Comments on: Red Hat: Microsoft still 'aggressive as hell'

CEO Matthew Szulik talks about staying relevant in a world where the operating system isn't the talking point it once was.

[rcrusoe]

Re: operating system layer becomes commoditized

The OS you run on your workstation is still important but, from
what I've read and observed over the past few years, it appears
to be less so every day. It looks like the day of the fat client on
everyone's desk has peaked.

Whether we get our apps from the Internet (Google, Live, etc) or
a corporate server, it appears it won't be very many years until
end users don't know or care what runs their workstation/
device/whatever.

That trend should help companies whose server OS's are gaining
marketshare (Redhat, Novell-SuSE, etc) and hurt those who
depend on fat clients (Microsoft).

The way companies like Microsoft are trying diversify by moving
into other areas like gaming, mobile phones, and web services,
it looks like they agree.

[DryHeatDave]

Great points

I couldn't say better myself.

I'm an Integration Architect, building SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) services for a very large financial services company.

M$ has previously talked about "online software" & that's a bit misleading. But not far off the mark. If there is greater take-up of UDDI & dynamic service discovery, there's going to be services embedded all over, whether it's a dictionary service embedded in Word, or selt-service acount maintenance for banking.

Then consider the insulation provided by Java apps. running in the JVM, using JNDI, RMI/RCP, CORBA IIOP, etc.

It does make the whole workstation data security issue look so 5 minutes ago. I wanna be a Trusted Authority, issuing certificates. There's a fortune to be made there. Just please lets make sure the guvment don't get into this business - they would NOT be Trusted.

Ultimately, your workstation OS is going to be running more & more applications, that are just GUI's & orchestration services.

Q. Taken a step further, could the OS itself benefit from using remote services ?

[sexlove2046]

aggressive

aggressise?

[jcannonb]

What do these people smoke?

"some of the darlings of the open-source community may struggle to stay relevant and hang onto the kudos they once enjoyed."

From what I read Windows is almost 100% dominant in the United States only. Many other countries prefer open source or non Windows alternatives. I am very much in the minority here in the US, as I prefer anything that is not Microsoft. A lot of the forums I read from for Linux and BSD and other platforms like ZETA, enjoy substantially more success in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia compared to here in the states.

Joshua

[rmiecznik]

smoking on bin-laden

They must be smoking that bin-laden-weed, lol

[Loco_Man]

Well

Can't talk for other countries, but at least here in Venezuela windows IS almost 100% dominant too (though most of it is pirated). Some people have heard of linux, but other than a couple of engineering students I've never really met anyone that uses it regularly (and even those I know that have used it either dual boot or abandoned it at all).

[Xpheyel]

Do you mean in servers?

According to this article I found, Windows XP is still at 70%. XP only, not all iterations of Windows.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=10780

Linux is doing great in the server market as far as I know. If you do have contradictory statistics you might want to send it in.

[Captain_Spock]

"As the operating system layer...

... becomes commoditized, focus appears to be shifting to the Web as the real disruptive platform..."; and, I am quite sure that I can close my eyes and bet the "farm" that one of these days "Linux, Windows and Unix" will have to make room for the OS/2 Warp Platform as this was the Operating System that was originally poised to begin the shift "to the Web as the real disruptive platform"!

[Seaspray0]

OS/2 Warp

You can still find this? We are talking about the same OS/2 Warp that was released around 1992, right? If you can find it, you might have a collectors item on your hands. I'd check out the store you get it at for any other collectables. I haven't heard about OS/2 in years.

[alucinor]

As focus shifts from the operating system ...

As focus shifts from the operating system to the Web, then it doesn't really matter what OS you use, either on the client or the server. Why not use what's substantially lower cost and free from vendor lock-in? Why not use Linux? (And not necessarily Red Hat.)

[Seaspray0]

Better yet.

If I have a computer that I only need to browse the web, then I will. Wait, that type of system was already done... boxes you can hook to your TV and served as web browsers. They were considerably cheaper than computers. Perhaps when the focus shifts to the Web, you should get one of these rather than a computer with an OS at a substantially lower cost.

Excuse me? You're not ready to give up all the other things you would like to do with a computer? I guess that means your focus won't be shifting from the operating system to the web as the article claims it will.