Microsoft se sube a Internet, a su manera. Un Vista virtual...?

BITS BLOG.

Steve Ballmer Maps Microsoft's Cloud-y Future By Saul Hansell March 20, 2009, 11:40 am

Comments on March 20, 2009: at 1:00 pm "Shareholders don't get fed by percentages," he said. Mr. Balmer still doesn't seen to get it, particularly in this time of economic turmoil. It should all be about providing increased value to consumers, not increasing share holder profit. That is why corporate IT deployments are migrating to alternative platforms away from Microsoft. Simply re-bundling a bunch of existing applications is a marketing ploy, not a technology advancement. — Darth at 3:33 pm People don't care what technology is behind an application. They care if it's easy to use and fulfills their business requirements. I still don't see how using MS cloud computing is going to benefit me when I'm already collaborating via Skype, GoToMeeting, YouSendIt and Gdocs. Additionally, we already have unified messaging with the Asterisk Linux telephone platform. The subscription costs for GoToMeeting and YouSendit are minimal and Skype and Gdocs are free. I don't need to switch to an expensive subscription model on MS to compete with these applications. Also, MS Office is great but having recently forked over $750 to create Gant charts on MS Project sucks. — Mike E

Saul Hansell/The New York Times A diagram, by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, of its cloud computing strategy

Look at the picture above. It's an original Steve Ballmer created before my eyes on the wall of a conference room here at The Times. Simple, isn't it? Well, that's the point that Mr. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, was trying to make when he drew it. I was talking to him about Microsoft's plans to offer companies cloud computing services — software that will run on Microsoft's new network of big data centers. As I learned about the Azure system, Microsoft's new cloud operating system, I started to wonder if it is overly complex. I asked if Microsoft was risking taking on too much, as it did with Longhorn, the operating system rewrite that led to the ill-fated Windows Vista. "It's not anything like Longhorn," Mr. Ballmer said. "And it's not really that complicated." He jumped up, grabbed a marker and drew a big black rectangle divided into smaller rectangles on the white board. "This is what we look like in the data center," he said. He was referring to all of the software Microsoft currently sells to run on corporate servers and the tools to develop them. That currently is a $13 billion-a-year business for Microsoft (22 percent of its total revenue) and its fastest growing segment. All of those products, Mr. Ballmer said, are being rewritten so customers can run them on Microsoft's computers in addition to their own. "Anything that has been a server needs to be a service," he said. So in the center box he wrote "Windows Server"—the company's core product for data centers. "Windows Server becomes Windows Azure," he said. That is going to be a service that will let companies build applications to be run from Microsoft's data centers. The next block up represented SQL Server — Microsoft's database product. "I'll bet by the time we're done, if I win, this will be called SQL Azure," he said, implying a bit of a branding debate. Nearby were boxes for Microsoft's other server products — Exchange for e-mail, SharePoint for collaboration, etc. The trapezoid at the very top of Mr. Ballmer's picture represented Office and other PC software products that it sells to big companies, much of it meant to interact with the server software, like Exchange. As he has before, Mr. Ballmer insisted that these PC programs are not all going to be replaced with Web sites, like Google Docs or Gmail. "Everyone says 'You have to run in a browser.' That's nonsense," he said. "When you run in the browser, you are not running HTML, you are just downloading code to the browser instead of downloading code to the PC." What is important, Mr. Ballmer argued, is giving Microsoft software the ability to use the Internet as needed. For example, corporations will be able to start their own social networks to enable employees to work together better. You'll use this network from within Office. He also suggested that the move will increase Microsoft's earnings from corporate services. That's because it will be able to charge both for the software itself and Microsoft's service to operate that software on its own machines. The company's costs will rise and its profit margins will fall as it builds out its data centers. Software, after all, has remarkable margins because it doesn't really cost anything to deliver an additional office license to a corporate client. But Mr. Ballmer said that Microsoft will still come away with more dollars in profit for every worker using its cloud-based services than it does from software. "Shareholders don't get fed by percentages," he said. So far, little of this is actually making money for Microsoft. It started selling the early version of cloud-based Exchange and SharePoint services last year. And it is testing its new systems with big companies including Coca-Cola Enterprises and Nokia. But Mr. Ballmer said he didn't think Microsoft was behind its potential rivals. "This is all so early," he said. "It's early for Amazon. VMware is just barely there. We're barely there. Google isn't there yet." Most of these companies don't have much experience selling to big companies, he said. "It took us 10 years to establish our enterprise capability and this company, Google, hasn't really begun to focus," Mr. Ballmer said. "We understand what the enterprise needs: security, compliance, archiving." That's why I keep wondering about the scope of what Mr. Ballmer is trying to do. Azure and the related products are meant from the start to have all the features that a multinational company might need to run sophisticated applications. His picture may well look simple to chief information officers who see in it a mirror of the software they already buy from Microsoft. I said one more time to Mr. Ballmer that his approach seemed much riskier than that used by Google and Amazon, which can start by offering simple services and then can build them up over time. Mr. Ballmer replied he was quite confident that Microsoft's "story is right." He added, "We are taking the complexity out, not the capabilities."

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Convergencia de celulares y computadoras.

TECHNOLOGY.

Computer Makers Prepare to Stake Bigger Claim in Phones By ASHLEE VANCE Published: March 15, 2009.

Minh Uong/The New York Times The computer industry has hit upon its Next Big Thing. It is called a phone. Emboldened by Apple's success with its iPhone, many PC makers and chip companies are charging into the mobile-phone business, promising new devices that can pack the horsepower of standard computers into palm-size packages. The companies are also shifting gears because their technological feats of the last two decades — smaller laptops with faster chips to deliver snazzier graphics — no longer impress consumers, who increasingly find their three-year-old computers adequate for everyday tasks. "The action is really with the smartphones where everyone is competing to cram the most features into a phone," said Linley Gwennap, a veteran chip industry analyst and head of the Linley Group. "I think of PCs as just kind of boring these days." The new smartphones promised by PC companies will, among other things, handle the full glory of the Internet, power two-way video conferences, and stream high-definition movies to your TV. It is a development that spells serious competition for established cellphone makers and phone companies. Apple was the first to spot a sleepy industry, shaking up the handset category two years ago with the iPhone. Until recently, the handset makers were the ones reacting to the iPhone — and then with me-too products. Now fellow PC makers are announcing plans for smartphones in a variety of sizes, shapes and abilities. Acer, the big PC manufacturer, has gone from offering no cellphones to selling eight new models, with more to come this year. "The smartphone market is the natural direction of our long-term mobile strategy," Gianfranco Lanci, chief executive of Acer, a Taiwan-based company, said as he announced the products at last month's World Mobile Conference in Barcelona. "We're just taking on another dimension." Dell has also worked on prototype phones but has not committed to making a new product. And Asustek, the company that was first to market ultraportable laptops known as netbooks, has new smartphones coming.

A mobile internet device based on Nvidia's Tegra chip.

The suppliers to the PC industry have also started shifting to the new market. Intel announced a deal to supply the cellphone maker LG with chips for new mobile devices. Nvidia, the PC graphics-chip titan, signed a deal to provide three smartphone makers — which supply handsets to brand-name manufacturers and carriers — with its new Tegra processor. "The rise of the smartphone and things like graphics and 3D images weren't important when the incumbents built this business," said Michael Rayfield, the general manager of Nvidia'smobile business unit. "This is a once in a lifetime deal where a huge market changes the things that are important to it." With smartphones and PCs taking on many of the same functions, there is certainly a fear among PC makers that if they do not get into cellphones, cellphone makers will start building PCs. Acer has characterized the smartphone business as a volatile battlefield, saying it needs to fire first and go after the cellphone makers before they come after it. Indeed, Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, has said it is weighing whether to get into the PC business. The convergence of the two devices has long been predicted, but it took a confluence of industry changes for it to begin in earnest. For decades chip manufacturers rushed to leapfrog one another with faster processors, and computer makers scrambled to squeeze more functions into smaller boxes. But ever-faster chips eventually become impractical. Their blazing speed requires vast amounts of power and cooling. The smartphones give the PC makers a chance to extend their newfound expertise in creating low-power products. In particular, Acer hopes to ride its success selling laptops and netbooks into the mobile phone market through a mix of new software and wireless data plans. It is working on software that will link all of its portable products together, synchronizing e-mail, contacts, media files and other information among the products. This could open up a way for carriers to sell more wireless 3G data services to consumers, since they could offer a single plan covering multiple devices. It is an extension of the model that Dell and others are already trying, in which carriers essentially give $400 netbooks away to consumers in exchange for two-year contracts to data plans. Such plans can cost as much as $1,500 over their lifespan. Deals that cover laptops as well as phones could prove troublesome for existing cellphone companies, as it would offer consumers a suite of products that were tightly integrated and supported. In addition, PC manufacturers come from an industry very familiar with low profit margins and tight cost structures, and would bring those pressures to bear on established cell manufacturers. "Acer has learned to live and prosper on very thin margins," said Aymar De Lencquesaing, the head of the company's smart hand-held business group. "I think we bring this kind of experience to a market that has perhaps has not yet had to endure similar rigor." Both Acer and Nvidia have promised very low-cost smartphones, threatening the most lucrative part of the cellphone makers' business.

Josep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A smartphone model called DX-900 by Acer.

At the same time, the phone market has been bombarded with operating systems from Microsoft, Google and Intel. There is a concern among longstanding players in the industry that operating systems and phone designs are becoming commodities, and that the barrier to entering the marketplace is lower than when mobile-phone manufacturers were building each handset from scratch. This gives companies like Motorola and Nokia an entirely new set of problems besides falling sales and shrinking margins. "It's cataclysmic for the phone guys, who were used to playing golf on Wednesday afternoons," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a research firm. "Those times start to look pretty good now." Not that such a move will be easy for the PC makers. The PC industry has a spotty record for expanding into consumer electronics. Dell stumbled with its MP3 player, and Hewlett-Packard's line of televisions failed to catch on with consumers. Both products have been discontinued. Also, the established mobile-phone makers have longstanding relationships with carriers, which remain reluctant to provide customer support for a wide array of devices from myriad manufacturers. Beyond that, traditional cellphone companies do not want to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Intel, which have grown over the years to dominate the PC business. Perhaps most critically, traditional phone and mobile chip companies have expertise in making phones that work. "It has to be a good cellphone first," said Ed Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research. "This is about as far away from PCs as raising elephants."

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