The fundamental problem we as an industry face is that the consistent
pattern of MS is to adopt and expand and then break compatibility
with other folks technologies.
Actually, I don't have a problem with this competition, the problem
is when any company claims an idea as their own, when in fact it is
not theirs.
This pattern has happened again and again, and is part of the
business model of the company as well as a cultural issue within that
company.
In short MS is a community in and of itself, and very often (though
certainly not always), this community does not share or play well
with others.
AND
I think we also all recognize that this is a very old battle going
back way beyond the birth of Microsoft to the 60's and proprietary
versus non-proprietary business models.
However, as I see it they have a severe problem -- a Flat stock curve
oscillating between roughly $25 and $30 for the last 5 years. That
is indicative of a stable business model, but I think we all know
that without growth, shrinkage ;), is inevitable.
Being behind the curve consistently is what is doing them in, the
copy and adopt model doesn't work in the current business climate:
Java -> Response C#
Google -> Response MS-Search
IPod -> various MP3 players and a new format, WMA
Itunes store -> on-line music sales with DRM
Amiga -> Win 95 (windows gets multi-tasking for real (well, sorta
kinda anyway))
AIM -> MSN Messenger
and of course
Beowulf -> HPC ((outcome to be determined))
But let's look at Early MS software
CPM -> DOS (a big upgrade) ((yes, I wrote code for both))
DOS -> DOS with background tasking (printer drivers)
DOS -> Windows (a big upgrade)
PC-Write -> Word
MS-Project 1.0
Lotus -> Excel
Here we seen more genuine innovation, not simple 'mee too'. Though I
would say the Lotus to Excel is more arguable if it was a big step
forward.
Unless MS starts to really embrace innovation and not put flight
simulators into Excel, while the actual spreadsheet program will
produce erroneous results (yes, I used the version that had the
flight sim easter egg, and had to by hand check my quotes before
giving them to clients and catch simple addition errors)).
That said, we as an industry do owe Microsoft one significant debt.
The standardization of Microcomputer hardware. Up until DOS the
world was so fragmented it was impossible to launch anything in the
software, or even specialized hardware arena using economies of
scale. With the world standardizing on the PC platform with DOS
stability and real desktop productivity gains became possible. Alan
Greenspan addressed congress in 1997. Having watched the address I
was personally impressed with his statement that the US. per-capita
GDP was dramatically higher than any other nation at that time,
because the US had a PC on pretty much every worker's desk that
needed access to a PC. Microsoft brought the US that
standardization, and those productivity gains.
To the best of my recollection it went.
U.S. 1.0 (normalized)
Japan .92
Germany .87
UK same range
and it went WAY down from there.
That same low cost microcomputer is what we base our Beowulf clusters
on today, essentially a more reliable beefier version of a desktop
PC. Just as we don't want Beowulf to be overridden by 'adopt,
assimilate, and expand', we should give the credit where credit is
due that we are not using Commodore 64's, TI's, Atari's, or DEC-
Rainbows as cluster nodes.
Ross
On Apr 2, 2007, at 3:07 PM, Joe Landman wrote:
Douglas Eadline wrote:
I believe that if we do not protect against revisionist history, then
[...]
you mean like how now with WCCS2k+3 clustering and HPC is *now*
(suddenly magically spontaneously) "mainstream" ?
This is just something I personally take issue with. The entire
explosive growth of clustering has driven HPC hard into the
mainstream. This happened long before it was a glimmer in their
eyes. 6+ years of explosive growth, going from noise in the
statistics to dominating the statistics. Then along they came with
WCCS2k+3.
Their entry is late into the cycle. And if you listen to the
comments of the senior execs, it makes one wonder how committed
they are to HPC and clusters as compared to how committed they are
to battling Linux.
This is not to diminish their efforts. WCCS2k+3 is likely
reasonably good for some subset of groups. Microsoft has some good
people there, and playing with the W2k+3 x64 on our JackRabbit unit
was fun. They still need a real POSIX subsystem, and hopefully,
someday, they will give in, and get cygwin or mingw to be fully
supported/shipping using their compilers/tools.
Though I expect to see airborn and stable flight from porcine
critters about the same time. Too bad, as that would likely ease
adoption/porting issues. Tremendously.
--
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
phone: +1 734 786 8423
fax : +1 734 786 8452 or +1 866 888 3112
cell : +1 734 612 4615
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