, like anyone else, can embrace.
Google is using the future (open source, cloud) to compete for the future, and its tactics threaten to hit Microsoft in its profit centers like Windows.
Microsoft, however, appears to be mired in its past. Windows 7 looks to be a serious upgrade over its Vista predecessor, but in 10 years time, will we care? Or will we have moved on, forgetting about those quaint days when we used to care about the operating system and applications like Office?
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
We like to ascribe secret designs--nefarious and otherwise--to software vendors. Super-secretive Apple, in particular, tends to excite endless rumor-mongering as to what it's up to. It seems to me, however, that Apple and its top competitors, including Google and Microsoft, are increasingly transparent about their plans. We simply don't pay attention to the signs.
Let's start with Apple. The big rumor at present is the company's alleged work on a tablet computer, kicked off by The Wall Street Journal's bold declaration that "people familiar with the situation" suggest Apple is working on "a new touch-screen gadget."
While the rumor may be true, it's highly unusual for anyone "familiar with the situation" of anything at Apple to talk about it. After all, the punishment for divulging confidential Apple information is death. Or worse: the icy glare of Steve Jobs.
But we don't really have to look to rumors for this one. As Cult of Mac reports, Snow Leopard includes a range of functionality--including a full-size virtual keyboard--that makes a lot of sense on a touch-screen device (one bigger than an iPhone).
Conclusive? Nah. But a very good sign of what Apple is thinking.
If you use Google Chrome and Google's web applications, then you're already running Google Chrome OS. Just maximize Google Chrome's window and imagine that each tab is an instance of an application.
Perhaps Google is more open than most because it increasingly works with open-source code and communities, and secrecy doesn't exactly lend itself well to fostering either of those, but still....
Even Microsoft, that reputed bastion of secret monopolistic plans, is pretty open about future product direction. For example, Steve Ballmer has called SharePoint Microsoft's "next big operating system". This may not mean much to many, but it speaks volumes about Microsoft's desire to marry its personal computer dominance to cloud and/or server-based computing.
Want to see where Microsoft thinks computing is going? Yes, you can read the documentation on Azure, but you'd find a much more tangible example by installing SharePoint.
Perhaps we should spend less time guessing at what such leading vendors may announce, and instead take a closer look at what they've already released. The clues are often hidden in plain sight.
This may herald a new era of transparency, as technology success increasingly depends upon community outreach, outreach that requires the ability to handle code in advance of a general release. Or it may simply signal the fact that it's very hard to keep secrets in any industry, much less the software industry, particularly when success depends more upon execution than whizbang innovation.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
While the open-source crowd gets (rightly) excited by Linux's growing market share, three companies are pulling the rug out from under the feet of traditional operating systems.
Red Hat is winning in Linux while IBM cleans up the Unix market. But those are increasingly yesterday's markets as Microsoft, Google, and VMware create different breeds of operating system, each tuned to the strength of its product portfolio.
The easiest to understand are Google and VMware. Google, with its Linux distribution Chrome OS, is placing secondary emphasis on the operating system and primary emphasis on where it takes you: the Web. Given Google's strength in cloud computing, this makes perfect sense. Google needs an operating system just long enough to move users "off" their personal computers (or mobile phones, for which Google has developed Android) and into its cloud services: Google Apps, Search, Wave, etc.
While Google won't find this strategy to be easy, it has the brand and expertise to bring "desktop" substance to cloud applications.
Similarly, VMware's vSphere attempts to untether computing from "desktops" and on-premises servers. VMware describes vSphere as:
...the industry's first cloud operating system, transforming IT infrastructures into a private cloud--a collection of internal clouds federated on-demand to external clouds--delivering IT infrastructure as a service.
VMware recently acquired open-source Java leader SpringSource to complement this strategy, giving developers an easy way to build, deploy, and manage Java-based applications for vSphere (and beyond). With Java applications already running at full steam in vSphere, this move should serve to heighten the value of vSphere.
And then there's Microsoft. The company prints billions of dollars worth of profits each quarter from its Windows franchise, yet for years it has been quietly developing its next big operating system. And no, I'm not referring to Windows 7.
With Windows under fire from VMware in virtualization (though Gartner thinks Microsoft stands to gain on VMware) and from Google in Web-based applications, Microsoft has created a bridge "between personal productivity and line-of-business applications," one that stitches together Microsoft's "desktop" dominance with its cloud ambitions.
It's called SharePoint, and with over 100 million seats and $1 billion in revenue, the odds are that your company already has it installed.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer long ago declared that "SharePoint is the definitive operating system or platform for the middle tier," and I don't think he's using the term "operating system" lightly.
Increasingly, SharePoint is the center of the Microsoft universe, at least, for enterprise computing. SharePoint serves as the hub for Microsoft's suite of operating systems, applications, and third-party software. It is a content application server, of sorts, one that provides the platform upon which so much of Microsoft's value is now being built.
I've disparaged SharePoint in the past for its tendency to lock customers into its proprietary repository. But let's be clear: a large number of companies seem perfectly happy to make that trade-off and are actively using SharePoint at the heart of their intranets, extranets, and Web sites.
Between Microsoft SharePoint, Google Chrome OS, and VMware vSphere, we're in for real innovation in what "operating system" means. While this shift will take awhile, leaving traditional vendors plenty of time to make money in traditional operating systems--hey, companies are still making money in green-screen software--the future of the operating system is almost certain to look different from vanilla Windows, Linux, or Unix.
Disclosure: My company, Alfresco, offers an open-source content application server that has been positioned in the past as directly competitive with SharePoint.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Google becomes more like Microsoft every day. It used to be that only Microsoft could pre-announce a product to mass hysteria (and mass exodus of start-ups dabbling in the area), then proceed to under-deliver for the first few iterations of the product and still make billions in the process. With Google Chrome OS, Google has signaled that it, too, can over-commit and under-deliver and still mint billions.
But let's step back and strip away the frenzied media response to Google Chrome OS to determine what, exactly, Google announced: Google announced that it was shipping Ubuntu.
No, Google isn't calling it Ubuntu, but Chrome OS is nothing more than the promise of an Ubuntu fork. Given that we have Ubuntu and plenty of other Ubuntu forks today, what's the big deal?
Heck, for that matter, we also have Jolicloud, another Linux fork that promises to be an "Internet operating system" for Netbooks, just like Chrome OS. (Ubuntu makes largely the same claim.)
The difference, of course, is that you can actually use Jolicloud today (alpha version), unlike Chrome OS, and I'm actually typing this on an Ubuntu-based Netbook. (Incidentally, you've got to think that Jolicloud's investors were kicking themselves last week when Google announced Chrome OS a day after they announced Jolicloud's funding.)
So, Google will ship an Ubuntu fork, but one that presumably will come with its own secret sauce. Why? Well, as CNET's Rafe Needleman generously suggests, because "The stakes are big enough that it's worth the shot for Google."
Maybe. Maybe not.
Let's assume "Maybe." This still leaves Google with the stated intent to tackle a Lilliputian market that only the Linux crowd seems to get excited about, which is why Barron's slaps the idea around:
I think Google misunderstands the nature of netbooks, which simply are small, cheap, lightweight PCs. Early versions ran Linux, and didn't sell. Once the netbook companies loaded them with Windows, sales picked up. On its last earnings call, Microsoft noted that the attach rate for Windows on netbooks had reached 90%. The people have spoken. Netbooks are a misnomer; while people do use them to connect with the Web, they use them for a lot of other things. Customers want netbooks to run standard software, including Office. And I doubt there will ever be a version of Office for Chrome OS.
Of course they won't support Microsoft Office. They're going to support Google Docs! (See "Microsoft moment" above.) Much as I like Google Docs, and much as I like OpenOffice and a range of alternatives to Microsoft Office, the reality is that if you don't support Microsoft Office, you automatically limit the market appeal of your operating system, a lesson Apple learned. Apple's support for Office was the beginning of its rise within enterprise computing.
It's just incredibly hard to overcome the inertia of an incumbent in an established market. Google looks smart when it is changing the rules for computing (giving search away and charging for ads, moving e-mail to the cloud, etc.), but when it competes with Microsoft on its terms...it's likely going to lose. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler gives a hint as to why. (Spoiler: It's the installed base, stupid):
New markets on the Web can emerge and grow really quickly. There's lots of opportunity for something like Facebook to take over in just a few years. But that's not really the case for PCs and desktop software. The installed base is just really, really large, and the growth and upgrade cycle are much much slower than with Web services.
Firefox has been the most successful piece of desktop software to ever challenge Microsoft's offering. We started the effort 10 years ago and finally arrived at a successful product 5 years ago and in the 5 years since we shipped that product, we've managed to gain about 300 million users and a quarter of Web browsing usage.
Apple has been the most successful operating system to challenge Microsoft ever and they've managed in the 8+ years of OS X availability to grab only about 5% of the global OS installed base.
It's just not fast or easy to move a market that's more than a billion large. Anyone that thinks that major change can happen in months, or even a couple of years, doesn't understand this space very well.
Google came out with a new browser (Chrome) some time ago, and still barely scrapes 2 percent market share. (Fake Steve Jobs says this is because "Chrome is [crap]," but I think it has more to do with the difficulty of changing consumer behavior.) Firefox has done better, but even Firefox is an example of just how hard it is to fight an incumbent on its terms, particularly when the incumbent is perceived to be "good enough," as CIO.co.uk editor Martin Veitch notes.
It won't help that Google doesn't look or behave in the way enterprises demand, as ZDNet's Larry Dignan writes.
In sum, Google has a lot to prove, and doesn't have a track record of churning out hits. It has one significant moneymaker, whereas Microsoft has two, one of which Google is now targeting with Chrome OS. It's going to get ugly, but I suspect Google may be the company that ends up with the black eye. As an open-source advocate, I'd like it to be otherwise, but I just can't see enough differentiation in Google's approach to suggest it will be more successful than others before it.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
It was just a matter of time before Google stopped pretending it doesn't compete with Microsoft and introduce its own operating system to go head-to-head against Microsoft. As reported by CNET, Google has now lifted the covers on its Google Chrome OS, "an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks."
More specifically, while Google claims Chrome OS looks to the future of a Web-friendly OS, this is precisely the future that Canonical's Ubuntu has been envisioning and actively courting. It's therefore not surprising that Ubuntu enthusiasts like Renai LeMay ask why Google apparently elected to "splinter the Linux community" rather than "leverage the stellar work already carried out by [Ubuntu]."
Why indeed?
Well, because Google clearly wants to pull a Microsoft. Yes, Google has stated that "[a]ll web-based applications will automatically work," and not just on Chrome OS, as doing otherwise would be suicide, but you can bet that Google will fine-tune its own applications to privilege their performance on its OS...just as Microsoft has. At least Microsoft doesn't ask the open-source community to help it in such work.
Google may well be focused on simply creating a "delivery mechanism for a web browser," but as Gunnar Hellekson opines, there are far more efficient ways to do so. Hellekson goes on:
Google keeps dropping these code bombs on the [open-source] community -- that's a really expensive way to produce something nobody wants to help with.
In short, don't expect the open-source community to do Google's work for it, work that Google may not be particularly well-suited to do.
All that said, I'm glad to see more competition in operating systems, and think Google will do a lot to help push the state of the art, just as it has in browsers. But let's be clear: Google's announcement is neither cause for widespread elation (open-source world) or fear (Redmond). As ZDNet's Dennis Howlett explains:
Where's the secret sauce here other than the Google halo effect painted over with the browser and duly hyped by the SV Google lovers?...[T]he reality is no one outside the Silicon Valley tech bubble gives a damn what operating system and browser they use. Many are still mandated to use IE6 as a colleague reminded me the other day. Simply having Google wave its hand is not going to sway hard nosed enterprise buyers - even if it is free. Which neatly brings me to another point.
Google has said it wants to get help from the open source community. I'll bet they do. All those drivers that [TechCrunch editor Michael] Arrington dismisses with a wave of the hand WILL need to be served. If he thinks I'm wrong then a quick call to any of the major banks' CTO offices should put him straight on that one....Even...when ChromeOS does emerge it will be a v1.0. No enterprise buyer I know will go within a country mile of committing its users' kit to something at that level of maturity.
In other words, Chrome OS has a long way to go before we see it hit significant volume of adoption, no matter how good it ends up being, and particularly enterprise adoption.
As for how good it will be, Robin Yellow, a friend who works in IT for a Fortune 100 company, notes that "Google are a bunch of young people in California who ride Segways and wear their pajamas to work," which may not be the ideal bunch to create software that enterprises of the world want and will trust. That's a concern shared by Red Hat's director of product management, Rich Sharples, who worries: "What Linux needs is a true consumer-grade desktop - the Google experience still seems to be aimed at the tech savvy."
Google opted to "build" its own Linux distribution, rather than use a wildly popular, Web-focused OS like Ubuntu. It is doing so with a team that lacks Microsoft or Apple's flair for enterprise and consumer, respectively, and has asked for the open-source community to make up the difference.
Good luck with that. Open source does many things exceptionally well. End-user design doesn't tend to be one of them.
I respect Google's technological savvy. I respect even more the development chops of the open-source community. Unfortunately, I don't think either is a near-term, credible developer of a consumer-friendly OS that will motivate people to want to move from their Macs or Windows machines to adopt Google Chrome OS.
That's why I think CNET's Ina Fried should change her headline from "To challenge Google, Microsoft might want to think Apple," to "To challenge Microsoft, Google might want to think Apple." Google is the challenger, and the reality is that exceptional design, not merely technology advances, is what will drive consumer change.
If Google needs a reminder of this, it need look no farther than Android, its open-source alternative to Apple's iPhone OS, which is long on technology and short on success, precisely because it fails to understand and allure the consumer.
If Google really wants to leverage the power of open source and outdo Microsoft and Apple in ease of use, perhaps it should find a way to broaden the base of the open-source development community to include average users so that your mom, my brother, etc. can provide feedback on how to improve ease-of-use of Chrome OS. Now that would be innovative.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
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