How can Microsoft keep its platform vibrant?

by on October 19, 2006

I walked around a company, Soasta, today that had nothing but Macintoshes for all of its developers — all used to develop testing systems that’ll run in Web browsers. And this was a startup aimed at Enterprises. Folks who build systems for Salesforce.com. For Oracle. Etc.

The company was full of people who used to do .NET programming (one of whom used to work for Dan Appleman, the guy who wrote the API book for Visual Basic).

This should freak Microsoft out.

Why are they using non-Microsoft tools? One, by using a Mac for development systems they can run Linux, Windows, and OSX on a single box. That saves them money and administration time (they use Paralells for running these different OS’s virtually).

But the Executive Chairman, Ken Gardner, saw that he was more productive when he switched from a Windows machine to a Mac. He also noticed he was more productive when he worked on a 30-inch screen.

Every worker there has TWO 30-inch screens. One at home and one at work. Ken knew his employees would work more if they had nice equipment at home too. So, he bought everyone a MacPro for the office (faster, so gives coders incentive to work in the office) and a MacBookPro for taking home.

The software they are building is brilliant, too.

Why don’t all companies invest in their workers this way? Ken says it gets results. And I can’t argue with what I saw through my camera lens.

THE POINT

Anyway, this all had a point. I got off on this riff cause of Joe Wilcox who laid out yesterday why Microsoft got so big and how it is harming its ecosystem of partners by releasing competing applications. He says that Microsoft is leaving a hole that he thinks Google could fill. There’s only nine months left until Vic Gundotra takes a new job at Google. He did a lot of strategy and developer evangelism work. Clearly Google is building a new kind of ecosystem and is courting developers. They are winning over the startup-style developers and new entrepreneurs to be sure. But, will they get the bread-and-butter developers who used to use Visual Basic?

SOASTA is betting on the Web. If Microsoft doesn’t watch out, they certainly won’t be the last company to switch people from .NET to more Web-centric and open-source development methodologies.

Will Microsoft listen to Joe Wilcox? That’s the question that developers everywhere (and their bosses like Ken Gardner) will watch to see the answer to.

By the way, Ken doesn’t think Microsoft can make the switch.

  • anand
    yes you can bet on the web like SOASTA and lose it.Web applications will not replace desktop applications atleast for a decade. And yes I hate to store my documents on a server which will make it easy for my govt. to scan them one fine day :) Reg. googles new ecosystem. Is this what you are talking about

    http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/10/13/gmai...

    probably they are trying to give companies like symantec and mcafee some new kind of business :)

    PS: sad you have no knowledge about MONO. .NET is here to stay !!!!
  • anand: that's OK. I remember when people said that DOS was always going to rule the industry too. But, when you see what SOASTA is doing, you'll see why they decided to go the route they are. I think it's pretty brilliant. And yes I know about Mono.
  • Andrew Tierney
    Hi Robert,

    I've been a VB/Delphi/Java/.NEt developer over the last 15+ years. I'm curious what your thoughts are regarding technology direction ?

    a) Desktop (Windows/Linux/OSX) vs Web 2.0/3.0 ?
    b) Language choice ? .NET/Mono or Java or Php/Perl/etc/

    Finally..

    Do you think Multi-Language, Multi-Platform is more important these days ? (compared to the old English/Windows only deployment model of the past).

    Can you make money in Software these days ? Or has the time past and its all services ? or is it all Web ?

    Interested in your feedback..

    Regards
    Andrew
  • The funny thing is that Microsoft is going this way too. I mean, as a platform company they are trying to fill every hole: the web, smart clients, supercomputing, etc. I think they actually do very well most of the times, but there are certaing things that more focused companies like Google and Apple still do better.
  • Andrew: I got a new MacPro. So that answers #1. I'll run Windows on it too. Linux isn't yet ready for my desktop usage. It's ugly and doesn't run enough software.

    I don't think language is what the trend is. I'm seeing most shops standardize around one, like Java (which is what SOASTRA is doing) or PHP or Ruby. Or, even, C#/.NET.

    But here in the valley there's a definite LAMP move for startups.

    There are still plenty of people making money in software, but most of them are at Adobe/Intuit/Microsoft/Oracle etc.

    Can you start a new company to sell software? That's a tougher one. NewsGator/FeedDemon did that. But they have a services component which is becoming more important to their business model.

    Services are easier to get adoption on and adoption is what you need to make money in an advertising-driven world. There's a lot of advertising money out there (more, indeed, than is available to the software industry) so the services model is definitely the rage with venture and entrepreneurs that I'm seeing.

    Delivering apps to the desktop like what Anand is advocating is much harder to make work business wise cause so few people are willing to install software unless it does something very killer (I just bought Parallels for my Mac, for instance, which is well worth the $80 I paid for it).
  • So, Microsoft has lost its touch (or, is losing its touch). Let's see how things are in 5 years.

    But, I do agree with the point that Microsoft is alienating itself by competing with its partners. Microsoft should realize that this is a huge mistake, sooner rather than later. It doesn't take too long for a company to fall... even a company as huge as Microsoft. (Almost) Everybody hates Microsoft...
  • i think anand is right. many many desktop applications cannot simply be replaced by the web. i companies like google are betting big time on the web. i simple think they will lose. here is why.

    1) people will find developing apps for the web is more cumbersome that desktop. i know the whole nonsense about people saying that you don't have to worry about platform when you develop on the web. well all they will end up doing is developing for another kind of platform, which is web browser.

    2) web based applications will be many orders of magnitude slower than desktop apps. why? the speed isn't simply there. everything is based on proper standards and browser implementation. these take time to get optimized and dont forget MSFT still holds the browser platform ( although firefox is becoming increasingly more popular ) and they will be in no hurry to rush out these things.

    3) web based applications will be having far fewer features than desktop applications. take for example google spreadsheets. they can't even make a plot of a graph. how pathetic. why? simple they will have to use flash to do something like that, but then google doesn't like flash. himmm so not sure what they are going to do.

    atleast 10 yrs down the line people will still be using desktop apps for things like word processing, multimedia editing and viewing. they is for sure unless something dramatically changes in tech. so companies that are betting on the web for apps will be doomed.
  • "Can you start a new company to sell software? That’s a tougher one. NewsGator/FeedDemon did that."

    I think NewsGator/FeedDemon will have it tougher now that readers like Google Reader are getting so much better. I can now use Google Reader anywhere and have all my feeds available always. Google does the feed syncing for me.

    Soasta sounds like a great company to work for. I've previously worked at places where you couldn't even get more RAM for your machine unless continuously asked for it. In the end it was like they would do it to shut you up. Although, in those places you're better off leaving and finding a company that looks after their employees.

    Re Macs: With their extremely competitive prices, great performance, there'll be more and more developers going for a Mac. Who would have thought the day would come where Windows applications could show "Made on a Mac"? :) I now do all my Windows development on a MacBook and love it.

    http://www.apple.com/about/webbadges/
  • Eshwar: you forget that Google also has several great desktop apps like Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Desktop, and Picasa. So, they are playing both sides of this, but they'll be pretty Web centric for where the Web makes sense.
  • hi scobble, in all honesty google will just do fine. they will continue to reap benefits from their search tech for atleast another 2-3 yrs. i totally agree they are the new yellow pages. they are in totally a different league altogether when it comes to search.
  • Robert,

    Thanks for visiting us today. Everybody was excited about the chance to show what we are building. I wanted to jump in here. I was a dedicated Microsoft developer for a very long time. I had a company (Viewpoint Systems) that presented at the Windows 3.0 launch in May 1990. My last company (istante software) used .NET on the server and an early form of AJAX to build a real-time dashboard product. That product ships today from Oracle and is called Oracle BAM.

    Our decision this time was to go JAVA, JBOSS, MySQL, AJAX for the UI. Why? Because there is IMO an incredible world wide collaberation going on in the open standards based world. Developers are collaberating and sharing reference implementations with use as is licensing. In the AJAX space it is now possible to pick from a wide variety of libraries and frameworks in order to quickly get to a very Rich Browser UI that will run in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Some assembly is required but the power and productivity in this approach is pretty amazing to experience.

    I worked with Anders Hejlsberg (.Net Architect) at Borland in 1994 when he was finishing Delphi. Anders is truly one of the 5 smartest (and nicest) people I have ever met. .Net is a superior development framework to anything else and makes creating services-based applications very easy. But the flaw in all of this is that these great tools only run on Windows platforms. And that dog won't hunt anymore. Open, standards-based non-proprietary platforms are going to win the day. This is ALREADY TRUE in the enterprise software space. If you want to test this go ask all of the Wall Street guys what their back office strategy is going forward. Commodity machines running Linux or Solaris clusters or grids.

    For much of my career, Microsoft was a friend to software startups and provided help in catching the wave that Microsoft was creating. This is no longer true and developers interested in building state of the art systems are not doing it in .NET in spite of all of its advantages. Microsoft could fix this by making their tools available cross platform. Mono certainly proves that it could be done. That would be a BIG decision. BIG companies don't make this kind of move. Small companies do.
  • anand
    >> .Net is a superior development framework to >>anything else and makes creating services-based >>applications very easy. But the flaw in all of >>this is that these great tools only run on Windows
    >>platforms.

    www.mono-project.com

    >>Open, standards-based non-proprietary platforms >>are going to win the day.

    Last time I checked java did not fall into the category. Nor did MySql fall into that category fully.

    Free source != open source

    >>If you want to test this go ask all of the Wall >>Street guys what their back office strategy is >>going forward. Commodity machines running Linux or >>Solaris clusters or grids

    I am fed up of these back office stuff. Were not they running unix for most part previously. Microsoft never had any big deal in the back office

    >>This is no longer true and developers interested >>in building state of the art systems are not doing >>it in .NET in spite of all of its advantages.

    Probably the guys at Myspace had different idea i guess. I dont build large applications, but definitely prefer C# and or c++
  • anand
    Btw a small question to ken in case he reads this again...are your products open source??
  • Anand: his products are services. So, no.

    Mono is NOT supported by Microsoft. So, if Microsoft decides to change C#, or sue Mono (which they could do cause Mono breaks many patents that Microsoft holds) then you're outta luck. Also, even today Mono doesn't support everything that .NET does (and won't cause a lot of the coolest .NET apps require Windows to be underneath the runtime). Oh, and how good is Mono's garbage collector and other stuff? Miguel DeIcaza is a smart dude, but there's an entire team of smart dudes working on .NET at Microsoft.

    Oh, and if you want to use Linux or OSX as your development platform, how good are Mono's tools? Certainly nowhere as good as Visual Studio running on Windows.
  • anand
    Hi robert, thanks for that answer. Reg. Mono as far as I follow they are strictly keeping themselves within the ECMA standards. So I guess microsoft would not sue them. THere is software called monodevelop. You can use that. Or you can also use glade to develop gtk based GUI. Glade has been there in linux ever since I started using that and is a very popular tool with drag and drop support. Last VS.NEt is in a separate class on its own. I would rather compare monodevelop with eclipse....good night
  • anand: good point, but I thought that Mono did quite a bit more than ECMA standards. I haven't looked into it lately, I should get Miguel on my video show. But, most developers who come at it will come from the Windows side of the fence and will feel quite inadequate when they get Mono. I haven't seen Mono used in ANY Silicon Valley startup. I'd love to know of one, if it exists.
  • I think the problem with your analysis is that you're looking at web 2.0 startups and the like. For those scenarios, the technologies you talk about make great sense. For corporations, my bet is that either Microsoft development tools or Java development tools will continue to be the main choices for quite some time.
  • John: true, but even inside large corporations I've started seeing movement toward open source and toward services. Have you missed how big Salesforce.com has gotten?
  • It's very difficult for developers to understand their own productivity objectively. Many great developers are almost religious about their favourite programming languages and development tools - and this tends to cloud their judgement on things like productivity.

    I simply don't believe that hardware/OS platform makes a significant difference to a developer's productivity these days. Screen size - yes. But not hardware/OS platform.

    You can use Windows, MacOS X, Linux or Solaris - and be highly productive on all of them. Why? Because the *true* enablers of developer productivity in 2006 are: modern IDES (like Visual Studio, Netbeans and Eclipse); and reusable software frameworks and APIs. These things are available to developers on all the above hardware/OS platforms.
  • Robert...you really, really, REALLY need to talk to Miguel and the Mono folks BEFORE you accuse them of breaking patents, etc.

    As well, you asking how good is the garbage collector in Mono is like my cat asking me about compression ratios in my car. There's no point to it, it's just some random point based on a term you happen to know.

    Maybe if Microsoft stopped treating Mono as absolutely shabbily as it does, they'd realize what a huge benefit for .Net Mono is. Sure as shit kicks Rotor's ass.
  • John - Rotor was an academic exercise meant more for universities to do research on, etc. It was *not* meant as a production 'go build your business on' software.
  • WebApps
    To those who say desktop apps will rule forever, what would you do if you got 1gbs broadband access and could get photoshop running from the web in less than a second? Pay for one license, run everywhere.

    Not now, not in a year, but it will come, it is unstoppable.

    You will only need an internet connection, a dumb BIOS that connects to the web and even your browser will auto download everytime you get online.

    Zero desktop.
  • Dave
    In the Enterprise the truth is that SAP rules. Not Web 2.0, nor anything else.

    They now have a Java stack. Most things are still ABAP based, but other than a .NET connector and better Office integration, Microsoft technologies are virtually non-existant. For most ABAP coding you still use the SAPgui, which is proprietary. For Java, it's an Eclipse-based IDE.

    The simple truth is, when all of you talk about "large corporations", OSS, .NET, and even services are peripheral to any ERP system.
  • >You can use Windows, MacOS X, Linux or Solaris - and be highly productive on all of them.

    Ken's developers run them all on MacOSX. He says they are more productive because all three OS's run on the same box using Parallels.
  • John: I will concede that there are two sides to this story. But it's pretty clear that Microsoft is not officially supporting Mono and is making sure that legally their options stay open for a lawsuit in the future. Clearly they won't let Miguel copy the coolest new stuff coming out for the .NET system (like .NET 3.0/WPF). So, what good is .NET running on other platforms if it can't do exactly the same stuff that it can on Windows? And, further, for developers, why would you develop .NET apps on Linux when Visual Studio is so superior and it only runs on Windows?

    Which gets to the startups' point: if you want to really be platform independent, why not go with a system that is far closer to the platform independent goal in the first place?
  • Christopher Coulter
    The Developer and Media Creation trend is going OSXy, but mainstream Corporate American is still pure HP-Dell boxified. If Apple would ever kick up a decent licensing strategy, and get the OEMs on board (who are dying for OSX), they too could tap into the large pool markets. But no, Apple is all smuggy (form over functiony) North Cally San Franish arrogantly happy with under 10%. The fear of whiteboxed commodity markets, keeps them out of the game, but smart ways to get that mindshare without selling your soul. Apple chooses to not even play, taking their ball home.
  • LayZ
    @19. Yeah? Which ones, specifically? Which "large corporations" outside of SV have you visited recently?
  • LayZ: Boeing. Target. Microsoft. Starbucks. Amazon.
  • SOASTA seriously considered MONO. There is legal uncertainty hanging over that effort that means you can't bet your company on it (particularly if you want to raise venture capital). Microsoft could make MONO very important by simply announcing that they won't sue them or developers in the future because they use MONO. They haven't done that. Microsoft has the best devloper tools BUT they only work on Windows. If your opportunity is targetted at the enterprise, the smart play is to be multi-platform. I have tried this the Windows only way twice before and it limits your market opportunity. On the other hand, JAVA, J2EE, MySQL, AJAX are all cross platform.

    Feel free to disagree. I understand. I was in the other camp for a long time. We are all making bets an the future. Those that pick correctly become the winners. Good luck!
  • Apple support of Windows is too timid for the corporate world. Bootcamp can work well but they would need to be more clear to really get a piece of the cake against HP or Dell. OSX taking over against Windows & *n*x in the corporate world is a non issue right now.
  • Windows, correct me if I'm wrong, runs on over 90% of the personal computers in the world. I don't know the number but I'd guess the % is even higher in the Enterprise space. Am I wrong about that? Is the open-source movement really as strong in the Enterprise space as this post and comments make it out to be?

    MAC personal computer sales have been good this year but the market share numbers we're seeing represent a % of personal computers shipped - it doesn't tell us much about how many people are actually using a MAC as their primary machine. A lot of people I know have been buying MACs as 2nd or 3rd computers - secondary computing platforms because they're pretty and a bit of a novelty but they aren't switching from Windows to MAC OSx. A lot of people are going bi-platform ; )

    The bi-platform thing can probably be attributed to a stale Windows platform and boring hardware from DELL and HP. Windows Vista and a new generation of hardware to support it are probably going to change that. I predict MAC personal computers sales will slow as $ for hardware starts to flow back into new Vista machines next year.
  • nagha
    Robert, it's good to see uptake of Macs into the business world as we all benefit from their increased presence. The lack of diversity makes businesses more susceptible to work outages when a virus or malware sneaks onto all of the computers. Also, the resurgence of the Mac puts pressure on Redmond to keep moving forward. Everyone wins when there's competition like this. As mentioned by Cale, WINDOWS became stale from the lack of healthy competition.
  • John: I will concede that there are two sides to this story. But it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is not officially supporting Mono and is making sure that legally their options stay open for a lawsuit in the future.

    Robert, here's a thot. Try going to the Mono web site and reading up on it before you say something really ignorant and dumb. It would be a neat trick for Microsoft to sue Mono, since Mono is built from public information and ECMA info:

    Are you writing Mono from the ECMA specs?

    Yes, we are writing them from the ECMA specs and the published materials in print about .NET.

    Good luck on that lawsuit.

    Clearly they won’t let Miguel copy the coolest new stuff coming out for the .NET system (like .NET 3.0/WPF).

    Really. You have proof that Microsoft is going to withhold the updates to .Net from ECMA and stop publishing technical info? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me, because when you talk about Ballmer and Allchin, "stupid moves" is what they do best, but I can't see Ray Ozzie being that blindingly dumb.

    So, what good is .NET running on other platforms if it can’t do exactly the same stuff that it can on Windows?

    Robert, do you even know what .Net is other than what you've been told by your (former) masters at Microsoft?

    And, further, for developers, why would you develop .NET apps on Linux when Visual Studio is so superior and it only runs on Windows?

    Superior for what? Windows dev? Sure. But you want to talk about things like Java, and i'll put Eclipse up against it any day. As well, you talking about development tools is about like a crow discussing hydrodynamics.

    You don't even know how clueless you are about Mono, yet you insist on denigrating it. I though Microsoft didn't pay you anymore.


    Christopher:

    The fear of whiteboxed commodity markets, keeps them out of the game, but smart ways to get that mindshare without selling your soul. Apple chooses to not even play, taking their ball home.

    Apple is a hardware company. That's what they make most of their money off of. There's no sane reason for *Apple* to cut their own throat, because there's no way you can sell enough OS X licenses to make up for the lost hardware revenue. That would be...stupid. Yes, that's it, stupid. Note that Apple tried that once. Worked really badly.

    Cale:

    Windows, correct me if I’m wrong, runs on over 90% of the personal computers in the world. I don’t know the number but I’d guess the % is even higher in the Enterprise space. Am I wrong about that? Is the open-source movement really as strong in the Enterprise space as this post and comments make it out to be?

    Actually, it's 90% of everything conglomerated together. It's lower in the K-12 space, probably higher in the Enterprise desktop space, dropping in the enterprise server space.

    In the server room, Open Source is DEFINITELY eating away at Windows. I know for things that don't specifically need windows, companies are looking at other options, mostly because Microsoft's license costs are insane.
  • Mike in PDX
    Sorry. I don't buy it.

    .NET ASMX *is* the new VB of the web. Developers are only a drag-and-drop away from creating a web service that extends any enterprise beyond their own firewall.

    The only difference is that MSFT has a pale 55% market share in web service tools this time around (opposed to 90%+ on the Win desktop).
  • If MS pulls its head out and really supports .Net everywhere, not just on Windows, it can be a dominant force without dominating the market and rumbling over people.

    Doubt it will happen until the last of the old guard is gone, but it's possible.
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