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Oh Man, Oh Man, Oh Man…  Goodness knows what’s it like on the inside. And we all know that this is only going to get worse.

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HiFlyer, Noel Carboni

Well, we will agree to disagree. The tell is when MS did their first round of lay-offs. Wiping out their Q and A  and Hardware support teams destroyed their back end protection. They renamed the current update system ‘cloud’ while firing the very people who were overseeing it. A ‘cloud system’ by its very nature is a secure system.  The backend, is overstaffed to handle the mass demands of it client and customer base. Hey, this is basic command and control in communications 101. MS bootstrapped their ‘new cloud’ on their current update system and blew it apart. If the current CEO had an once of integrity, he would have announce a massive hiring campaign to build a separate and secure system for his ‘new cloud’.  Yes, Apple does it right. Because Jobs accepted the increase hardware and personal costs for closed systems right of the bat.  I run secure systems and it’s not cheap.  The extra personal and hardware is needed just to handle unexpected problems that come from your client and customer base every day. Every. Single. Day. This is Billion Dollar Corporation we are posting about. So why is the CEO acting like he is the boss of a cheap web startup and short changing his customer base.

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Elly

I’ve been hearing much of the same. Some of this I’m sure is just the usual griping one hears, when a new team is installed. BUT, there is something going on. Microsoft’s second wave of lay offs took out some long time heavy hitters, men and women with deep ties to Gates and his long time board members. And the failure of win 10/cloud computing is a massive black mark for the current CEO, and the board members that back him. Yes, the current CEO should win, the majority of the board has backed him so far. And yet, we have win 10 pro workstation and now the backtracking in Germany. Something is going on, I’m sure of it. I don’t know what it means.

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Elly

This is the one issue that we all are dealing with. OEMs are livid with Microsoft for badly botching this. Software developers are screaming about lack of documentation and standards. But this is a serious problem across the software side of the industry. Software Devs are not the problem, it’s the corporate culture we are seeing from these companies that is so disturbing. It is just not Microsoft alone that my IT teams have to clean up behind, this seems to be wide spread. In extreme cases, we bypass the company and deal straight with creator of the software we use. (Our in house law team hates me.) I think we are beginning to see the second and third order effects of hiring policy’s of the past decade, combined with the attitude of profit over growth. What really bother’s me is the lack of institutional memory many of these software companies have. Microsoft’s failure to successfully transfer to cloud computing simply should have not happened. There is way too much institutional knowledge there. We may have a far bigger problem than we understand.

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NetDef, AlexEiffel, Elly

I’ve been expecting something like this for while. We thought MS would run this past CCB last year. There are ‘whispers’ that despite the purge of the last 6 months there is  a fierce inside struggle that has surprised both Microsoft’s board and it’s CEO. At this moment  win 10 pro w may have more meanings than we understand.

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Elly, NetDef

(excuse me while I put my on tinfoil covered cheesehead. Got to protect myself from those evil Bears and Vikings fans….) I respect my fellow Wisconsin voters. Voting is a right, and a choice.  This may be the hardest vote many have made in their lives. I’m proud of them.  90% of winning is just showing up. In the last three months Hillary Clinton did not campaign in WI, PA, MI. Since the election many reasons from the Clinton camp for her no show in the Midwest have been floated. The fact remain, she did not come to make her case here, or in the other two states. Why? Who knows. The voters in WI took notice, as did the voters in the other two states.  People in my home state are very rational and cold blooded when voting on big state and national issues. You will find much of the same in each of the 50 states. Regardless of the outcome, I’m proud of  my fellows citizens for exercising their supreme right, under the Constitution of the United States of America.

This has building for a long time. I personally warned some of same Tech CEOs three years ago that they were playing with fire. This is what happens when you don’t know your industries history. These guys thought they could buy protection from the Obama administration in the form of campaign contributions. It’s like they don’t understand or read the Constitution or Bill of Rights of the United States of America. The United States took down Ma Bell, even thou it has been declared critical to the  National Security of the United States, and let us not forget about the Browser wars. Microsoft ended up in federal court before signing a consent decree. Death by a thousand cuts. Both Goggle and Facebook have huge assets. Too bad, the government of the United States of America assets are close to unlimited. Death by a thousand cuts, indeed.

Smith is between a rock and and very hard place. Throwing away all the outreach Bill Gates did was very stupid. But his Boss and Microsoft’s board wanted to send a message. Not sure if they understood the message they sent, was the one received.  Not sure if it really matters, events are moving  so fast now the only things these companies can so hang on and ride it out.

I hear you Noel, boy do I hear you. Serviceability is the one issue were I do not, will not  ever compromise on. As an old hardware guy  I go ballistic when I have to replace any piece of equipment.  Most mean times are nothing more than [edited] than to sell you the same hardware with a different name and shiny cover.  The real problem we face is the loss of  institutional memory thanks to the stupid and high handed HR policy’s of the second and third generation software companies. Almost every problem Microsoft faces(including the latest WSUS update mess ) is due to sloppy or in some cases, badly written software. Someone like your self, and the other PDs who comment here on Woody’s would have flayed these guys for the bad command lines alone. That kills more good hardware than any other single thing we deal with. These software companies want to change the culture,  without paying a price. Let some one else take on the burden, as long it not us. Stupid fools, the blow-back is already surfacing inside their own companies and within the greater public at large. Serves them right.

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Elly

I believe  the Surface Pro line is a perfect example of the degrading of a once great company. Hardware built to last surrounded by an outer cover that falls apart  after mild use. Built to be thrown away. A perfect metaphor for the current Microsoft. And here’s the kicker. It all can be fixed with no or little effort, both Surface Pro and the company it self.  All it takes is the will to do so, the knowledge and ability already exists inside Microsoft. Does Microsoft have the will to fix their own problems, or has the cultural rot spread too deeply already.

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Elly, BobbyB, Noel Carboni

Of course I know what raid is. It’s bug spray. I use on hornet, yellow jackets and tech sales reps all the time. Best thing ever. RAID!

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lurks about, NetDef

Right now it is the best option. There is always a balance between want and cost. You may want something, but the cost may prohibited that. That you understand that means you have beaten the single biggest factor in setting up your own business.  Most operations that fail are undone by their back room costs. They never see it till it bites them. The old joke about a 360 degree sweep goes for business too. Above all, find a good numbers guys to watch your financial back. Most start ups die because they lose control of their spending early on. People will hate you watching every penny spent, but in the long term it is the single biggest factor in the successful start up of any business, regardless of its size.

Looking back I realized I did not answer your question Jim. Sorry about that. The short answer is no. The long one is not at this moment. Lets see if I can compress this down. The main problem is Linux is still the offspring of Unix, the most dense and complex OS development to date. While software Devs have though hard work managed to bring Linux to the desktop-laptop(an amazing achievement) there is a huge gap between that, and what is needed to support in the small business environment. That support exists strictly for large enterprise or government  and government related operations. Linux is still a very new OS, and the support and supply for it is just starting up. My guess, we are looking at 20 years minimum before the support for small business, or even consumer version becomes a reality. Which makes Microsoft’s actions in the small business consumer market so shocking.

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Elly, MrJimPhelps

There is a running joke among  my IT team about me and win 10. I can’t repeat it, it’s too dirty.  For the past 6plus months I done nothing but think about replacing windows as a whole in our system. But this is far bigger than just my operation(which is very VERY big).  Most of our customers use some form of windows, everything from 2000 to 2012r2. Most do not, and would not even think of replacing their severs with win 10(what flavor of the moment). What’s driving this reluctance on their part, is the stability and support issues. Noel Carboni has pointed out in his many comments the damage Microsoft is doing with its constant replacement of win 10 OS to software development. Scale that up to a small business, or government or major corporations that use windows as a backbone and the problem become clear.  I have a lot more I like to say, but I will leave it for another time. To answer your question, we all ready have. We run a Unix OS as our backbone and  Linux with a GUI as interface. Our customer and client base is world wide, so we can not afford any shutdowns no matter the scale. Windows is very important in connecting the many different systems we engage with. My CTO is looking for a replacement, but none are up to our needs for the moment. There are a couple of OS that are unix based that are close, but both time and money are required to bring them up to stuff. That’s one decision I can’t make by myself, and I am not ready to give my boss heartburn, not just yet.(but he knows its coming.)

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Elly, AlexEiffel

I should have been clearer in my comment. By it’s self windows 10 is a good OS.  The main problem with windows 10 is what it is asked to do. Hell, windows 8.1 split into two separate OS would be an excellent system. Between the two MS could have controlled all segments of the market for the foreseeable future. This is a human failure, nothing more, nothing less. Microsoft’s failure to move into the cloud, with small business and consumers sits directly at the feet of the current CEO.(He who must not be named) The EOL issue is the giant elephant in the room. It has been painfully clear that Microsoft is rushing to have their cloud service structure in place before the EOL crunch. They’ll ask for forgiveness later on.  All of this is to convince the current CTOs and sysadmins, that MS and their engineering teams are up to the task of building a new infrastructure for one system  Or windows as a service. They failed. That’s what I mean by a Train Wreck. All the white paper BS in the world is not going to cover that basic fact up. As I have said before, this is  failure of execution at every level. Only governments do clusters this big. Which tells you how deep the current CEO and Microsoft’s board is in it. What makes this so bad for MS, is their plan, while difficult was doable.  Why? because they did it successfully with both office and windows update, and their server apps for business. That’s what make this so bad. The plan to do this with updated technology already exists. The current CEO and his team had no excuses. None what so ever. As a boss, I watch my IT team spend way too much of their time fixing and cleaning up Microsoft’s mistakes.  All of this for the sake of one man’s ego. Madness.