Ballmer admits the mistake of Vista, in 2001 I kept my mouth shut and switched to Windows Server team

Steve Ballmer had an analyst review this last week and one of the top stories covered is Ballmer discussing the mistakes made focusing on Windows Vista.

Ballmer Blames Vista for Microsoft's Smartphone Failures PC Magazine - ‎13 hours ago‎ Microsoft's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer this week admitted that Redmond was so focused on the much-maligned Windows Vista a decade ago that it missed the boat on smartphones. "If there's one thing I guess you would say I regret, I regret that there was a ...   Ballmer Blames Vista for Windows Phone's Failure DecryptedTech - ‎5 hours ago‎ So you all remember Windows Vista right? It seems that Microsoft and Steve Ballmer also remember that failed OS (despite current appearances with Windows 8). In fact Steve Ballmer is usingWindows Vista as an excuse for their late entry and poor ...   Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer blames Windows Vista for his company's ... TopNews United States - ‎2 hours ago‎ During the course of a Q&A session at Microsoft's recent meeting for financial analysts and institutional shareholders, the company's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft's excessive focus of the doomed Windows Vista OS a decade back was ...   Ballmer: Blame Vista for Our Mobile Woes NewsFactor Network - ‎3 hours ago‎ The Vista issue did take Microsoft's -- and Ballmer's -- eye off the mobile ball and focused everything on the operating system. The organizational ... "It would have been better for Windows and probably better for our success in other form factors." Timing Is ...

I have worked on Client OS from 1988 to 2001 at Apple and Microsoft.  After Windows XP in 2002 came the next version of Windows code name "Longhorn", aka Vista.  There were political battles on who would head up the developer relationships for the platform and I threw in the towel before the fight to Vic Gundotra (Director of Windows Developer Relations) who now is Sr VP of Eng at Google.

Why did I turn my back on Windows Vista in 2001?  After 10 years at Microsoft, I had learned my lessons, kept my mouth shut and just move on.  What would have I said?

Windows Longhorn will fail because management has told the OS team to innovate.  Everyone needs to be innovative. You cannot tell a whole OS team to innovate and expect it to work.  The kernel team, the graphics system, printing team are all creating new ways to do things, and a simple thing like print will not work.  This is what happened when Apple created the Pink OS (taligent) and faced the reality of Blue (System 7) was more realistic to ship.

Bill Gates is quoted as being surprised that Taligent was insignificant in the industry.

In 1997, when Bill Gates was asked what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise, his reply was:

"Kaleida and Taligent had less impact than we expected."^[5]

Windows Vista was also despite 5 years of painful development shipping in Jan 2007 insignificant in the industry.  While this was all going on I switched to Server OS team, then management tools, and left the company in 2006.  I never touched a Windows Vista release (2002 -2007) until 2008 when I got a new laptop and it ran Vista.

The mistake made by so many executives when ordering innovation is they don't understand how the pieces work together.  The team that needs to innovate works best if they know parts of the system will not change.  If you try to build a new innovative building with a ground breaking foundation, state of the art super structure, with never before used electrical and mechanical systems, and new finishing material, you would need to build the building at least 3 times to get things to work.

There is a way out of this predicament.  If you design the process to have many iterations of small changes with the teams working closely together it is possible.  But, this team should be as small as possible and as far away from executives with top down edicts.  Kind of like a SkunkWorks.  When you end up with the smaller team you can make the decisions on where the innovation needs to come from and not everyone should innovate.  

The mistake made is when you measure the success of a team based on how innovative they are, you have people taking risks they don't need to.

Windows Vista failed because the top down order was everyone needs to innovate to build the new version of Windows.

What end users and the media think is innovative is many times the result of many iterations of failure.  Windows Vista failure. Windows 7 success. Windows 8 failure.  Next OS?????

RMS Launches its First Data Center - Green with 100% renewable energy

This last week I was in Iceland at a media/analyst event sponsored by RMS, Datapipe, and Verne Global.  Honestly, I spent so much time talking to so many different people, I find it easier to reference the public disclosures than to write on my own. :-)

The #1 topic of interest to me is RMS as a customer choose its first data center to be a green one with 100% renewable with Datapipe in Verne Global's data center.

Here is the press release from the customer, RMS.  This is RMS's first data center, a green one with 100% renewable energy.

RMS Launches First Global Data Center, Taps Verne Global and Datapipe for 100 Percent Green Computing Environment

Verne Global and Datapipe deliver renewably powered high-performance computing for RMS’ revolutionary exposure and risk management environment

KEFLAVIK, Iceland – Sept. 19, 2013 – Verne Global today announced that RMS, the world’s leading catastrophe risk modeling firm, is deploying its RMS Cloud from Verne Global’s data center campus in Iceland. Powered by the RMS Cloud, RMS(one)TM, the insurance industry’s first real-time exposure and risk management environment, will empower insurers and reinsurers to execute risk modeling, underwriting and portfolio management on a single, open platform hosted in a 100 percent green environment. RMS(one) TM will leverage Datapipe’s Stratosphere® high-performance computing (HPC) green cloud platform for peak loads.

“With RMS(one) running on the RMS Cloud we are giving our customers unprecedented freedom, business agility and competitive advantage by allowing them to execute on their entire exposure and risk management strategies,” said Bobby Soni, chief platform and services officer at RMS. “RMS(one) offers the industry’s first secure, reliable and scalable computing platform coupled with big data infrastructure, which streamlines our customers’ modeling, underwriting and portfolio management processes.” 

Here is one post from ZDNet's David Chernicoff.

RMS demonstrates the importance of the private cloud

Summary: Lack of reliability in Amazon EC2 a major motivator in private cloud investment

By David Chernicoff for Five Nines: The Next Gen Datacenter |September 20, 2013 -- 12:51 GMT (05:51 PDT)

 

When RMS looked at deploying the betas of their cutting edge insurance risk management solution,RMSone, to their customers they realized that the cloud-based service would be significantly less valuable if it wasn’t incredibly reliable.

Here in DatacenterKnowledge's post from Rich Miller.

Data Center Customers Warming to Iceland

September 19th, 2013By: Rich Miller

Verne Global CEO Jeff Monroe calls its Iceland-based data center “the ultimate energy hedge” for its ability to provide long-term price visibility through 12 to 20-year contracts. (Photo: Colleen Miller)

and a post from Colleen Miller.

Free Cooling in Iceland: A Closer Look at the Verne Global Data Center

September 19th, 2013By: Colleen Miller

 

•  KEFLAVIK, ICELAND - Verne Global, which announced a cloud launch this week by client Datapipe and its client risk-modeling specialist RMS, is uniquely positioned from a geographical and business perspective. Verne is taking advantage of the geography of Iceland to operate a data center that is run on 100 percent renewable energy sources, and leverages the chilly climate in Iceland, located just below the Arctic Circle. The geography and geology of Iceland allows the local power companies to use natural resources such as hydro power and geothermal resources to produce electricity. Data Center Knowledge took a tour of this unique data center facility this week. Our photo feature gives insight into the facility, which is being deployed with a modular approach, and seeks to draw clients from both the United States and European countries. SeeVerne Global Data Center Leverages Iceland Power, Cooling.

Oops, took a knife in a carry-on

I just got back from Iceland and took my camera gear.  After a few days going through my gear in the hotel I saw one of my folding knives was in the camera bag.  I made it through security once, but I wasn't going to try again so checked one bag with the below knife in it.

 Here is a video of the knife.

Why did I have a knife in my camera bag?  When you have $3,000 worth of camera and lens, and another $3,000 Mac Book Retina it's a bit of insurance to have when walking around with the gear.  Plus its handy to have a good knife.

How did I get through security?  With all the camera gear batteries, cables, tablet in the camera backpack it was probably hard to see the knife since it was in a side pocket position like this to the X-ray scanner.

Next time I'll double check the side pockets of my camera bag to make sure I take the knife out. :-)

Time to stop using the word "Cloud"

I was having a dinner conversation discussing a bunch of different topics.  One was about a future SaaS solution that is built in the cloud.  We were discussing the cloud, and then I made the suggestion that it may be best to not use the word "Cloud."

Why?  Everyone wants a Cloud?  No.  Some people want the Cloud.  To some the Cloud means it is not secure, it goes down, and it is not as good as legacy systems.  Thanks to AWS outages, Cloud's are perceived as not as reliable by many.  Microsoft, Google, and Twitter have had outages and the media jumps on it.  Cloud services like LinkedIn have had security breaches.  Perception is reality.

Discussing this idea with another executive who supports the roll out of a SaaS Cloud service, I asked does he spend time in "damage control" mode when a user thinks the Cloud is not secure and unreliable.  Yes, all the time. He has to explain how his Cloud is better than others.  

So, how about just not calling your service a Cloud SaaS.

If users make the leap that your service is like a cloud service and they are positive, then fine say it is a cloud.  Otherwise focus on the business value of your service.  What is the business value of the cloud?  There are plenty of companies, event companies, and companies who have product that many money on the cloud.  Is that what you are, then fine use the word cloud.  If you are not marketing the cloud, then drop the word.

I've convinced myself to stop talking about the cloud in presentations and documents when I can.  It is better to talk about what your service does.  It is highly available, secure, and scales.  The cloud means to many that the service has compromises in security and availability, and leaves a bad aftertaste. 

On site power generation changing the Utilities

WSJ reports on companies adding on site power generation is changing the Utilities behaviors.

Companies Unplug From the Electric Grid, Delivering a Jolt to Utilities

Michal Czerwonka for The Wall Street Journal

At Kroger’s food-distribution center in Compton, Calif., a tank system converts organic waste into biogas to produce electricity used by the facility

On a hill overlooking the Susquehanna River, two big wind turbines crank out electricity for Kroger Co.’s KR +2.19% Turkey Hill Dairy in rural Lancaster County, Pa., allowing it to save 25% on its power bill for the past two years.

Google and Apple are mentioned in the article and their servers in data centers.

Almost overnight, that niche market has gone decidedly mainstream. Six years ago,Google Inc. GOOG -0.19% attracted attention by installing big solar arrays atop its Silicon Valley complex in California. Other tech companies followed suit, worried about ensuring power supplies for energy-hungry server farms and achieving sustainability objectives.

Apple Inc. AAPL +1.14% now gets 16% of its electricity from solar panels and fuel cells that run on biogas. Apple’s data center in Maiden, N.C., makes all the power it consumes, a company spokeswoman said.