It's been a busy year for Bob Muglia.
Microsoft's server and tools boss shipped an update to Windows Server, got promoted to division president, and prepared Microsoft's operating system in the clouds--Windows Azure--for its commercial launch.
Bob Muglia
(Credit: Microsoft)In what has become a bit of a year-end ritual, Muglia sat down with CNET for a year-end interview. We hit on a range of topics, from the future of Windows Server, to why his bank won't be moving to Windows Azure any time soon, to the changing life of an IT manager, to Microsoft's consumer future. (Spoiler alert: Muglia thinks it is bright.)
Here's an edited transcript of our interview:
A few years out, how much does Windows Server, the server operating system, start to resemble Windows Azure?
Muglia: Well, making them as similar as possible is clearly the goal, and the goal is to take all the things that we do in Windows Server and make those capable to be done in Windows Azure, and then take the learning we have in Windows Azure and bring it back to Windows Server.
We just took the step of bringing the Windows Azure team, Amitabh (Srivastava) and his group, and putting that in my organization.
Now, what we also did as a part of that, is we merged the Windows Azure and Windows Server teams together. I just talked to Amitabh and he's really excited about the synergies that he can build across the organization and making these things as similar as possible.
In our own services, obviously we choose the hardware, and so there's a more limited set of things that work together. In some senses that gives us a bit of agility on the services side, because we can make something work in one very particular way, but what we've got a long term history of doing is understanding how to do that, and then abstracting that out to work in a much more general purpose way, to work with the hardware that our customers have.
One of the things we're looking at is how do we take the ideas that we're bringing to market in the form of Windows Azure service, and then build those into Windows Server and make them available to our on-premises customers and our hosters.
Do you expect there to be sort of an interim option? I wouldn't be surprised to see you guys do something in the intermediate term where you have the traditional Windows Server that runs on any hardware, you have Azure very customized for your data center, but then make a version of Windows Azure that they can write Azure apps for, but run in their own data centers.
Muglia: We're looking at those sorts of options. I think the trick to the thing is to understand what are the workloads that are most appropriate for doing that, and how would we structure that, and honestly we're still looking at that.
There are some interesting thoughts in that sense, and you can see how, for example, in a high-performance computing environment, where people could use hundreds or thousands of computers in one cluster, you know, Azure is really very, very helpful for something like that. But we're still looking at understanding exactly how we might bring some of those things to market.
I know you're the enterprise guy, but I thought I would give you the opportunity to come to the rescue of your consumer colleagues. One of the analysts pretty prominently said in The New York Times that it's kind of "game over" for Microsoft on the consumer side, particularly phones. I'm curious your thoughts on this.
Muglia: Well, I read your blog. You did, generally speaking, come to our defense. I mean, it's probably a fair thing to say that we understand the nerd. I think we understand more than the nerd, but it's certainly true that we do a good job with that audience, and that's actually my customer in a lot of senses, because I've got the developers and the IT pros.
You know, I feel like as a company we have a lot of focus on the consumer, and are doing a lot of great things that are quite revolutionary to consumers, and we're going to continue to do it. I mean, obviously if you look at what's happened even with Windows 7 and the success of Windows 7, most of the short term success has been in the consumer marketplace. The business marketplace is going to happen, but business moves slower than the consumer does.
Obviously we've had products like Xbox that have been very successful with consumer, and I think the new Zune work has been really fantastic, and obviously Bing has been really great.
I also think that people are going to be very pleasantly surprised to see the work we're doing in phones, and that will become visible next year. So, I think even in areas where there's been some concern, there is some really substantive, very, very innovative work coming down the line.
It seems a little weird to be saying this, but we're almost at 2010. Are there things in technology that you thought would have happened by now that haven't yet happened?
Muglia: Well, I certainly thought that the 787 would have flown by now. I hear it's supposed to fly Tuesday or Wednesday, though, so that's a good thing. I'm glad to hear that.
I think, if you had asked me in 2000, "Would we be further along on reading on devices than we are now?" I would have said we would be. And we're really starting to see that now with some very special purpose readers, but I would have thought it would have hit across more general purpose devices by now. So, that's probably been one thing.
You know, I think that that's related to how fast tablets or slates or whatever you might want to call them might have taken off. I might have thought that would have gone a little faster than it has. Those two are somewhat related with each other.
But those things always kind of come at different speeds, and I'm pretty confident both of them will become very important as we move forward.
If you could show the world as it is now to your 2000 self, what do you think would be most surprising?
Muglia: We've shifted to a world where all kinds of media are delivered digitally.
You think about what's happened with newspapers and magazines and things, I guess I wouldn't have predicted that shift would happen as dramatically. Not that it's delivered digitally, I think we would have expected that, but the kind of reporting and the real-time nature associated with it.
And I guess, similarly, some of the way social networks have developed, and the impact that they have had on the way people communicate. I find it so fascinating as an example to see the impact that Facebook has on what's happening in other countries like Iran, and getting information out, those sorts of things. You know, I'm not surprised by them, but I certainly wouldn't have predicted them back then.
So, probably your 2000 self might be surprised that in 2009 you're in touch with more people from your high school than you were in 2000?
Muglia: Right, exactly, things like that, exactly. That's a perfect way to say it.
Obviously, your focus is the IT world, and I'm curious, how different is the life of an IT manager? How much has changed in the last decade for what they do on a day-to-day basis?
Muglia: I actually think it's quite different for an IT manager. I think IT managers used to be expected to build the systems and do everything, and now I think they're much more focused on providing the infrastructure for the business teams and the people within business to do things.
One other thing that's missing at least from Microsoft at the end of this decade, as compared to the beginning is Bill Gates at least in a full-time sense. As one of the people kind of at the top of the technical ranks, I'm curious how have you noticed his absence in the last 18 months since he's left full-time work?
Muglia: I watched while Bill was here how his role shifted over a period of time. There was a period of time when the company was at a size and scope where Bill really was able to do the direction, the technical direction of very large parts of the company.
During the 1990s, we grew to a point where that was just not possible for a human being to do, although Bill's capacity is far beyond most. And so over time, Bill shifted into much more of an advisor role, and he provided advice and guidance.
While Bill's advice was always incredibly useful, he did a great job of also building a lot of people within the company that could also think in a similar sort of way to him. I mean, I'd like to think that I learned a lot from Bill and I'm able to do some of the things that Bill would have done.
I view part of my job is to take up and do many of the things that Bill did, and to do it in my area. My area of scope is broad but it's to a level that I think I can still do that effectively.
But I think what's happened is we now have a hierarchy of people. You've got Ray doing some significant cross-group things, and then you've got people like myself or Steven Sinofsky or folks in Stephen Elop's world, J Allard, all playing subset roles of what Bill used to do.
For a long time, Microsoft and you talked about this notion of autonomic computing. One of the things that conveyed was the sense that the IT would just sort of manage itself. Now you guys talk more about Dynamic IT. It seems like some of the idea that it's just going to magically happen has been moved from the notion.
Muglia: Let's just sort of kind of go back and talk about the time from where all those things sort of emerged in the 2002, 2003 sort of time. People sometimes called things autonomic computing, they sometimes called it utility computing. You know, our name for it was always Dynamic IT. It actually started out as the Dynamic Systems Initiative, and we sort of broadened it a bit with Dynamic IT a few years ago.
And the idea being that operational resources should be largely self-managing, and the process, the lifecycle of developing an application should be connected from the point of requirements, definition, through development, all the way to operations. That vision has not changed. We said it was a 10-year vision in 2003, and it will probably take us 10 years to really fully fulfill it. I think every year, as we release new products, we take substantive steps forward.
Now, the thing I didn't understand back then is that all of this would lead so naturally to the cloud application model, and that's what we've kind of put in place over the last year or two. I would very clearly say that is the next thing.
When you think about some of the biggest trends in the coming few years, I imagine cloud computing is a big one?
Muglia: Yeah. The thing that to me is so exciting about that is the impact I think it's going to have on business, most importantly allowing people to write applications more rapidly that really meet the needs of tier one enterprise apps, and do so at a fraction of the cost, both from a hardware perspective and from an operational perspective.
So, the kinds of things that would have required a mainframe in the past.
Muglia: Absolutely. Obviously we built software for very high-end systems. I mean, being straight and honest, that's not the main thing that our software is used for. We have a fairly small number of our systems running on these big $100,000 plus machines. But it's an important segment of the market, and clearly UNIX has a significant segment there, and the mainframe is a significant segment there.
When I talk to the Windows Azure guys, and I talk the software architecture that they've put in place in terms of having isolation units and understanding how to contain failures, and then I look at the way we are building the next generation data center systems, built inside these containers, I recognize that a container is essentially the mainframe of the future. The difference is that it's thousands of times more powerful than a mainframe at a fraction of the cost.
Do you have a sense of how many people are actually doing real cloud computing today, what percentage of businesses, and what that might look like in the next two or three years?
Muglia: I think Forrester has done some work that it's a really small number of people, like 4 percent of folks that are actually deploying things right now. So, it's still very nascent. But we expect a really large number of folks to start to (use cloud computing) over the next 12 to 18 months.
We're right at that inflection point where people are going to begin to start building real applications and begin deploying those applications into their environment, both for internal use and for their external customers. Certainly if you go out three to five years, we expect it to become very mainstream.
One of the constant debates is when people ask how much work will be done in a company's own data centers as compared to some sort of public cloud like Microsoft is running with Azure. Do you have a sense of where that mix might be a couple years from now or five years from now?
Muglia: I think certainly over the next five years we'll still see more work done in-house than in a public cloud. I mean, you'd have to move an awful lot of work out in order to shift that.
The question will be what is the cost and the effect, and at one level how much can this be done for people in a public cloud environment at a lower cost, and what level of security and trust can be established so that people feel comfortable moving their workloads to the cloud. I don't expect my bank will be moving their core financial systems to a public cloud environment in a five-year horizon, and that's probably a fine decision on their part.
I want to make, enable, and build the technology infrastructure to allow people to move their most sensitive data into the cloud so that some day it will become possible for a bank to do that, but I think it will take a little while for it to actually happen.
Last week, Microsoft bought a company called Opalis that specializes in software to manage data centers. Is this a big company? What made you interested in them?
Muglia: It's a moderate sized company. I'm really excited about this acquisition. I mean, what they do is something that's called "run book automation," and what they've done is they've built a very strong base of understanding of how to automate tasks that are happening within the data center.
And by the way, that's quite heterogeneous in its nature. Although they run fully on Windows, they're not limited and restricted to data center tasks that happen simply in Windows, but they can reach out and work with Linux and UNIX systems, et cetera.
Being able to automate a set of tasks is one of the key things that's going to be necessary to simplify the operations of any of these data center environments, and Opalis is a fantastic acquisition for us because they bring a ton of expertise and real world customer experience in that space. We think our customers will see value from this literally from day one.
With Microsoft's Windows Mobile unit having run in slow motion for the past several years, it doesn't surprise me that there are calls for the company to get out of the phone business.
The more interesting question raised in this New York Times blog, to me, is whether Microsoft flat out just doesn't get the consumer.
That, to me, is a much broader issue for Microsoft, given the fact that more and more parts of computing--even enterprise software--are taking their lead from consumer trends--think Facebook, Gmail and Twitter.
Microsoft certainly has its challenges on this front, and no business illustrates those challenges more clearly than the phone business, where Microsoft has squandered an early position in smartphones and now faces a massive task to catch up to Apple, Research In Motion, and even upstart Google, which has not been at the game nearly as long.
Luckily for Redmond, I don't think it is that they don't get the consumer at all. Products like Surface and Windows 7 and Zune HD show that Microsoft is thinking about the consumer experience and does have some sense of what appeals to the average user.
So it's not that Microsoft totally doesn't get the consumer. Rather, I would argue, the consumer it understands best is the nerd, as opposed to the mainstream user. That's why, from my way of thinking, its products tend to start as niche products for gearheads and work their way toward the average consumer.
And Microsoft's nerd focus isn't always a bad thing, particularly in the enterprise where it is nerds who tend to be making the decision. Windows has fared pretty well against the Mac, although the PC's lower cost also has a hand in that.
What's happened on the mobile side, though, shows that the focus of power is shifting. It's only a matter of time before similar trends more deeply affect the corporate desktop, whether it is e-mail, collaboration, or social networking.
The consumer business also represents a huge opportunity on its own for Microsoft. When it comes to connected entertainment, for example, Microsoft has what should be a big advantage. Because of its size and breadth, Microsoft's software powers multiple living room devices (Xbox, Windows Media Center, and Mediaroom digital TV) as well as devices that delver media onto phones, cars, and other portable devices.
And of course, a huge part of the battle has moved off of the PC or any single device and onto the Internet. That explains Microsoft's huge investment in Bing, but also its other online moves, including offering Office via the browser, and projects like Live Mesh that aim to bring together our myriad gadgets.
There is still a huge win to be had for the first company to allow people access to their media seamlessly in all these places. The best experience right now, I would argue, is taking one's iPod or iPhone with them into all of these different locations. That's a good experience, but not as good as being able to buy content once and have it automatically show up, on-demand in all of these places.
The company has shown glimmers of hope in some areas, though clearly there is more change that needs to happen. Its new retail stores, though similar to Apple, show Microsoft knowing how to highlight its coolest side. There are more products coming out with memorable names like Silverlight and fewer with mouthfuls like Windows XP 64-bit Edition for 64-bit Extended Systems.
There are pockets of understanding, particularly in the entertainment unit, which is developing things like the eminently cool Project Natal. But, then, as The New York Times blog points out, there is the Windows Mobile unit where it seems the phone has been ringing for years and Microsoft has yet to answer the call.
What's your take. Is it game over? Or does Microsoft have enough quarters in its pockets to learn how to play the table after all?
Love and Microsoft are entities that, at times, have had a fractious relationship.
However, take one glance at the new TV ad for Windows Phone and you will see just how much progress has been made to bring a little healing to that Microsoft feeling.
A man, who looks suspiciously moody and French, is leaving his apartment.
His lover is pleading with him to stay. But wait he has more than one lover. He has, well, five, six, seven of them. Well, he is French, right?
There's something strange about these lovers too. It's not that they seem tired after a night of passionate application to the art of lovemaking. No, these are simply passionate applications.
They are Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and, good Lord, is that Twitter twitching like, well, a technically troubled teenager?
How can this man, this louche, sleepy-eyed Frenchman, leave these sweet, tempting applications behind in his apartment while he goes off gallivanting with, who knows, a Snow Leopard?
But wait, this is not like those French movies where the ugly guy gets the girl, then gets the girls, and is still eternally unsatisfied with his existential lot.
No, this Frenchman has a sense of humor.
Just when you are about to burst into tears at his callous, Gallic behavior, he turns back toward his applications and waves his cell phone to show them that, yes, he loves them and, no, there is no second family of applications in Marseilles.
The applications, filled with love and iconic commitment, gaily skip down the steps of his apartment building and begin to bundle themselves into his car. Love is the journey, not the destination.
And, in a final gesture of untrammeled human humility, the Twitter icon knows its rightful place in this menage-a-many: the back end.
As it slides into the trunk, my heart hops, skips, jumps, and almost flies through my T-shirt as I whisper to myself: "Microsoft. It's a love thing."
It will take time to get used to the concept, but I know that, as in all relationships that start out with good intentions, everything is possible.
While Microsoft didn't have anything new to announce at its first annual Open House in New York on Tuesday, it spent a lot of money turning the huge New York Armory into a showcase for its fall product line.
Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, delivered a 30-minute opening presentation highlighting everything from Windows 7 to Windows Phone to Xbox Live and Zune. But the Open House was really intended to be an open house, with a heavy emphasis on lifestyle applications for the company's various products.
There was also some rather funky stuff (read:weird) that included women dressed up in bird costumes. So check out the slideshow below--and Natali Del Conte's video report, above--to get the full flavor of the event. And as always, feel free to comment.
After months of talking about Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is announcing on Tuesday that the first crop of phones to carry the Windows Phone brand are ready to hit the market.
A host of new phones running the new operating system are expected to debut between now and the holidays, with many being announced later on Tuesday. AT&T has already announced two Windows Mobile 6.5-based phones--the Pure and the HTC Tilt 2. In all, Microsoft has said to expect more than 30 phones running the OS by year's end.
(Credit:
Microsoft)
With the new operating system, Microsoft hopes to make the case that the devices are not only worthy phones, but also the best option for those who want to take their Windows world with them. The operating system itself features Adobe Flash support, an improved browser, and menus that are easier to navigate with a finger, as opposed to a stylus. Perhaps more interesting are two new services that come along with Windows.
The first, the Windows Marketplace, is Microsoft's answer to the iPhone's App Store. It's somewhat interesting that Windows Mobile has long had more programs than the iPhone--none of which involved approval from Microsoft. But Microsoft has found itself in the position of having to insert itself as middleman to match Apple's approach.
Users will still be able to buy and download applications directly from developers, but Microsoft apparently felt it had to mimic the iPhone's App Store in order to help connect less technically savvy users with the thousands of programs that already exist for its phones.
The second service, My Phone, has been in testing for a while now. Just debuting, though, is a paid "Find My Phone" feature that costs $5 per use (although you pay only when you need the service, unlike Apple's iPhone-finding service, which requires a $99-per-year MobileMe subscription). The service can be used to locate a missing phone, make it ring (even if it is set to vibrate) or even remotely lock or wipe the device.
The big question, though, is if any of these changes are enough to get Microsoft back into serious consideration in a smartphone market that not only includes the iPhone, but also devices running the Android, Palm WebOS, and BlackBerry operating systems.
That challenge--to gain both market share and developer attention--was highlighted by this past weekend's Code Camp held at Silicon Valley's Foothill College. According to one attendee, a session on Windows Mobile 6.5 attracted just six people--three of them from Microsoft--while the iPhone session filled a large lecture hall.
Even some of Microsoft's partners have moved on, with Motorola and Palm among the more high-profile companies to focus their attention on other operating systems.
That said, one recent report suggests it's too soon to count Microsoft out. Market researcher iSuppli projects that Windows Mobile will manage to triple its volume by 2013 and reclaim the No. 2 operating system spot worldwide.
"Windows Mobile is facing a host of challenges, including rising competition from free alternatives like Symbian and Android, the loss of some key licensees, and some shortcomings in its user interface," iSuppli analyst Tina Teng said in a report. "However, Windows Mobile holds some major cards that will allow it to remain a competitive player in the market."
Even after several years of progress that Microsoft executives admit has been too slow, Microsoft still has 15 percent of the market, according to iSuppli. In part, that's because the phones remain an inexpensive and easy-to-support option for many businesses that use Microsoft's e-mail server and management tools.
For its interface tweaks and new services, Windows Mobile 6.5 is an interim update to Windows Mobile, inserted into the product's road map only after a larger overhaul--Windows Mobile 7--got held up in various delays.
Microsoft is now expected to debut that product--as well as Windows Mobile-based successors to the Sidekick family known collectively by the code name Pink--sometime next year.
Teng noted that the lack of support for the kind of capacitive touch screen found on the iPhone is a key drawback for Microsoft's partners.
"This represents a major barrier for smartphone (makers) that would like to produce innovative phones," Teng said. However, she said she expects that to be remedied with Windows Mobile 7.
In the meantime, Microsoft plans to push hard on the marketing front, launching a large ad campaign for Windows Phone that will include some TV spots in addition to print and online advertisements.
The launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 comes both as CTIA wireless show kicks off in San Diego and Microsoft's Robbie Bach hosts a consumer event in New York.
Microsoft dreams of conquering the phone business, but it knows that 'pink' is just one hue in a very broad palette.
The leaked photos that emerged on Gizmodo on Wednesday, while genuine, paint just one part of the picture of how Microsoft hopes to get back into the phone game.
According to sources familiar with the company's plans, the designs shown on Gizmodo are are more the evolution of the Sidekick than they are an effort to take on the mass market or even Apple's iPhone. The devices themselves won't be built by Microsoft itself and are unlikely to arrive before next year, the sources said. A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the Gizmodo report.
(Credit:
Gizmodo)
Microsoft has been working for years now on plans to revitalize its phone business after ceding ground to Apple, Research In Motion, and others. The software maker has been working on a major overhaul of its operating system--Windows Mobile 7, which was supposed to be in phone makers' hands by early this year but has suffered a number of delays.
The new devices draw heavily on the company's 2008 acquisition of Danger, the maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick. Although they use Windows Mobile at their core, they are geared at the same kind of consumer who bought a Sidekick--one who is heavily into social networks, instant messaging, and other online services.
Microsoft is counting on Danger for more than just its cachet with teens and young adults, though. Danger also specialized in delivering much of its technology via services. Indeed, the Sidekick evolved as a device where nearly all of the data lived in the cloud as opposed to being managed by the phone itself.
That will be an important component of Microsoft's phone push, even beyond the range of these devices.
In outlining the future of its phone strategy, Microsoft is trying to keep the breadth of its existing Windows Mobile ecosystem, while at the same time developing a few, closer partnerships that could yield more worthy rivals to the most popular handsets.
Microsoft has signed deals with a few phone makers, such as LG, that are expected to offer Windows Phones designed more closely with Microsoft.
However, this project appears to be in addition to that effort, expanding on the legacy of the Sidekick. Sources wouldn't provide any exact timing, but I'd think about a year or so, given what I have heard. That also appears to be the current timing for Windows Mobile 7.
For this year, Microsoft is focused on a more modest evolution of Windows Mobile--Windows Mobile 6.5--as well as efforts to re-brand products using its operating system as Windows Phones.
Microsoft also continues to shift executives and other resources to strengthen its phone efforts.
Former server executive Andy Lees now runs the phone business, while former Mac Business unit chief Roz Ho heads a "premium mobile experiences" team responsible for some of the Pink work. The software maker has also tapped folks from its Tellme unit to help bring improved voice recognition capability into Windows Mobile.
In a July interview with CNET News, Entertainment and Devices unit president Robbie Bach acknowledged that Microsoft also just needs to pick up the pace.
"If your point is we haven't advanced Windows Mobile as fast as we like, I think the answer is that's true," Bach said. "You are going to see that change."
HTC's Touch Pro2 is among the new phones expected to ship with Windows Mobile 6.5.
(Credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft is hoping that a new crop of phones this fall will help the company in its quest to stay relevant in the cell phone market.
The software maker said on Tuesday that the first phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 will launch worldwide on October 6 and will include phones running on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless.
The new crop of phones will also be the first that Microsoft will sell under the "Windows Phone" brand, an effort to tap into the marketing power of its flagship desktop operating system.
With Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is hoping to convince users that its phones are not just good for doing work. Much of Microsoft's phone focus in recent times has been on improving the operating system's consumer features in an effort to regain ground lost to rivals.
"We know people want a phone for their whole life," said Stephanie Ferguson, general manager in the Windows Mobile unit. "They just frankly want to do more. That's why we've shifted."
Although it includes features such as improved Web browsing and conversation threaded e-mail, as well as a new Windows Marketplace app store, Windows Mobile 6.5 is seen largely as an interim upgrade of the operating system.
Microsoft has come under criticism for the rather slow pace at which its software has evolved in the face of competition from the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and Palm Pre.
AT&T, which is one of Microsoft's oldest partners in the cell phone business, said that it is supporting Windows Mobile 6.5, although the carrier acknowledged that Apple and others in the market have grown faster.
Even in large corporations, Windows Mobile has not maintained the position it once seemed poised to inherit.
"Microsoft probably didn't get the share of the enterprise space that we all would have expected three or four years ago," said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president of devices for AT&T. "I think Research In Motion did even a better than expected job of gaining that share."
AT&T didn't say which of its phones will support Windows Mobile 6.5, but it will likely be a mix of new phones and current models that can be upgraded to the new OS. The company is looking to close one gap between Windows Mobile and its rivals. Starting next month, customers will be able to more easily use their Windows Mobile phones on AT&T's Wi-Fi network, matching a feature already available to its BlackBerry and iPhone users.
As for Android, AT&T has yet to commit publicly to shipping an Android phone, but Bradley said the company is actively studying whether to do so.
"We are going to do what's right for customers," Bradley said. "It's an important development in the industry and one that we are watching real carefully to make sure that our customers have choice and the best service."
For her part, Ferguson said she believes that Windows Mobile 6.5 is a significant step forward, although she declined to predict whether Microsoft will gain share in the wake of its release.
"These are going to be fabulous phones that meet the customers' needs for their whole life," Ferguson said. "In the end, that's how I judge us."
The October 6 launch ties in with a "consumer open house" event that Microsoft Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach is hosting that day in New York City.
One of the big pushes with the new release is the Windows Marketplace app store. Although Microsoft has long offered tens of thousands of applications, they have been hard to find and download, something Marketplace is designed to address. While the Marketplace will launch with Windows Mobile 6.5, Ferguson declined to say how many programs have been submitted or approved thus far.
Ferguson did say that among the programs will be Netflix, Facebook, and a variety of games.
"We need enough apps that customers can have some great choice," Ferguson said. As for the Netflix app, I checked and it lets users manage their queue or watch previews, but not actually watch movies form their queue. (That would have been a compelling feature, I reckon.)
Microsoft will also formally launch its free My Phone service, which has been in beta. In addition to backing up contacts, calendar, text messages, photos, and other data, the service will also have a "Find My Phone" feature, similar to a paid iPhone service that helps users locate a lost iPhone.
In a July interview, Todd Brix said that the Find My Phone can be used to remotely send a message to a phone and cause it to ring, even if it is set to vibrate. If that still doesn't locate it, users can look up on a map where the phone last synchronized to the service. Users can also remotely lock the phone and send a message to it urging whoever has it to call a specific number. If that doesn't work, users can also remotely wipe the device.
The software maker has said little of its plans for Windows Mobile beyond the current release, although the software maker has been working for more than two years now on a more substantial overhaul of the operating system as well as a collection of new consumer-oriented mobile services. The operating system upgrade, Windows Mobile 7, was originally expected early this year and has hit several delays. It's now not expected until sometime next year.
Microsoft is expected to work closely with a smaller number of hardware makers, who will be among the first to adopt the new products when they debut next year.
AT&T's Bradley declined to talk about Microsoft's roadmap for the future, but said he has seen some encouraging signs that the company will make devices with more consumer appeal.
"I have every reason to think they are going to make that happen," Bradley said. "That's frankly an imperative."
Microsoft on Monday announced plans for mobile software that aims to allow people in emerging markets to access various Internet programs using lower-end feature phones.
The software, known as OneApp, is due out later this year and should allow people in emerging markets to access services like Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger using the kinds of inexpensive phones most often sold for $20 or $30. Microsoft said Blue Label Telecoms in South Africa will be the first to use OneApp and will use it to offer phones that ship with a dozen mobile applications, including a mobile wallet program as well as the social-networking tools.
A mock-up of OneApp running on a feature phone allowing access to Facebook and other applications.
(Credit: Microsoft)While not an operating system, OneApp is a software environment within which many kinds of programs can run. The key to OneApp, Microsoft said, is the fact that the applications and data run largely from the cloud. That means that OneApp can run on phones with rather meager memory and processing abilities. OneApp itself takes up only about 150 kilobytes of memory, as opposed to the many megabytes often used on programs for smartphones. Individual applications can be as small as 10 to 15 kilobytes.
"When you launch an application, (OneApp) only loads the part of the application that you want," said Amit Mital, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's "unlimited potential" unit, which focuses on emerging markets. "We use very intelligent and sophisticated caching. The rest of it sits in the cloud."
Microsoft has been working on OneApp for the past year and a half, noting that there are hundreds of millions of feature phones in emerging markets, most of which aren't being used to run software.
"People have used them just for voice and SMS" (Short Message Service), Mital said. "What we want to do is unlock their power so they can be used from a broader set of services and applications."
The move comes as Microsoft is also struggling to keep up in the smartphone race against heightened competition from the likes of Apple, Google, Research In Motion, and others. Microsoft said that OneApp is separate from its Windows Mobile efforts.
Mital stressed that OneApp is an adjunct to Windows Mobile, which is still the company's bet for smartphones, and is largely aimed at emerging markets, rather than developed ones.
OneApp is Microsoft's plan for developing markets for the here and now. Longer-term, Microsoft has been exploring a concept called "phone plus," in which a smartphone could be plugged into a television and keyboard to act as a sort of basic computer.
With OneApp, Microsoft will find itself competing against applications written for Sun's J2ME.
Mital said that the big advantage of OneApp is that programs written for it should run on most OneApp-enabled phones, something he said is often not the case with Java.
"If you build an app for one phone it may or may not work on another phone," Mital said. "The development cost is extremely excessive. You go through the development cycle over and over. That is just debilitating."
For now, Microsoft is working directly with select partners to develop OneApp, but eventually Microsoft plans to release a software development kit to allow others to write their own OneApp programs. Programs for OneApp can be written using tools like XML and JavaScript, Mital said. "The world does not need another new programming paradigm. We were very determined to use existing programming paradigms."
In addition to Blue Label Telecoms, which is launching shortly, Mital said that Microsoft hopes to announce one or two more carriers using OneApp before the end of the year.
Although there are plenty of feature phones still shipping in developed markets, such as the United States and Europe, Mital said Microsoft is focusing on emerging markets.
"Right now my team is extremely focused on emerging markets," Mital said. "There's literally billions of customers in these markets."
Microsoft's efforts to regain lost ground in the mobile phone business will see the company offering two different versions of its operating system next year.
The company will continue to broadly sell Windows Mobile 6.5 to a large variety of handset makers, while working more closely with several handset makers to sell phones built on a new version of Windows Mobile that has been several years in the making, according to a source familiar with the company's plans.
While Windows Mobile 6.5 is a fairly interim update to the mobile operating system that Microsoft has been selling, Microsoft has also been working on more radical efforts to overhaul the operating system. Both its plans for Windows Mobile 7 and its long-running "Pink" project aim to match the kinds of experiences seen on the iPhone and Android, using more advanced voice and touch interfaces and higher-end hardware.
Microsoft demonstrated Windows Mobile 6.5 at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. That interim update to Windows Mobile will start arriving on phones this fall, while a more radical overhaul of Redmond's cell phone OS is due next year.
(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET News)A Digitimes report this week called the effort a "dual-platform" strategy, although I'm not sure I'd use that term to describe two versions of Windows Mobile being sold at the same time.
What is clear is that Microsoft needs to do something serious if it hopes to live up to its mobile ambitions. For years now, the company has made rather modest updates to the Windows Mobile operating system, which dates back to the days of code powered PDAs and other organizers that were neither phones nor, in some cases, even connected to the Internet.
In that same time, Palm has gone back to the drawing board and reinvented itself with the WebOS-based Pre, while the iPhone and Android have entered the market and even Research In Motion has arguably done more to capture consumer interest than has Microsoft.
Internally, Redmond has shifted a number of its people into the mobile unit. In addition to former server executive Andy Lees, who now runs the phone business, former Mac Business unit chief Roz Ho has been leading a top secret "premium mobile experiences" team responsible for some of the "Pink" work. The company purchased Danger, known for creating the teen-centered T-Mobile Sidekick, and Ho heads that unit as well.
The software maker has also tapped folks from its Tellme unit to help bring improved voice recognition capability into Windows Mobile.
Call waiting
Microsoft has been working on Windows Mobile 7 for what now seems like an eternity, especially in the mobile world. The product was supposed to be in phone makers' hands by early this year, but has suffered a number of delays.
While the iPhone may be the apple of everyone's eye, Nokia says that its main goal in partnering with Microsoft is taking on BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
"This is really about creating a formidable challenge for RIM rather than anyone else," Nokia executive vice president Kai Oistamo said in a conference call Wednesday.
Andersson
(Credit: Nokia)As first reported Tuesday by CNET News, Microsoft and Nokia are working together to bring mobile versions of the software maker's Office programs onto Nokia phones running the Symbian operating system. The companies said Wednesday that the collaboration also extends to Microsoft's unified communications and System Center management tools.
In an interview, Nokia executive vice president Robert Andersson said that RIM has an almost dominant position in the North American market for mobile e-mail. "That's the application where they really are strong," he said.
By bringing the full Office suite to Symbian, Andersson said, Nokia hopes to do RIM one better. "What we are bring with this collaboration is a much deeper much richer experience."
But the fruits of the partnership will take some time. For next year, the companies are committing only to bringing a version of the Communicator instant messaging program to Symbian.
"The first deliverable is next year," Microsoft corporate vice presidentTakeshi Numoto said in an interview. "We're not really talking about things beyond that."
Given that, it seems reasonable to think it could well be until 2011 before the mobile versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote make their way onto the first Symbian phones, and even then the rollout will start with just the E-series of devices.
Microsoft and Nokia started discussions about six months ago, but the work has centered on finalizing the business details.
"We just basically signed the contract a few weeks ago," Andersson said. "Getting the big teams on board is only beginning now."
Numoto
(Credit: Microsoft)Andersson said the partnership will involve hundreds of dedicated workers from the two companies.
For Microsoft, the move helps the software maker in its goal of fending off competition from Google and extending Office from the desktop into the larger world of Web, PC, and phone. "Extending that reach to 200 million Nokia smartphones was a natural for us," Numoto said.
Numoto tried to downplay the impact that the collaboration would have on Windows Mobile, which competes with Symbian-based devices. Until now, one of Windows Mobile's selling points has been that it is the only phone operating system with mobile versions of Office, though other phones have third-party tools that let users view and edit Office documents.
"We truly believe and are committed to Windows Mobile," Numoto said. "We are excited about Windows Mobile 6.5 coming this fall... As you know, in the technology industry there is always an element of collaboration and competition."
For its part, Nokia said it is committed to Symbian and has no plans to start offering Windows Mobile phones.
"There are no such plans," Oistamo said on the conference call.
Audio
Rivals work together
Ina Fried talks with Jennifer Guevin about what each company hopes to get by partnering up.
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