Microsoft has built software, but not a Linux distribution, for its software switches

A Microsoft Linux distribution would be remarkable, but Redmond says it doesn't have one.

Late last week, hell had apparently frozen over with the news that Microsoft had developed a Linux distribution of its own. The work was done as part of the company's Azure cloud platform, which uses Linux-based network switches as part of its software-defined networking infrastructure.

While the software is real, Microsoft isn't characterizing it as a Linux distribution, telling us that it's an internal project. That's an important distinction, and we suspect that we're not going to see a Microsoft Linux any time soon.

The Open Compute Project (OCP), of which Microsoft is a member, is an industry group that is working together to define hardware and software standards for data center equipment. This includes designs for high-density compute nodes, storage, and networking equipment. One part that Microsoft has been working on is network hardware, in particular, software-defined networking (SDN). SDN adds a layer of software-based programmability, configuration, and centralized management to hardware that is traditionally awkward to manage. Traditional network switches, even managed ones, aren't designed to enable new policies—alterations to quality-of-service or VLANs, say—to be deployed to hundreds or thousands of devices simultaneously. And to the extent that such capabilities are present, they vary from vendor to vendor.

Earlier this year, Microsoft, Dell, Mellanox, Facebook, Broadcom, and Intel contributed a specification, the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), that provides a common API that can span the wide range of ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits—chips tailored to handle very specific workloads, in this case, handling Ethernet frames) used in software-defined switch hardware. The SAI API is, in principle, cross-platform, defined for both Windows and Linux, but much of the switch hardware is supported best, or even exclusively, in Linux. A Linux distribution to support these applications, Open Network Linux, has even been developed.

The Azure Cloud Switch, which is what Microsoft announced on Friday, is Redmond's software-defined switch. It builds on the SAI API to enable it to work with switch hardware from many different vendors; in August, an ACS switch using six different vendors' switch ASICs was demonstrated. ACS is built on top of a Linux SAI implementation, and it uses Linux drivers for the switch ASICs.

Given Linux's dominance in this area, it's at once both surprising and unsurprising that ACS uses Linux. Unsurprising because there's little practical alternative for this situation; surprising because Microsoft is still assumed to have some degree of hostility toward Linux. The company today would tell you that this hostility is a thing of the past. Microsoft would say today it's willing to use the best tool for the job and work to ensure that its software is available on the platforms that people need it on. With this new, more pragmatic Microsoft, the use of Linux should be expected. And accordingly, Microsoft says that it is using this software in its own datacenters. Microsoft has publicly used non-Windows infrastructure before—some Skype infrastructure initially used Linux, for example, and Hotmail ran on FreeBSD when it was bought—but this is nonetheless unusual, as it's new Microsoft development, not a bought-in project.

So why isn't the company calling this new endeavor a distribution? The big reason is that the company doesn't intend to distribute it. Again, it's an internal development that showcases the OCP approach, but it isn't a package that will be given to third parties.

Microsoft's diagram describing ACS might also be significant; the Microsoft components are a set of applications and services that sit above SAI; that's a chunk of software, but everything else could be taken from an off-the-shelf Linux distribution (Microsoft hasn't specified). Another confounding factor could be the various switch ASIC components. Each vendor's ASICs have their own drivers and SDKs, and at least some of these are not open source. This would make it difficult to build a Linux distribution around them.

As such, hell likely remains toasty and warm, and Microsoft won't be in the Linux distribution business any time soon. But equally, it's clearer than ever that this isn't the Microsoft of the 2000s. If Linux is the best tool for the job, Microsoft is willing not only to use it, but to tell the world that it's doing so.

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Microsoft and VMware cozy up, forgoing past rivalry

The companies have worked together on a new device management initiative

Microsoft's new, more collaborative approach to the computing industry was on display at VMware's annual conference in San Francisco Tuesday, when executives from both companies shared the stage to talk about new device management features in Windows 10.

As VMware Executive Vice President Sanjay Poonen explained, VMware and Microsoft, historically fierce rivals, have been working together more closely under the leadership of Satya Nadella. That work has now borne fruit in the form of Project A2, a new service that brings together VMware's AirWatch device management service and its App Volumes application delivery technology. Using Project A2, Windows 10 users can log in to their corporate account, get their device set up for use with a company's resources and then get all the applications they need provided straight from IT.

Project A2 is made possible by new tools in Windows 10 that make it easier for IT professionals to provision devices and ensure that they comply with company policy. Microsoft makes use of that with its own device management services, but has also made them available to companies like VMware.

The appearance of Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jim Alkove at VMworld is a significant move that Poonen didn't let go unnoticed. He told the crowd that people backstage at the conference had compared the appearance to Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan working together.

"I think you're the tall Reagan, and I'm the Indian version of Gorbachev," Poonen joked.

Microsoft is singing a very different tune from the position it took last year. During VMworld 2014, Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson took to his blog to discuss everything he thought VMware got wrong with AirWatch and why people should use Microsoft's management tools. (He hasn't yet published anything relating to VMworld this year.)

The charm offensive from Alkove is part of Microsoft's push to get businesses to adopt Windows 10. The company said last week that 1.5 million devices are already running the enterprise edition of its new operating system, and the company said that it plans to have 1 billion devices running Windows 10 within 3 years. Getting businesses to bring their deployments into the next generation is key for the company's ambitions.

It's also another sign of how the Redmond-based tech giant, under Nadella, is playing nicer with companies that it would have treated more harshly in the past. Microsoft has also doubled down on building out its services for non-Windows platforms, and is working better with companies like Salesforce.com that compete with it.

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Microsoft needs SDN for Azure cloud

Microsoft needs SDN for Azure cloud

Couldn't scale without it, Azure CTO says
The Microsoft cloud, through which the company’s software products are delivered, has 22 hyper-scale regions around the world. Azure storage and compute usage is doubling every six months, and Azure lines up 90,000 new subscribers a month.

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Fifty-seven percent of the Fortune 500 use Azure and the number of hosts quickly grew from 100,000 to millions, said CTO Mark Russinovich during his Open Network Summit keynote address here this week. Azure needs a virtualized, partitioned and scale-out design, delivered through software, in order to keep up with that kind of growth.

“When we started to build these networks and started to see these types of requirements, the scale we were operating at, you can’t have humans provisioning things,” Russinovich said. “You’ve got to have systems that are very flexible and also delivering functionality very quickly. This meant we couldn’t go to the Web and do an Internet search for a scalable cloud controller that supports this kind of functionality. It just didn’t exist.”

Microsoft wrote all of the software code for Azure’s SDN. A description of it can be found here.
Microsoft uses virtual networks (Vnets) built from overlays and Network Functions Virtualization services running as software on commodity servers. Vnets are partitioned through Azure controllers established as a set of interconnected services, and each service is partitioned to scale and run protocols on multiple instances for high availability.

Controllers are established in regions where there could be 100,000 to 500,000 hosts. Within those regions are smaller clustered controllers which act as stateless caches for up to 1,000 hosts.
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Microsoft builds these controllers using an internally developed Service Fabric for Azure. Service Fabric has what Microsoft calls a microservices-based architecture that allows customers to update individual application components without having to update the entire application.

Microsoft makes the Azure Service Fabric SDK available here.
Much of the programmability of the Azure SDN is performed on the host server with hardware assist. A Virtual Filtering Platform (VFP) in Hyper-V hosts enable Azure’s data plane to act as a Hyper-V virtual network programmable switch for network agents that work on behalf of controllers for Vnet and other functions, like load balancing.

Packet processing is done at the host where a NIC with a Field Programmable Gate Array offloads network processing from the host CPU to scale the Azure data plane from 1Gbps to 40Gbps and beyond. That helps retain host CPU cycles for processing customer VMs, Microsoft says.

Remote Direct Memory Access is employed for the high-performance storage back-end to Azure.
Though SDNs and open source go hand-in-hand, there’s no open source software content in the Azure SDN. That’s because the functionality required for Azure was not offered through open source communities, Russinovich says.

“As these requirements were hitting us, there was no open source out there able to meet them,” he says. “And once you start on a path where you’re starting to build out infrastructure and system, even if there’s something else that comes along and addresses those requirements the switching cost is pretty huge. It’s not an aversion to it; it’s that we haven’t seen open source out there that really meets our needs, and there’s a switching cost that we have to take into account, which will slow us down.”

Microsoft is, however, considering contributing the Azure Service Fabric architecture to the open source community, Russinovich said. But there has to be some symbiosis.

“What’s secret sauce, what’s not; what’s the cost of contributing to open source, what’s the benefit to customers of open source, what’s the benefit to us penetrating markets,” he says. “It’s a constant evaluation.”

Some of the challenges in constructing the Azure SDN were retrofitting existing controllers into the Service Fabric, Russinovich says. That resulted in some scaling issues.
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“Some of the original controllers were written not using Service Fabric so they were not microservice oriented,” he says. “We immediately started to run into scale challenges with that. Existing ones are being (rewritten) onto Service Fabric.

“Another one is this evolution of the VFP and how it does packet processing. That is not something that we sat down initially and said, ‘it’s connections, not flows.’ We need to make sure that packet processing on every packet after the connection is set up needs to be highly efficient. It’s been the challenge of being able to operate efficiently, scale it up quickly, being able to deliver features into it quickly, and being able to take the load off the server so we can run VMs on it.”

What’s next for the Azure SDN? Preparing for more explosive growth of the Microsoft cloud, Russinovich says.

“It’s a constant evolution in terms of functionality and features,” he says. “You’re going to see us get more richer and powerful abstractions at the network level from a customer API perspective. We’re going to see 10X scale in a few years.”

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Microsoft touts two next-gen Office editions for Windows

Will preview long-awaited touch version next month

Microsoft this week set a loose release date for its next iteration of Office on the desktop and announced that the long-awaited touch-enabled Windows apps will launch around the same time.

The touch-enabled apps will go out as a preview in February when Microsoft debuts Windows 10 for smartphones.

Office 2016, the moniker chosen for the next edition of the classic desktop suite, will launch in "the second half of 2015," said Julie White, who heads Microsoft's Office product management, in a Thursday blog.

The name was in line with previous labels for the bundle, which was last upgraded to Office 2013 in January of that year.

White gave little information about Office 2016, which will be the choice for Windows users who work with keyboard and mouse, other than the wide release window. It's almost certain that Microsoft will offer a public preview of some kind, probably within the next few months, and start selling the suite at the same time it rolls out Windows 10.

Windows 10 has been tagged with various launch itineraries, including "early fall" by Microsoft's chief operations officer, and most recently, "later this year."

Nor did White discuss pricing or packaging, but Microsoft commonly defers those details until near the ship date. Microsoft has promised to continue to sell perpetually licensed copies of Office -- those customers pay once and can use the software as long as they want -- so the dual models of buy-once and Office 365's rent-not-own will continue.

Office 365 subscribers can upgrade to Office 2016 free of charge when it appears.

Last year, Microsoft also teased a new Office for the Mac, which has not been named -- and said then that it, too, would go on sale in the second half of 2015. Microsoft has already previewed Outlook, the email client for the new Office on OS X, to Office 365 subscribers, and updated it earlier this week.

It's probable that Microsoft will start selling both Office 2016 for Windows and the new, still-unnamed edition for the Mac at the same time, which would be a break with precedent. In the past, the Mac edition has followed the Windows version by several months at minimum.

But White used most of her post to trumpet "Office for Windows 10," a suite of touch-first apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. The latter will sport both email and calendar functionality, as does the desktop version.

Office for Windows 10 will be pre-installed on new Windows 10-powered smartphones and tablets with screens smaller than 8-in. It will also be available for larger-screen devices -- tablets and touch-ready notebooks -- from the Windows Store.

Sticking to its practice of dribbling out information to keep customers interested -- and its wares in the news -- Microsoft did not spell out whether the apps would be free to customers who already have a smartphone or tablet and who upgrade their devices to Windows 10. The company also did not say how much the apps would cost to install on larger tablets or touch laptops.

Unless Microsoft turns its Office business model completely inside-out between now and the apps' release, it will give smartphone and smaller tablet owners Office for Windows 10 for free, perhaps limiting the apps' features in some ways for larger tablets and touch PCs, and tie full functionality on the latter pair to an Office 365 consumer or corporate subscription.

Users who want to use the apps for business purposes -- no matter the device -- will need an Office 365 small business or enterprise subscription.

Those are the licensing terms for Office on the iPhone and Android smartphones, and for the iPad and the impending version for Android-based tablets.

Touch-based Office apps for Windows have been on Microsoft's to-do list for years.

In September 2011, then-CEO Steve Ballmer hinted that the company was working on "Metro-izing" Office, telling Wall Street analysts, "You ought to expect that we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style." Metro was the brand that Microsoft once used to describe the tile- and touch-based interface that debuted on Windows 8 in 2012.

More than a year ago, Ballmer -- by that time on his way out -- promised "what I would call not just a touch-enabled, but a touch-first user interface ... for Windows 8," and set the release order as Windows first, iPad second. Ballmer's replacement, Satya Nadella, flipped the order when he introduced Office for iPad in March. Since then, Windows users have been waiting for word on something similar for them.

Microsoft's White said that a sneak peek of Office for Windows 10 -- not Office 2016 -- would be partnered with a Windows 10 Technical Preview update "in the coming weeks," which fits with what operating system chief Terry Myerson said Wednesday was a February timetable for a first beta of Windows 10 for smartphones.

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Microsoft will surprise in 2015

As the company seeks new ways to grow, it is likely to explore things once unthinkable for it

You may have noticed that I take a rather cynical view of Microsoft. But I think I am able to recognize when it does good things. As a matter of fact, I think the company made some smart moves in 2014, and it’s going to benefit from them in 2015.

One of those smart moves was to try to move beyond the fiasco that was Windows 8. Yes, Microsoft took its own sweet time in realizing just what a moronic blunder Windows 8.x’s Metro was, but it now is in the process of shoving that awkward interface into the background with Windows 10 (now in beta), bringing back the kind of windows, icon, menu and pointer (WIMP) interface that desktop users prefer.

True, the company needs to do much better in the quality assurance (QA) area. The blunders Microsoft has been making in Windows 10 are sort of understandable (it’s still beta, after all). I still don’t understand, though, how a change to Internet Explorer 11 can foul up an operating system update if, and only if, you have Office installed. No, what I find of much greater concern is an overall pattern of sloppy coding. An Exchange update that knocks out Outlook? Windows 7 patches that block other security patches? If Microsoft doesn’t make QA job number one on the desktop in 2015, Windows 10 may yet prove a flop.

It just may be, however, that Microsoft wouldn’t be that worried if Windows 10 didn’t take off.

I’m serious.

Look at what else Microsoft has been up to in 2014. Midyear, it released a version of Office for the iPad that was newer than the one on its own Surface devices. It followed that up by starting to bring Office to Android tablets. I’m a beta tester for this, and guess what. It’s not bad.

Of course, to fully make use of either one you’ll need an Office 365 subscription.

But wouldn’t that mean that Microsoft is turning from its old role as a purveyor of proprietary software into more of a service and cloud company? Yes, and I think that’s exactly what it’s up to.

This view is bolstered by taking a close look at Microsoft’s most recent quarter. Its Devices and Consumer revenue increased by a respectable 47%, but its Commercial group revenue rose only by 10%. But when you peer more closely at the Commercial group, you see that revenue for cloud computing software and services like Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM exploded upward by 128%.

No one ever accused Microsoft of being blind to growth opportunities, and that’s certainly what the cloud and related services look like to me.

OK, it’s not exactly a jolt to say that Microsoft is going to pay more attention to the cloud. But how about this for a surprise? It’s going to make nice with Linux. Don’t take it from me. This is what CEO Satya Nadella had to say this year: “I love Linux.”

Now, there’s a break with the past for you. But why would Nadella say that?

Again, it’s the cloud and services. Microsoft knows for a fact that businesses want Linux servers on their clouds, and so that’s what Microsoft is delivering via Azure.

I’m not saying we’re going to see a desktop release of something with a name like MS-Linux, but an MS-Linux for the cloud isn’t out of the question at all.

I really can see it.

I can also see 2015 being the year that Microsoft finally buries the hatchet with Red Hat, the leading enterprise server Linux distributor. On Azure, Microsoft already supports CoreOS, Oracle Linux, openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and CentOS. But to really get Linux customers on board it needs to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well. And 2015 will be the year it happens.

Of course, Microsoft’s old proprietary ways would make MS-Linux on Azure a tough sell. The open-source crowd has never wanted anything to do with that Microsoft. That’s why it’s significant that Microsoft is getting more involved in open-source development.

Sure, there are limits it’s not about to cross. I mean, you’re never going to see Microsoft open-source Windows. (And I hate to think how the open-source community would react to the deplorable state of that code.) But Microsoft is opening newer products, such as Project Orleans for Halo and .Net for servers. That’s kind of amazing.

So the real story from Microsoft in 2015 won’t be Windows 10. Oh, it will get the headlines, some of them on stories that I’ll write. But the real news, the news that will change the bottom line, will be in clouds, services and open source.

That’s a big deal. What it means is that Microsoft 2015 will no longer be the company that Bill Gates made and Steve Ballmer almost ruined. It’s a whole new Microsoft, and I, for one, will be very interested in seeing how it all works out.

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Microsoft may drag out layoffs for a year

Long periods of uncertainty about who goes, who stays, can corrode a company's morale

Microsoft yesterday said it could take as long as a year to lay off the 18,000 workers who will be eventually shown the door, making for a long, drawn-out morale-busting process that was criticized by both labor experts and industry analysts.

"I'm definitely not a fan," Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, said of the lengthy process.

"You owe it to your long-term Nokia and Microsoft employees to do it as quickly as possible," added Miller, who, like many of his colleagues the Kirkland, Wash.-based research firm, is a former Microsoft employee. "You also owe it to yourself to do it as cleanly and quickly as possible. The longer it drones on, the more randomized people get."

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (and an identical press release), Microsoft said it would "substantially complete" the layoffs by the end of this year, and that the process would be "fully completed" by June 30, 2015.

In its previous biggest layoff -- when it cut 5,800 jobs in 2009 -- Microsoft also took up to 18 months to finish the dismissals.

"They should have learned from 2009. Morale suffered," Miller said of the months of uncertainty when workers wondered whether they would be laid off.

Mini-Microsoft, an on-again, off-again blogger who is purportedly a current Microsoft employee, agreed with Miller in the first post to the website since former CEO Steve Ballmer announced his retirement nearly a year ago.

The 2009 layoff "was implemented so poorly, with constant worries and concerns and doubts about engaging in new ideas due to expectations those would be the easiest to trim during ongoing cut-backs," Mini-Microsoft wrote Thursday. "When was it over? When was the 'all clear' signal given?"

The blog went on to say, "If this truly drags on for a year: we need a new leader. This needs to be wrapped up by the end of July. 2014."

Comments on the blog expressed the hope that the ax would fall quickly. "When you take a [Band-Aid] off, you just grab hold and rip," wrote one person, voicing a sentiment echoed by dozens of anonymous commenters.

Other comments on the blog suggested that some layoffs had taken place immediately. It was impossible to verify the authenticity of those comments, however.

"Most of the follow-up emails I've seen suggest that it will be a quick process (C+E, OSG, Devices, etc.) for those in Redmond who should find out today if they are about to be axed," wrote another unidentified commenter. The writer was referring to Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise, Operating Systems and Devices groups, which are led, respectively, by Scott Guthrie, Terry Myerson and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

According to the state of Washington, Microsoft said it would eliminate 1,351 jobs in the state.
"I don't think it's a good thing to do," Wayne Cascio, a professor at the University of Colorado, Denver and an expert in human resources management -- specifically downsizing -- said in an interview about long layoffs. "It creates massive uncertainty and a big drop in productivity. People spend their work time on social networking and getting a resume up to date. And there's the very real risk that the company might lose the most valuable, and marketable, employees."

Anything company executives and managers can do to reduce uncertainty, which is the root cause of the disruption, is all to the good, Cascio added, for both those destined to receive a pink slip and those who will remain.

That uncertainty often leads to an often-overlooked phenomenon, said Cascio. "There's empirical research that has shown that a year after layoffs, the unanticipated turnover rate goes up," he said, explaining that, in such situations, many people who are spared the hatchet take the initiative and leave on their own for other jobs. "The larger the layoff, the more that rate goes up."

If a company normally has an annual turnover rate of 10%, it should expect a jump to 15% during the 12 months following a layoff, Cascio said.

Asked whether companies take that into account when they plan layoffs, Cascio said, "I don't even think they know about this."

Cascio acknowledged that in some instances a long layoff stretch can't be avoided. "Microsoft may not know how many to let go," he said. Other factors, including regulations in foreign countries where a company operates, can come into play as well.

He characterized the Microsoft layoff, which aimed to cut 14% of the company's workforce, as "large." Nationally, the average size of a layoff 10% to 11% of a company's workforce; anything over 20% is considered an "extreme" downsizing, Cascio said.

"People wonder what's going to happen, but they don't know," said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research and head of U.S. business for Kantar WorldPanel Comtech. "Am I invested in the company or not? Is the company invested in me or not? There's a need for more clarity about what will happen."

"It's important that companies reduce the uncertainty, not only for the people laid off, but for those who remain," said Cascio. "Those who are staying will be looking for signals on how those laid off are treated."

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Microsoft finally gets a clue: Boot to desktop as default in Windows 8.1 update

According to leaked screenshots and secret sources, Microsoft will scrap ‘Metro’ and roll boot-to-desktop as the default in the Windows 8.1 update coming in March.

If you hated the Live Tiles presented as the default on the Windows 8.x Start screen, then Microsoft allowed users to tweak the setting in Windows 8.1 to bypass the "Metro" interface at boot and instead boot to desktop. But boot-to-desktop will be the default, according to leaks from Microsoft insiders and screenshots of the upcoming Windows 8.1 update. Rumor has it that the update will roll out on Patch Tuesday in March.

The Russian site Wzor first posted leaked Windows 8.1 test build screenshots showing the change enabled by default.

Leaked Windows 8.1 test build, no more Metro Start screen, boot to desktop as default
Then Microsoft insiders, or "sources familiar with Microsoft's plans," told The Verge that Microsoft hopes to appease desktop users by bypassing the Start screen by default, meaning users will automatically boot straight to desktop. "Additional changes include shutdown and search buttons on the Start Screen, the ability to pin Windows 8-style ("Metro") apps on the desktop task bar, and a new bar at the top of Metro apps to allow users to minimize, close, and snap apps."

Of course, Microsoft continues to lose millions upon millions of customers to iOS and Android. That desperation is likely what drove Microsoft to force a touch-centric operating system on customers. If customers can't easily use a Windows OS on a traditional desktop, then Microsoft hoped its "make-them-eat-Metro" strategy would force people to buy its tablet to deal with the touch-based OS. For Microsoft, it was like killing two birds with one stone. But despite the company's "One Microsoft" vision, we're not birds and we don't like having stones thrown our way.

Microsoft claimed that telemetry data justified the removal of the Start button in Windows 8, and then its return in Windows 8.1. That same telemetry data shows "the majority of Windows 8 users still use a keyboard and mouse and desktop applications." The Verge added, "Microsoft may have wanted to push touch computing to the masses in Windows 8, but the reality is that users have voiced clear concerns over the interface on desktop PCs."

"Microsoft really dug a big hole for themselves," Gartner's David Smith told Gregg Keizer, referring to the Redmond giant's approach with Windows 8. "They have to dig themselves out of that hole, including making some fundamental changes to Windows 8. They need to accelerate that and come up with another path [for Windows]."

Back in December, NetMarketShare stats showed that more people were still using the hated Windows Vista than Windows 8.1. January 2014 stats showed Windows 8.1 on 3.95% of desktops with Vista on 3.3%. Despite Microsoft warning about the evils of clinging to XP, and the April death of XP support, Windows XP, however, was still on 29.23%. Many people still hate Windows 8, which may be why the company plans to jump to the next OS as soon as possible.

Microsoft plans to start building hype for "Windows 9" at the BUILD developers' conference in April. The new OS is supposedly set to come out in the second quarter of 2015. While it seems wise for the company to want to ditch the hated Windows 8.x as soon as possible, Microsoft had better to do something to encourage developers as the expected boot-to-desktop change will mean folks won't see the Metro apps on the Start screen.

Windows 8.1 update leaked screenshot of test build
According to the test build screenshot, Microsoft is urging people to "switch to a Microsoft account on this PC. Many apps and services (like the one shown for calendar) rely on a Microsoft account to sync content and settings across devices." Note that "sign into each app separately instead" is "not recommended" by Microsoft. Of course, setting up a Windows 8 computer without it being tied to a Microsoft email account was "not recommended" either...but it can be done with about any email address or set up as a local account tied to no email address. If you use SkyDrive, aka the newly dubbed "OneDrive," then why not just log in when you need it?

Trying to keep its developers "happy," may be part of the reason Microsoft does not recommend signing into your Microsoft account on an individual app basis. Sure there's still the Windows Phone Store, but some people complain that the Windows Phone Store is full of junk and fake apps. Of course, since Windows 8's dueling tablet-PC interface was a flop, perhaps Microsoft will follow Apple's lead and come up with a separate OS for tablets. That move might help out Microsoft and developers; without developers, there's no apps. Without good apps, even a new OS for tablets won't help Microsoft from continuing to decline and falling into the abyss of irrelevancy.

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Ubuntu 13.10 takes aim at Microsoft, Apple, Google

Canonical is making a serious run at the cloud, client, server and smartphone markets

Ubuntu is moving into the rarified class of operating systems that cover x86/x64 clients and servers, ARM-based tablets/smartphones, and commodity cloud instances. Meaning that it's taking on everybody from Microsoft to Red Hat to Apple and Google.

On the cloud front, Canonical’s announced compatibility with OpenStack APIs for both internal, Ubuntu-hosted or external clouds speaks to Canonical's attempts to make Ubuntu instances a default choice. (Watch a slideshow version of this story.)

On the client side, Ubuntu’s Unity GUI starts to go places where Ubuntu-derivative/associated distros like Linux Mint cannot: onto smartphones and tablets. It took pains for us to obtain a smartphone that would run Ubuntu 13.10, but the Nexus 4 we used is essentially identical in functionality to installations we put on notebooks and virtual machines.

The server version is targeting enterprise scale-out as well as scale-up implementations. Ubuntu server editions are still Debian with Canonical clothing, but thanks to attention paid to hypervisor compatibility and leadership in both the OpenStack compatibility and Amazon Web Services EC2 worlds, 13.10 Server wants to rock rapid rollout and play everywhere, with every hypervisor. That includes stacking application instances inside of itself for what Canonical calls “compactness”.

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It works, and there are aids to rolling out 13.10. But the stability of OpenStack will be a target for criticism as various vendors tilt and mangle OpenStack towards their own pursuits and goals.

Ubuntu 13.10 client

Dubbed Saucy Salamander, the 13.10 client has changed very little from the previous version, although the GUI plumbing underneath is in transition. This may be the last version of Unity that uses X.org underpinnings, as Canonical transitions to the windowing/GUI system Mir and its X.org-Mir translator.

The support life for this OS is only nine months and the next version, 14.04, will be a five-year supported version that might contain the debut of XMir and Mir -- which would be somewhat radical for Canonical in an Long Term Support release.

The Ubuntu Dash dashboard has been upgraded to allow opt-out searches through the Ubuntu One cloud storage service. Queries sent when opted-in are sent to Ubuntu One, and Canonical serves as a proxy information broker among the current 50-plus third-party providers, listed here, sending the results back to the user. Call it: Answers-As-A-Service, or AaaS.

On one hand, this allows searches across numerous providers, and hopefully, the Canonical parsing engines are smart enough to pick suitable answer-providers from among the third-party supporters. This also means that as Canonical ostensibly anonymizes user information and privacy policy prevents Big Data ad engines from coming into play. This will please privacy advocates.

The other hand is that Canonical does store the query and account information associated with the search transactions by Ubuntu One accounts. This information is stored and can be the subject of a subpoena or other order, hence possibly revealing user/query information -- to the chagrin of privacy policies and mandates.

The Dash update, however, is deceptively handy. Yes, Amazon is featured prominently in searches for products. A sampling of various queries was enlightening, and OCD query searchers will become rapidly addicted to the amount and variety of results, when using the uprated Dash. It's perhaps the key secret sauce that makes this edition useful.

Inside this version are updates of the Linux kernel (3.11), Firefox (24), and when we tried to update SAMBA 4.04, it cratered the instance, even though a prior version was installed. The second time was a charm.

Ubuntu Server 13.10

Through installation, we saw no real server changes on the surface. We could choose to install Open SSH, DNS, LAMP, Mail, Print, SAMBA, Tomcat, and/or virtual machine hosts or add a Postgre database. Or our own manual package selection from the installation menu. We tried various combinations in several instances.

Oddly, Canonical still packages MySQL as its default LAMP database, where many in the industry have gone to MariaSQL, a fork of MySQL. Perhaps it's been retained for compatibility sake -- and the fact that Oracle can be hired to make it work.

Part of the reason we like Ubuntu Server 13.10 is the ability to use Juju to spawn app instances into Linux Containers/LXC. Our problem with this is that LXC isn't due to go to production (a 1.0 version) until February of 2014. If you're adventurous, and we were, it's possible to use a Juju charm to deploy applications into containers that are similar to Oracle/Sun's original idea of a container -- with a few additions, such as a bridge with network address translation and unique IP addresses (only IPv4 for now), and other walled-instances that remind us of how SELinux and other neo-virtualization systems can place significant walls around app instances within servers.

The LXC components start with a shared bridge, and several other adaptations that define kernel name space, and kernel addressing -- but not those found in full bare-metal hypervisors, rather, the kind championed by Parallels in their Virtuozzo kernel-sharing scheme. Instances aren't necessarily unique, and they're not as simple as chroot, which redefines user space for partitioning an application.

Prior to 13.10, Juju's behavior was to dutifully launch applications into their own instance, which was fast, but wasn't very efficient, and made a lot of revenue for cloud providers, as they often charge by the instance. It's possible, using the pre-production LXC method, to launch apps into their own containers, and provision the containers on the fly with comparatively simple commands. But this is alpha code, and is still experimental in nature, rather than more mature products whose rules and qualities are comparatively well known.
Ubuntu

The LXC setup contains templates that can be used, although some are experimental. We chose to boot a simple application (a WordStar-like text editor) into an AppArmor shell. SELinux barriers and constructs are also supported. We set up an LXC bridge, provisioned it, then stuffed the application inside the container. It takes about 10 lines of code from initial start until the app is deployed, all of which can be built into a script with arguments to provision many containers simultaneously, much as the popular Puppet instance controller product provisions OS instances through a communications bus. Everything can be setup to boot at once, by dependency choice, and/or at restart time. File system mounting is easily supported, and one needs to be careful that file locks don't thwart multiple app instance access.

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7 things on Microsoft's 2014 to-do list

7 things on Microsoft's 2014 to-do list
Microsoft needs to make Nokia work, get Office on iOS, and find Ballmer's successor in 2014

2013 was a busy year for Microsoft, which announced that CEO Steve Ballmer will leave the company after 33 years, upgraded its controversial Windows 8 platform, doubled down on its Surface tablets, reveled in the success of Office 365, and successfully tweaked Windows Server. But there’s more to do in 2014.

Here’s a look at seven things Microsoft should put on its to-do list for 2014.

No. 1: Make Nokia work

Microsoft could have just strengthened its partnership with Nokia, perhaps investing heavily in the company to become a major shareholder with sway over what Nokia does. Instead it ponied up $7.2 billion to own it. In buying the company Microsoft gains total control over its hardware products – phones primarily but also tablets.

The Nokia deal falls in line with Microsoft’s aim to be a products and services company. It did a pretty good job with its Surface hardware, even when it had virtually no tablet-manufacturing experience. Nokia is already credited with making good phones, but they’re saddled with the Windows Phone operating system, which has yet to capture the imagination of buyers like Android phones and the iPhone have.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD A complete list of Outlook 2014 stories +

However, measuring the success of the Nokia deal isn’t about whether its hardware can unseat these more popular devices. Worldwide there are vast markets for low-end phones in markets where cell service is still taking hold and where Windows Phone can make headway, says IDC analyst Ramon Llamas.

Nokia makes the Asha family of low-end feature and smartphones -- three of which the company claims are the top three selling phones of their kind in India, the Middle East and Africa, which are considered undeveloped markets that hold vast potential for new sales. Nokia announced three new Asha smartphones this fall to sell in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East (two of them in Latin America as well) for between $69 and $99.

Windows Phone is doing well enough that it might finish the year as the No.3 phone operating system - albeit at a great distance behind Android and iOS - and beat out Blackberry, says Llamas. In the last quarter Apple sold about 34 million iPhones versus about 7 million Windows Phones, he says. “They’re not falling by the wayside, I have to give them credit,” he says.

Owning Nokia will enable faster decision making and turnaround times on innovations, he says, potentially making the phones more competitive. If Microsoft can differentiate Windows Phone from high-end competitors, it could make advances in the developed markets of North America, Japan and Europe. “Android and Apple are entrenched but not 100% locked down forevermore among users,” Llamas says.

Nokia tablets could also be a boon. Microsoft’s Surface RT tablets sold well at drastically reduced prices as the company tried to unload inventory in preparation for selling its successor, Surface 2. That’s a device without cellular connectivity. Nokia already sells a tablet based on the Windows RT operating system plus 4G wireless for $399 through a service-plus-hardware deal with AT&T. It’s also announced Lumia 2520, a Windows RT tablet with LTE for $499.

Nokia’s Lumia 1520 and lower priced 1320 phablets – smartphones with screens between five and seven inches – give Microsoft an immediate entry into the relatively new phablet market that last quarter accounted for 22% of all smartphone sales, according to IDC.

No. 2: De-Ballmer the company

With Steve Ballmer on his way out as CEO, Microsoft needs to leave him behind. The new boss must quickly state the company’s goals and set up an internal structure that can convincingly support those goals.

That’s important not only for achieving the goals, but also for convincing investors of the company’s ability to execute. Microsoft’s stock price has jumped up and down over the past month on rumors about who will be the next CEO and when that person will be announced.

Despite the company’s continued enormous profits during Ballmer’s tenure as CEO -- $5.2 billion last quarter, up 17% from the same quarter last year – critics have been calling for his replacement for years, and his successor must address some of the reasons they’ve been so vocal.

Clearly Ballmer did a lot of things right, but his missteps hurt critics’ perception of him. Ultimately a lot of complaints had to do with speed.

"Hey, dude, let's get on with it," Microsoft board member John Thompson told Ballmer earlier this year, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. "We're in suspended animation."

The conversation was about Microsoft taking measures to catch up to Apple’s and Google’s consumer products, but it was emblematic of some other notable snafus during Ballmer’s 13-year tenure as CEO. Microsoft participates and is expected to lead in markets ranging from enterprise software and services, to consumer software and services, to games, to tablets, to phones, to search. Its competitors are well heeled giants focused on fewer products on which they bring to bear enormous amounts of cash and expertise.

But under Ballmer, Microsoft missed the main wave of the mobile revolution in both tablets and phones, offering products in both areas that just didn’t capture customers and have gone through iteration after iteration trying to catch up. And as Ballmer himself says, his biggest failure under his leadership was Windows Vista, which he says in a Fortune article took too long – eight years – to get right with the shipment of Windows 7.

Ballmer took steps to address this lack of agility earlier this year with a corporate reorganization and management overhaul that has been playing out over the intervening months. Those changes have to be endorsed and taken on by his replacement or rejected and reworked if the company hopes to move more quickly in such a variety of realms.

The new boss also needs to make sure that when products do launch, that they’re ready. Under Ballmer, Windows 8 was an ambitious change from Windows 7 that would have taken some getting used to no matter what because of intentional differences from its popular predecessor. But only 10 months later with the release of Windows 8.1 did Microsoft address problems that should have been resolved at launch.

Microsoft entered the computer hardware market with its laptop/tablet Surface line but wound up writing down $900 million in Surface RT losses, something the company can afford financially but that hurt its reputation in a market it wants to dominate. Its Surface RT (now Surface 2) looks like an attempt to better Apple’s iPad by adding Microsoft Office to a tablet. It’s solid hardware but is doing poorly because of price, and a dearth of apps that customers actually want.

These are part of Ballmer’s legacy, and the stigma should leave when he does. His replacement needs to make clear that nothing Ballmer left behind is sacred.

No. 3: Build on the success of Office 365

Microsoft successfully bet that customers would rather buy Office as a service that is available from multiple machines – including phones - and is constantly updated than to buy it as software they have to install and upgrade as they go along. It comes along with cloud storage, too.

Office 365 scored 1 million users back in May. That doubled by the end of October, a strong start and an important part of transitioning users from software buys to continuing services. At $100 per year for Office 365 Home Premium, that’s already a significant revenue stream that seems to be soaring. It helps validate the company’s definition of itself as a services and devices operation.

No. 4: Make Office available for iOS

Businesses are dealing with Apple devices as part of their bring-your-own-device programs, and it’s time Microsoft acknowledged it.

Since corporate customers are not limiting their employees to using Windows-only devices, Microsoft should not freeze out those other devices from using their popular productivity suite. Popular isn’t not a guaranteed status, and there are competitive alternatives -- such as Google Apps -- that Microsoft should not ignore. It’s better to sell a product to Apple customers than it is to ignore them and drive them to buying someone else’s product.

No. 5: Chase down Amazon Web Services with enhancements to Azure

Microsoft has been chipping away at Amazon Web Services, racking up impressive numbers of new customers and producing a constant beat of new features for its own cloud service. This includes multi-factor authentication for services, adding big-data analytics based on Hadoop, auto-backup to Azure, and creating a public cloud for government (planned).

No. 6: Get more Windows 8 apps

The Windows Store boasts more than 135,000 applications, but no single one of them nor even a collection of them is compelling enough to cause customers so choose Windows 8 in order to use the apps.

Microsoft needs such apps and needs them soon. Think the next Angry Birds.

Without an A-list of apps, customers will seek other platforms that have what they want without giving Window 8 much consideration despite its other merits.

The company has been luring apps and game developers for more than a year to create apps and games for Windows 8, offering deals on tools and attractive splits of revenue when their products are sold through the Windows Store. It’s even given away Windows 8 laptops and tablets to attendees at its developer conference.

It has also partnered with third parties for Windows 8 versions of popular games. One example is Disney, which in some cases has released Windows 8 versions of its games before releasing them for Android -- a step toward making Windows 8 relevant.

Its efforts seem to be working. In August, user-interface developer Infragistics came up with the 100 must-have apps that are available for iOS and found that just 54 of them were available for Windows 8. The 100 were a smattering of social-site apps such as Google+, services such as HBO GO and PayPal, and resource sites like IMDB. Now, though, 72 of those apps are available for Windows 8.

Coming up with the next Angry Birds requires inspiration and innovation in a way that can’t be plotted out, but Windows 8 needs that kind of lightning to strike.

Beyond that Microsoft needs compelling business apps to be written for Windows 8, taking advantage of its touch-friendliness. Expanding the usefulness of Windows 8 by making workers more productive when they use it will make it more attractive.

No. 7: Promote Windows 8.1 for business

It may already be too late, but as Windows XP fades into end of support this April, Microsoft needs to do all it can to push those XP diehards into buying Windows 8 machines as a replacement.

Figures indicate that Windows 7 is gaining in popularity while Windows 8 is dipping, according to NetMarketshare statistics.

One remedy for this could be pushing Windows 8 into large businesses, which would not only boost sales but also promote consumer popularity by forcing workers to become familiar with the operating system.

But adopting Windows 8 wholesale into enterprises is a longshot given that the touch aspects that make Windows 8 superior in some cases to Windows 7 aren’t needed to do many corporate jobs. Those that lend themselves to touch, such as mobile workers and sales staff, could transition to Windows 8 while others remain on Windows 7, but that’s a long process. It could result in businesses hanging on to Windows 7 until Microsoft irons out the kinks, much as they did by hanging onto Windows XP, skipping Vista, and ultimately adopting Windows 7.

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Balky browsers tick off tablet owners

Crashes are the top complaint from iPad Air, Fire HDX owners, No. 2 annoyance on iPad Mini, says Fixya

Browser problems are the most common complaints of iPad Air and Fire HDX tablet owners, an online community of troubleshooters said Friday.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Fixya mined 10,000 user-generated reports related to Apple's iPad Air and Retina-equipped iPad Mini, Amazon's Fire HDX and Microsoft's Surface 2, the second-generation tablet that replaced the poorly-received Surface RT of 2012, to come up with its conclusions.

Browser gripes topped the charts of the iPad Air and the 8.9-in. Fire HDX, said Fixya, while the surfing app tied for second on the iPad Mini's top-five-beef list.

Nearly a third -- 30% -- of the reported problems with the Air and 25% of those with the Fire stemmed from the tablets' bundled browsers, Safari and Silk, respectively. On the Retina iPad Mini, 20% of complaints targeted Safari, the same percentage as aimed ire at the paucity of storage space on the least expensive model.

"A relatively common issue with mobile Apple devices, especially those using Safari -- the browser that comes pre-packaged with the device -- is a crashing browser," said Fixya. "Users report that opening certain Web pages (most likely those that use [Adobe's] Flash [Player]) and opening multiple tabs on the browser can cause the browser to crash and kicks users onto the home [screen]."

Famously, Apple has never supported Flash Player on iOS, the mobile operating system that drives the iPad. Before his death, co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs was adamant about banning Flash, going as far as to publicly trash the media software in a 2010 diatribe.

But Safari on iOS is not supposed to crash when it encounters a website that calls on the Adobe software.

Fire HDX owners pummeled Silk with similar laments. "Silk ... has a variety of issues, most notably choppy performance and tendency to crash," Fixya noted.

Only the Surface 2 escaped owners' disgust with their device's mobile browser. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is bundled with Windows RT 8.1, the OS that powers the tablet.

Instead, Microsoft customers tapped a shortage of quality apps as their No. 1 complaint, with 25% of the reports focused on the issue. Users' gripes matched those of analysts who have cited the app issue as the platform's weakest link since long before Microsoft started selling Windows 8.

Fixya recommended that iPad and Fire HDX owners regularly clear their browser's history and delete cookies to keep Safari or Silk as stable as possible. But it had no answer for the Surface 2's app problem. "App support is an issue with the device that ... users can't fix on their own," Fixya pointed out.

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Microsoft takes off the gloves with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 II

Hyper-V V3 resources can be aggregated into clusters, and through the use of new VHDX sharable disk stores, can create islands internally -- or for cloud-hosted purposes, external clouds whose resources should be opaque to other cloud components. We were not able to successfully find constructs to test the opaque nature of what should be isolated clouds, but rudimentary tests seemed to prove isolation. The VHDX format can also be dynamically re-sized as the need arises; we found that the process is fast, although during that period, disk and CPU resources can peak until the modification is over. Heavy CPU/disk-imposed limitations thwart resizing by slowing it.

We also tested Hyper-V and 2012R2 IPAM and Microsoft's SDN successfully under IPv4 (other limitations prevented heavy IPv6 testing). Software defined networks (SDN) cross a turf that is divided in many organizations: virtualization and network management teams. Network management staff have traditionally used IPS, routing, switching and infrastructure controls to balance traffic, hosts, even NOC hardware placement. SDN use means that what were once separate disciplines are now forced to work together to make things work inside the host server's hypervisor, where the demarcation was once where the RJ-45 connector meets the server chassis.

IPAM allowed us to define a base allocation of routeable and/or non-routeable addresses, then allocate them to VMs hosted on Hyper-V hosts or other hosts/VMs/devices on our test network. We could in turn, allocate virtual switches, public private or internal, connected with static/blocked and sticky DHCP. Inter-fabric VM movements still require a bit of homework, we found. Using one IPAM is recommended.

[ALSO: Windows 8.1 cheat sheet]

What we like is that the SDN primitives and IPAM can work well together, with well-implemented planning steps. We could create clouds easily, and keep track of address relationships. A Microsoft representative mused over the spreadsheets that carry IP relationship management information in many organizations, calling it crazy. We would agree, and believe that hypervisor or host-based IPAM is a great idea. If only DNS were mixed in more thoroughly -- and it's not -- we'd be complete converts to the concept. We found it very convenient nonetheless, although errors were more difficult to find when they occurred, such as address pool depletions. Uniting networking and virtualization/host management disciplines isn't going to be easy.
The Bad News

We found head-scratchers and limitations. We found several initial foibles installing the operating system on bare metal to what should be generic hardware. We were able to overcome them, but warn installers that they'll need to consider that Windows 2012 and especially R2 might require updated server BIOS firmware to UEFI-compatible, as happened with our Lenovo ThinkServer and HP DL 380 Gen8 servers. When Windows 2012 R2 can't install (R2 or Hyper-V V3-R2), we received an inarticulate flash of an error message. We actually took a video of it to capture that there was a problem with ACPI -- and not UEFI. The turf between platform providers and OS/hypervisor makers is still real and strong, but Microsoft isn't alone, as we've incurred driver/platform mysticism with VMware and Oracle, too.

We found the Hyper-V role cannot be re-instantiated. This means that no hypervisor on top of a hypervisor. Microsoft claims that there has been no customer demand for this, but it also imposes a limitation. Although running a hypervisor atop a hypervisor seems silly, there are cases where it's useful. One role often cited is in production test labs, and another where Microsoft's SDN is used -- Hyper-V V3 must always be the base layer talking to the metal and silicon of a server, precluding other schemes direct access to the metal and therefore impeding other SDN schemes.

The Azure Pack uses the same Hyper-V infrastructure as Windows Server 2012 R2. Microsoft offers a sample of what other third party providers may offer in the form of services and ready-to-deploy pre-built appliances. We were reminded of what TurnKeyLinux started several years ago, in terms of usable appliances built from Linux substrates. There isn't a huge variety of appliance samples available, but what we tested, worked -- full WordPress websites that were ready for skins and customizations.

A Service Bus, actually message bus, connects components in the clouds serviced by the Azure Pack and Hyper-V. The Service Bus connects Microsoft-specific API sets, after a framework “namespace” is created. Communications can be subscribed and published to the framework and its members in the namespace talk via REST, Advanced Message Queueing Protocol/AMQP, and Windows instrumentation APIs. The Service Bus reminds us of products like Puppet, Chef, and others in the Linux world, communicating in a stack-like framework for rapid deployment and ease of VM and infrastructure fleet management.
Windows 8.1

Where Windows 8.1 is upgraded on Windows 7 or Windows 8 platforms, the upgrade was fast and made no mistakes. Windows XP can be run atop Hyper-V or in a Type 2 hypervisor application, but we didn't test this, as we've retired Windows XP completely and we hope that readers have, too. Like Windows 8.0, 8.1 can use the latest version of Hyper-V V3 as a foundation, so that other OS versions can be used on the same host hardware, with resource limitations to guests or 8.1, SDN, IPAM, and other Hyper-V features.

The Windows 8.1 UI is initially identical to Windows 8.0, but with the addition of a desktop icon that can be touched/chosen to be optionally or subsequently a resident resource more familiar to XP and Windows 7 users. We found it's also possible to boot directly to an Apps screen that allows apps to be easily chosen, although not with the same vendor topical drop-boxes that Win XP and Windows 7 might be used to. If there are many applications, the screen must be scrolled. Windows XP/7 users who have accumulated many dozens of applications might be scrolling frequently as long lists of applications can fill many screens.

We found more UI customization choices, and discovered we could make very busy combinations of Live Tiles. It's possible to insert RSS feeds into tiles where supported, allowing what we feel is an addicting amount of information available within just a handful of tiles, and the appeal of moving tiles combinations on tablets to suit differing use situations. Apps that use “traditional” windows are easier to manage, and users can now move multiple windows adjacent to each other (especially handy on multiple monitors) without having snap behavior crater their placement choices, as occurred in 8.0 and even Windows 7 editions.

Desktop/notebook users have now taken second seat to tablets in this upgrade, and some of the hoped for bridges to Windows 7-ish look-and-feel are missing as we found the 8.1 changes more easily demonstrated on tablets. However, mouse or touch sweeps are more customizable, although consistencies can be imposed in Group Policy. If you're looking for the familiar Start button, you'll still need to garner it from a third party app provider. Microsoft, like Apple and Google, would really prefer that you obtain Start Buttons and other third party applications from Microsoft's online store, which is far more filled with new, familiar, and diverse applications than when Windows 8.0 was released. You can still install from “unauthorized” sources if preferred or forbid that if you're draconian or simply worried about security.

Recent changes to 8.1 in terms of speed weren't dramatic, in our subjective analysis. Windows 8.1 uses Server Message Block V3/SMB3 features when connecting to Windows 2012+ network resources that allow several features, including SMB Encryption, SMB traffic aggregation for speed, and TPC “signing” for ostensibly trustable, ostensibly non-repudiating host and client relationships. We say ostensibly, as we're unsure of a comprehensive methodology to test these, and therefore, have not.
Overall

Microsoft has been very busy. Windows Server 2012 R2, while a strong operating system update, is perhaps more about Hyper-V V3 and Azure Pack, and represents a trend towards platform strengthening on Microsoft's part as platform flexibility starts to replace the operating system as the functional least common denominator for applications infrastructure. Towards these ends, Hyper-V now controls more of the network than the operating system, more of the storage connectivity and options then the operating system, and more of the application availability and administrative control nexus than ever before.

For its part, Windows 8.1 is now the client-side of the experiences rendered by web access, and client/cloud-based services, which become increasingly location-irrelevant where persistent connectivity is available. The Windows 8.1 release comes in fewer forms than Window 8.0, which comes in fewer forms than Windows 7. The shrinking forms betrays that the versions must now be synchronized across a wide variety of platforms, from traditional desktops and notebooks, to tablets, phones, and VDI/Desktop-as-a-Service platforms. More attention to this variety of user device in Windows 8.1 also includes attention paid to criticisms of the seemingly lurching change from former Windows UIs to the tiled interface of Windows 8.

Windows as a client is no longer like the old leaky Windows, but it's approachable in a more familiar way. Whether the 8.1 client changes can re-enamor disaffected users, and roll with new competitive punches, remains to be seen.
How We Tested Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1

For Windows Server 2012 R2, we tested the RTM version downloaded from the MSDN website. We deployed and tested the DataCenter version on both bare metal servers from HP (DL580G5, 16core, iSCSI, Dell (Compellent iSCSI SAN and older Dell servers), and Lenovo (ThinkServer 580 with 16 cores, 32GB) and various hypervisors. Windows 2012 R2 installed basic operations successfully atop VMware vSphere 5.1 and 5.5, Oracle VirtualBox 4.2, aforementioned Hyper-V V3, and Citrix XenServer 6.2, and we found much flexibility and a few servers that needed the aforementioned firmware upgrades for Hyper-V or 2012 R2.

Windows 8.1 was tested on a Microsoft Surface Pro, Lenovo T530 notebooks, and as virtual machines, upgrading from Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.0 Enterprise versions, as well as fresh installs on UEFI the T530 notebooks hardware.

Testing was performed between the Lab (Gigabit Ethernet switched infrastructure) connected via Xfinity Broadband to our NOC at Expedient/nFrame in Indianapolis (Gigabit Ethernet switched infrastructure with 10GB links on Extreme Switches, connected via a GBE backbone to core routers, Compellent iSCSI SAN, with numerous hosts running VMware, XenServer, BSD, various flavors of Linux, Solaris, in turn connected to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure Cloud).

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Microsoft working out kinks in Outlook.com's IMAP implementation

The company rolled out IMAP support for the webmail service on Thursday

Getting Outlook.com to work with email client applications via IMAP is proving to be a challenge for some users of the Microsoft webmail service.

A variety of problems have been reported through comments in the blog post Microsoft published Thursday announcing the new IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) support in Outlook.com.

To their credit, Microsoft officials are clearly monitoring the feedback very closely, as evidenced by their frequent replies to the comments being posted.

"We've seen a handful of reports of users running into the error 9 so we're looking into this with high priority," wrote Ben Poon, an Outlook.com program manager with Microsoft, referring to a server timeout error some users are experiencing.

Another common complaint is that messages deleted using IMAP-compliant client applications remain on the Outlook.com Web interface.

The thread of comments, which is now nearing 80, also goes into questions and recommendations about specific configurations under certain scenarios and for particular OSes and email applications.

Matthew Cain, a Gartner analyst, said that scaling up IMAP support, particularly given the various ways IMAP can be interpreted by developers, can be difficult.

"Thorough testing at scale, and testing of all major permutations, is a requirement before any go-live action," Cain said via email.

Microsoft declined to comment on the issues.

In its announcement Thursday, the company said that support for the IMAP email retrieval technology would expand the scope of client software and devices that can interact with Outlook.com.

"With today's announcement, we now have a richer email experience across devices and apps, including those not using EAS (Exchange ActiveSync), such as Mac Mail and Thunderbird on a Mac," wrote Microsoft official Steve Kafka in the blog post.

Outlook.com already worked with EAS, which allows it to be used with devices running the Windows Phone, iOS and Android mobile operating systems, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft was prompted to add IMAP support based on feedback from Outlook.com users who let the company know "loud and clear that this was important," Kafka wrote.

The addition of IMAP also opens the door for third-party developers to create applications for Outlook.com or integrate existing applications with it.

Microsoft detailed in its blog post how several developers have already linked their applications and Web services with Outlook.com using IMAP.

One of them is TripIt, which can now detect emails with travel confirmations in Outlook.com inboxes and import them into a TripIt itinerary.

Outlook.com, first unveiled in mid-2012, has replaced Hotmail as the company's webmail service. Microsoft describes Outlook.com as a total reinvention of webmail, from the user interface to the back-end platform. With Outlook.com, Microsoft expects to have a stronger competitor to Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

However, Outlook.com has been hampered by occasional technical problems, including an incident last month in which the product malfunctioned in various ways for several days, as well as a prolonged outage in March.

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How Microsoft can fix the Surface tablet the second time around

Microsoft insists on selling us its Surface laptop/tablet hybrid, but it needs to take user preference into account.

With the announcement of the second version of Microsoft’s Surface tablet coming up later this month in New York City, this might be a good time to ask a pertinent question: What’s really important in a hybrid tablet?

Hybrid devices like the Surface and Surface Pro, the HP Split 13 x2, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11s, along with many others, fall somewhere between a classic iPad-style tablet and an Ultrabook-style laptop like the Macbook Air or Sony Vaio T Series. They are designed to work as both standalone tablets and keyboard-equipped laptops. The idea is that one device can take the place of both, saving money and the hassle of carrying and switching between multiple devices.

The Problem With Hybrids
It’s a nice theory, but the devices haven’t really caught on yet, and I’m pretty sure I know why.

The problem, as I see it, is that most of these hybrid devices are trying to too hard to do it all, and that’s pretty hard to pull off. Hybrid makers would do better to concentrate on one aspect of the device, and then make the other capability a nice add-on for extra functionality.

But here’s the kicker: The laptop, not the tablet, needs to be the core of this combo.

I’ve used many of these devices, including the Surface and Surface Pro and the HP Envy x2, as well as touchscreen "laptops" like Google's Pixel Chromebook. They’re all interesting devices, but none of them is perfect. Working through each one’s compromises, though, made it abundantly clear that for the device to have a chance of replacing a separate laptop and tablet, it had to ace the laptop portion of the test.

A hybrid with a strong laptop function that also works as a mediocre tablet could still find a home in many business users’ kits. After all, having a second-rate tablet at hand is often better than not having a tablet at all.

But if the device can’t cut it as a laptop, all bets are off. What good is a hybrid laptop/tablet if you still have to lug along your laptop to do your real work?

A Tale of Two Surfaces
The differences between the two existing Surface models make the point obvious. The Surface is lighter and enjoys longer battery life than the Surface Pro, but its Quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip is underpowered for a laptop. Worse, relying on Windows RT means it may not run all the Windows programs a laptop would. It simply won’t replace a laptop for anyone who really needs one.

The Surface Pro, while bigger, heavier, more power-hungry and much more expensive, sports an Intel Core i5 chip like those in many traditional laptops. If you can live with its relatively small screen and those snap-on keyboards (I could), then it might actually be able to replace a standard laptop for you. And it’s still usable as tablet. Sort of, anyway.

And that’s what these hybrids are all about: Replacing what you absolutely need to have, and doing a good-enough job at the add-ons that would be nice to have. Or, that’s at least what they should be doing. Let’s hope the upcoming Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro do a decent job.

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Memo from Steve Ballmer to Microsoft Employees: Let's go!

Memo from Steve Ballmer to Microsoft Employees: Let's go!
Microsoft high priority: enterprise information assurance

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today announced a reorganization of the company around four areas: operating systems; devices and studios; applications and services; and cloud and enterprise.

He says in a memo to all Microsoft Employees that the reshuffling will give priority to corporate custom

The sweeping changes will be phased in over the rest of 2013, keeping existing teams that are in charge of Windows 8.1, Xbox One, Windows Phone and other top-priority products firing on all cylinders until a smooth transition can be made, he says.

After the reorganization teams that span groups will be in charge of key technologies and services with each team headed by a champion who reports directly to Ballmer or to someone else who reports directly to Ballmer.

“We will also have outgrowths on those major initiatives that may involve only a single product group,” he says. “Certainly, succeeding with mobile devices, Windows, Office 365 and Azure will be foundational. Xbox and Bing will also be key future contributors to financial success.”

Here’s the full note Ballmer sent to employees to describe the reorganization:

From: Steve Ballmer

To: Microsoft - All Employees

Date: July 11, 2013, 6 a.m.

Subject: One Microsoft

Today, we are announcing a far-reaching realignment of the company that will enable us to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast changing world.

Today’s announcement will enable us to execute even better on our strategy to deliver a family of devices and services that best empower people for the activities they value most and the enterprise extensions and services that are most valuable to business.

This company has always had a big vision — to help people realize their full potential. In the earliest days, it was by putting a PC on every desk and in every home. We’ve come farther than we could have imagined. The impact we have collectively made on the world is undeniable, and I am inspired when talented new hires say they chose Microsoft because they want to change the world — that’s what we do today, and that’s what we’ll do tomorrow.

Sharpening Our Strategy
About a year ago, we embarked on a new strategy to realize our vision, opening the devices and services chapter for Microsoft. We made important strides — launching Windows 8 and Surface, moving to continuous product cycles, bringing a consistent user interface to PCs, tablets, phones
and Xbox — but we have much more to do.

Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.

We will do this by leveraging our strengths. We have powered devices for many years through Windows PCs and Xbox. We have delivered high-value experiences through Office and other apps. And, we have enabled enterprise value through products like Windows Server and Exchange. The form of delivery shifts to a broader set of devices and services versus packaged software. The frontier of high-value scenarios we enable will march outward, but we have strengths and proven capabilities on which we will draw.

This memo shows you how far we have developed our thinking on our strategy for high- value activities based on devices and services delivery.

Driving Our Success
It is also clear to me and our leadership that we must do an extraordinary job to succeed in this modern world. We have delivered many great products and had much success in market, but we all want more. That means better execution from product conceptualization and innovation right through to marketing and sales. It also means operational excellence in cloud services, datacenter operations, and manufacturing and supply chain that are essential in a devices and services world. To advance our strategy and execute more quickly, more efficiently, and with greater excellence we need to transform how we organize, how we plan and how we work.

Improving our performance has three big dimensions: focusing the whole company on a single strategy, improving our capability in all disciplines and engineering/technology areas, and working together with more collaboration and agility around our common goals.

This is a big undertaking. It touches nearly every piece of what we do and how we work. It changes our org structure, the way we collaborate, how we allocate resources, how we best empower our engineers and how we market.

One Strategy, One Microsoft
We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company — not a collection of divisional strategies. Although we will deliver multiple devices and services to execute and monetize the strategy, the single core strategy will drive us to set shared goals for everything we do. We will see our product line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders. All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers.

We will reshape how we interact with our customers, developers and key innovation partners, delivering a more coherent message and family of product offerings. The evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution. Our marketing, advertising and all our customer interaction will be designed to reflect one company with integrated approaches to our consumer and business marketplaces.

How we organize our engineering efforts will also change to reflect this strategy. We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capability — and be most efficient in development and operations — with the greatest coherence to all our key customers. We will plan across the company, so we can better deliver compelling integrated devices and services for the high-value experiences and core technologies around which we organize. This new planning approach will look at both the short-term deliverables and long-term initiatives needed to meet the shipment cadences of both Microsoft and third-party devices and our services.

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Microsoft opens new competitive fronts with cloud-based Windows Server

Amazon, VMware and even Microsoft partners threatened by Windows Azure move

Microsoft doesn't want to admit it, but a Gartner analyst says the vendor's decision to offer Windows Server instances in the Azure cloud is opening a new competitive front against partner hosting companies.

Before 2010 is over, Microsoft will update Windows Azure with the ability to run Windows Server 2008 R2 instances in the Microsoft cloud service. The move could blur the lines between platform-as-a-service (PaaS) clouds like Azure, which provide abstracted tools to application developers, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds such as Amazon's EC2, which provide raw access to compute and storage capacity.

Microsoft Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 on collision course

This move also improves Microsoft's competitive stance against VMware, which is teaming with hosting companies to offer PaaS developer tools and VMware-based infrastructure clouds.

But the cloud-based Windows Server instances open up a new competitive front against Rackspace and other Web hosters who are Microsoft partners, according to Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald.

Microsoft has, to some extent, downplayed the new capabilities, saying the cloud-based Windows Server – which goes under the name Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role – is primarily an on-ramp to port some applications to the Azure cloud.

"What they really want is people using Azure," MacDonald says. At the same time, VM Role "is a form of infrastructure-as-a-service," he continues. "The reason Microsoft is being so vague is they really don't want to upset their ecosystem partners, all the hosters out there in the world making good money hosting Windows workloads. Microsoft doesn't really want to emphasize that it is competing against them."

Whereas IaaS clouds provide access to raw compute power, in the form of virtual machines, and storage that is consumed by those VMs, PaaS clouds provide what could be described as a layer of middleware on top of the infrastructure layer. Developers using PaaS are given abstracted tools to build applications without having to manage the underlying infrastructure, but have less control over the basic computing and storage resources. With Azure, developers can use programming languages .Net, PHP, Ruby, Python or Java, and the development tools Visual Studio and Eclipse.

Microsoft officials have previously predicted that the lines between PaaS and IaaS clouds will blur over time, but stress that Windows Azure will remain a developer platform.

In response to MacDonald's comment, Windows Azure general manager Doug Hauger says "our partners provide a vast range of services to customers for hosting an infrastructure-as-a-service [cloud]. The VM Role does not compete with them in this space."

For what it's worth, Rackspace does view Microsoft as a cloud competitor. "The cloud market is going to be huge and there are many ways to win in it," Rackspace President Lew Moorman says. "Microsoft is serious about the market and we view them as an emerging competitor as well as partner. We are confident that our service difference will resonate to a large part of the market regardless of the technical offers that emerge from players such as Microsoft."

In an interview this week, Hauger discussed both the similarities and differences between Microsoft's cloud-based Windows Server instances and the virtual machine hosting provided by Amazon and other IaaS vendors.

"I think there is an incredibly broad, gray line between infrastructure-as-a-service pure-play and platform-as-a-service," Hauger says.

Ultimately, the marketplace will only care about the technical capabilities of cloud services, not the taxonomies used to define them, Hauger continues. With VM Role, Azure customers will have to manage and patch their own guest operating system. This is clearly different from pure PaaS, in which developers write to endpoints and services through an API, and are "abstracted from even worrying about the operating system," Hauger says.

But VM Role, when it becomes available later in 2010, will still have some of the developer tools and other benefits of PaaS, so "it's not the ground floor of infrastructure-as-a-service," Hauger says. "You're taking the elevator up a little bit."

Even though Microsoft is offering VM hosting, that does not mean customers will be able to create custom compute and storage configurations, as they might with an IaaS provider like Rackspace, Hauger says.

Custom storage configurations are "something we absolutely do not offer with the Windows Azure platform, because we've made an architectural decision to have a uniform storage pool."

On the other hand, Azure customers don't have to worry about writing multi-tenancy capabilities into their applications. Hauger argues that building applications that are resilient, scalable and automated is, while not impossible in an IaaS cloud, quite difficult when "you're staring down the throat of a VM and you have to manage that yourself."

Even with VM Role, and a Server Application Virtualization option that will let developers transfer application images to Azure, Hauger does not recommend that customers "forklift a big, monolithic application from on-premise and move it over to Windows Azure."

VM Role could be used to move some "lightweight" HPC applications to the Azure cloud, Hauger says. If a customer needs large-scale data analysis, but only for a short amount of time, it makes sense to move that app to Azure temporarily and then take it back in-house, he says. Some customers are finding that purely Web-based applications, like Facebook games, also make sense for Azure, he says.

Microsoft officials are willing to admit that Azure's capabilities are not limitless.

For example, Microsoft CTO Barry Briggs says his own team used Azure last year to build a charity auction application, but kept credit card processing on-premise "because PCI compliance is a big deal."

"There are some things that will probably stay on-premise for a while and I suspect PCI compliance will be there, because customers want to take some time to understand what the capabilities and potentials of the [cloud] technology really are," Briggs says.

Although Microsoft is expanding Azure by offering VM hosting, it's important to note that the offer applies only to Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft clearly wouldn't offer Linux VMs and offering older versions of Windows Server would not fit the Microsoft strategy, either, MacDonald says.

Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, meanwhile, offers Windows Server 2003 and 2008, eight versions of Linux and OpenSolaris.

Although Amazon does offer a billing service, load balancing, databases and a variety of other tools designed for developers, Amazon has not made any significant moves into PaaS, MacDonald says. Amazon says its approach prevents customers from "being locked into a particular programming model, language or operating system."

But Microsoft's Windows Server hosting does put the two companies into more direct competition, MacDonald says.

Perhaps most crucially for Microsoft, the VM Role service gives CEO Steve Ballmer and his cloud team a more viable way of competing against VMware, which has partnerships designed to provide both PaaS offerings and the VM hosting capabilities needed to move applications to the cloud.

"The customers need to have an easier on-ramp to cloud computing, and Microsoft wasn't providing that and their biggest competitor was," MacDonald says. "This was a gap they had to fill and I'm glad to see they've done it. I'd say it's two years late. It doesn't mean they're too late, but they should have done this from day one."

As for the Web hosters who now find themselves in competition against Microsoft, MacDonald says they will simply "have to evolve."

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Google to Microsoft on Windows Phone 8 YouTube app blocking ads: Cease and desist

Mud slinging round one million: Google CEO Larry Page warned against companies being "negative," before claiming Microsoft is "milking" Google. Microsoft zinged back about the cease and desist letter Google sent.


Last week, Microsoft incorporated Google Talk into Outlook and SkyDrive to allow users "to chat with friends stuck on Gmail." Then Google CEO Larry Page criticized Microsoft for "taking advantage" of "interoperating" with Google, "but not doing the reverse." That's "really sad," Page said at I/O, "And that's not the way to make progress. You need to actually have interoperation, not just people milking off one company for their own benefit."

YouTubeIn return, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw stated, "It's ironic that Larry is lending his voice to the discussion of interoperability considering his company's decision -- today -- to file a cease and desist order to remove the YouTube app from Windows Phone, let alone the recent decision to make it more difficult for our customers to connect their Gmail accounts to their Windows experience."Cease and desist

Google claimed that Microsoft violated Google's Terms of Service with the YouTube app. The Verge got its hands on a copy of that cease and desist letter that Google sent Microsoft. It demands that Microsoft "immediately withdraw this application from the Windows Phone Store and disable existing downloads of the application by Wednesday, May 22, 2013." Google's real gripe stems from the fact that Microsoft's YouTube app has "features that specifically prevent ads from playing."

After the cease and desist letter went public, Microsoft responded by "saying it's happy to include advertising." However, ZDNet speculated that the Windows Phone 8 YouTube app might have been part of Microsoft's Scroogled campaign.

You wouldn't know all this background cease and desist drama from what Page said at I/O.

Every story I read about Google gives off a notion of "us versus some other company" or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero-sum. There is a lot of opportunity out there.

Opportunities on "Google Island"
Gadget Lab's Mat Honan wrote about some of those far-out and freaky opportunities in a fictional piece about "Google Island." It's an interesting and trippy read. Honan talked about arriving at Google Island in a "driverless boat" to find Page's naked "Google Being" explaining "complete openness" made possible by experimenting on an island in which no pesky government's laws could get in the way with privacy.

At I/O, Page expressed an interest in setting aside a place "where people could experiment freely and examine the effects." Honan joked that the place is Google Island, where Page would claim, "As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws-or lack thereof-apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey."

Besides Google knowing everything about a user's health, "genetic blueprint" and even "the chemical composition of your sweat," Honan's fictional Page claimed that Google has "looked at everything you've looked at online. Everything. We know what you want, and when you want it, down to the time of day. Why wait for you to request it? And in fact, why wait for you to discover that you even want to request it? We can just serve it to you."

OK, so that was fiction...but it harkens back to a time when then Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." Schmidt later added, "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions...They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Taking a page from Page, that's "really sad." Schmidt's quotes were, in part, why Leave Google Behind recommended switching to Bing. "Believe it or not, Bing's privacy policy is superior to Google's. Opt out of personalized ads."

Google is all about ad revenue and the company will never allow Microsoft to block ads on YouTube. Meanwhile, speaking of YouTube and ads, Nintendo is scanning for fan-made YouTube clips that show footage of its games, such as how to get through a level, and then "hijacks" the ad revenue. Nintendo is not blocking screencaps that feature its intellectual property; however, by using content ID match to identify game footage videos uploaded by fans, Nintendo is adding advertising "at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips."

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