Tag Archives: Microsoft

HindustanTimes: Cloud Computing Politics

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Published in HindustanTimes on March 30th 2009


The Standard Excuse

As competition between technology companies gets heated organizations like IBM, Microsoft, Google, Sun and many more leave no stone unturned in their quest to dominate the market. In a free market everything seems fine as long as your customers are happy with the value you are delivering. Yet in this mayhem of corporate battleground there is something called a “standard” and it seems to be the latest missile tech giants are using against each other.

Tech Companies and the standards’ politics

Wikipedia defines a technical standard as an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices. For example when you buy an ISI product you can be sure of the quality or an ISO standard means a certain set criteria are being observed in manufacturing. Similarly the tech industry has its own standards. Call it the maturity of the technology industry that it has reached a stage when companies are pushing for Open Standards where formats are available and developers can add applications or maybe even modify and do many other innovations.

Microsoft versus IBM, Sun and others

In the last few years it is the politics of standards that is being witnessed. Top tech giants fighting it out. Two years ago I covered the much heated OXML standards debate when Microsoft was pushing its docx against stiff competition from IBM, Sun, Google and many more. From Governments to standard bodies to ISO and many other international bodies everyone got embroiled in one of the most heated standards debate. Ofcourse Microsoft had the last word and oxml is indeed a standard now. Now it’s the turn of cloud computing and the players are IBM, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and more.

Cloud Computing and its importance

Cloud computing, said to be the next big thing in the tech industry is the latest target of bad politics. Let’s understand what really makes it so big. Cloud computing means services and software can be accessed over a network. So while the “real” software resides on a cloud, you are able to access it on your computer and work on it as if it was on your computer.

In the last couple of years cloud computing has turned into a huge money runner. Take the case of ERP. Earlier if an organization wanted an ERP solution the starting cost was Rs.10 lac upwards. Now you can get an ERP solution for as less as Rs.3,000 and that too from the biggest tech giants like Oracle, Microsoft, Sap and more. Oracle calls it On Demand, Microsoft calls it software plus services. Companies like Salesforce have had this software as a service model from their start. Most of Google’s ammunition is fired around this model and noteworthy is within 9 years of its start this startup has become the biggest competitor for the world’s biggest technology company Microsoft.

The point is cloud computing is the future, cloud computing is where a lot of future tech developments depend. Imagine if tomorrow we actually have a cloud computing based model for an operating system! If that sounds laughable do watch out for this space in the coming weeks with some really great information around this.

The Politics of Cloud Computing

This time it was IBM which supposedly led a coalition of trying to push something called a “Open Cloud Manifesto.” Microsoft’s Steve Martin supposedly “prematurely revealed” this manifesto and the coalition it termed as “shadowy group of IT industry companies.” Amazon too joined forces and rejected it. Amazon rejection is understandable considering Amazon’s EC2 and S3 APIs are almost like defacto standards. Google and Salesforce, perhaps the biggest players in cloud computing also joined Microsoft and Amazon.

The Cloud Computing Manifesto contains a “public declaration of principles and intentions” for cloud computing providers and vendors, annotated as “a call to action for the worldwide cloud community” and “dedicated belief that the cloud should be open”. It follows the earlier development of the Cloud Computing Bill of Rights which addresses similar issues from the users’ point of view.

The Last Word

Rising above the politics its absolutely great news that the industry finally agrees on “open” standards. Microsoft which for long was a packaged software company has transformed itself well for the next technology wave. Microsoft opening its .doc standards was a step in the positive direction and perhaps so was the OXML standard. The current “manifestogate” controversy will soon subside. Sooner of later the industry will have to agree on a set of standards for something that can redefine the biggest tech wave of this decade. It’s great to see Google and Microsoft on the same side.

Puneet Mehrotra writes on business and technology for HindustanTimes email: puneet@tbe.in

Business Week: Microsoft strips to seduce Linux

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This is my latest story that appeared in Business Week on 28th August 2009.  This was my 4th story on standards.

Aug. 28–NEW DELHI —

Microsoft strips to seduce Linux
Calls it Interoperability

“The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion” said Mr.Albert Einstein. When we look at relationships and the course history takes the past seems like an illusion wondering if it ever existed. It was just the other day that Microsoft and Open Source were bitter enemies. One a packaged software corporate giant driven solely by profits. The other completely driven by passion by a group of geeks not even under the same roof. In 2001 Microsoft had said “Linux is cancer.” A few years MS started decided to apply balm to heal the cancer and mend its relationship with Linux through its Open Source initiatives. Its 2009 now and Microsoft, the once closely guarded organization is stripping its soul, literally, to woo Open Source by releasing 20,000 lines of Linux code to the Linux kernel community in the name of interoperability something not even Bill Gates could imagine 10 years ago!.

In Perspective
Imagine if one fine day India and Pakistan decide to get together and exchange their nuclear documents for the common good of the citizens of the sub-continent. Sounds unbelievable, right? Microsoft and Linux have been the same. Besides ideological differences in terms of software creation, ownership and distribution there must be rarely a common ground between them. Microsoft’s Chief Steve Ballmer in 2001 had said “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” Linus Torvalds, father of Linux OS, on the other hand, led a one man army and created an entire guerilla front of geeks separated by geography but bound by passion that in time became the biggest threat for the biggest organization on earth, Microsoft.

Besides another major difference is the way the two create software. Microsoft’s model is solely driven by profits. Linux’s model is solely driven by passion. Microsoft writes 1 line of code and gets 1000 patents for it. Linux is written and distributed under the GNU General Public License which means that its source code is freely-distributed and available to the general public.

Microsoft – A confused organization

Around 4 years ago things changed at Microsoft through its Open Source initiatives. What can be termed as a late reaction from a confused company that till recently was all against Open Source and GPL. Whether Microsoft was for Open Source or against it perhaps not even Microsoft was very sure!

In July this year came the biggest shocker from Microsoft. The once closed and highly guarded Microsoft decided to open 20,000 lines of Linux code to the Linux kernel community in the name of interoperability. In addition Microsoft also highlighted the ongoing investment the company is making to optimize PHP on Windows Server and the Microsoft SQL Server database system.

What motivated Microsoft to do the unthinkable to get literally get into the heart of Linux kernel? Sam Ramji, senior director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, in a statement said “The current economic climate has a lot of companies consolidating their hardware and software assets. Many companies are turning to Microsoft more frequently to help them succeed in a heterogeneous technology. So there’s mutual benefit for customers, for Microsoft, and for commercial and community distributions of Linux, to enhance the performance of Linux as a guest operating system where Windows Server is the host.”

And what was the objective of Microsoft doing this? Says Tom Hanrahan, director of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center, “Our initial goal in developing the code was to enable Linux to run as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor and implementation of virtualization.”

The Linux View
From Linux side Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Driver Project Lead, said “Microsoft’s contribution is a good move for Linux. I’m pleased to see Microsoft working to build a better relationship with the Linux community. I think that this will be good news for users and organizations who want to see better interoperability between Windows and Linux.”

If Microsoft opening was a surprise, the bigger surprise came from Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, “Microsoft hatred is a disease” said he.

Microsoft’s Motivation – Greed or Interoperability
The big question is can Microsoft be trusted? What it couldn’t do to Open Source all these years is this a new way of finishing Linux and making it obsolete.

There is a possibility. On the macro level Microsoft’s Open Source could be to make Linux obsolete. Mary Jo in Zdnet says “Microsoft’s goal is to convince OSS vendors to port their software to Windows. But Microsoft doesn’t want OSS software to just sit on top of Windows; the company wants this software to be tied into the Windows ecosystem by integrating with Active Directory, Microsoft Office, Expression designer tools, System Center systems-management wares and SQL Server database.”

Linus Torvalds has so far been very confident of Open Source and doesn’t see Microsoft as a threat. Says he “I agree that it’s driven by selfish reasons, but that’s how all open source code gets written! We all “scratch our own itches”. So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them.” He goes on to add “Does anybody complain when hardware companies write drivers for the hardware they produce? No. That would be crazy. Does anybody complain when IBM funds all the POWER development, and works on enterprise features because they sell into the enterprise? No. That would be insane. So the people who complain about Microsoft writing drivers for their own virtualization model should take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are being so hypocritical.”

Microsoft’s Interoperability Argument

It is also true the way business and governments are operating in mixed environments which include both Microsoft and open source applications. Interoperabilty does make increasing sense especially for enterprise customers.

The Last Word
Microsoft is a commercial organization and its objective solely is profit. Microsoft’s biggest worry right now is Google which it sees as its biggest enemy that maybe eating into its bottomline soon. Call it desperation but Microsoft urgently needs to get into newer markets and also tap cheaper talent pools. The Open Source may just be the right platform to piggyback and also get closer to a community IBM, SUN and Google have been wooing and using for years now. IBM, SUN and Google are also commercial organizations using Open Source talent pool. Will someone also question their motives on wooing Open Source?

Puneet Mehotra writes on technology
puneet@tbe.in