Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer touted his
company's vision for a bright future, while casting doubt on
alternatives to his company's Windows operating system, in
particular Linux when addressing a gathering of software industry
leaders.
Ballmer said he was excited about the promise of technological
advances in the next decade. Ballmer then took shots at the
open-source software development community and warned participants
to think twice before adopting open-source products such
as Linux.
"I am as fired up now as I have ever been in 24 years at
Microsoft," Ballmer said. Noting the rapid adoption of technology
such as PCs, the internet and mobile telephones in the preceding
decade, Ballmer said a new generation of software and hardware,
driven by advances in speech recognition technology and multimedia,
will revolutionise the way individuals work and live.
"In the next 10 years, you are going to see more positive change
than in the last 10," Ballmer said.
Advances in software in coming years would make such features
practical, making "information workers" and those in fast-growing
fields like healthcare more productive, he said.
Ballmer promoted his company's products as a key to that
transformation, including the next version of the Windows operating
system, dubbed "Longhorn", and the company's .net computing
architecture.
Joking about recent news regarding a curtailed list of features
in Longhorn, Ballmer said that cutting back on the promised
features at least allowed the company to announce a release date
for the product, which was a "major accomplishment".
Despite the focus on the next version of Windows, Microsoft is
also working to make its offerings more interoperable with products
using other software platforms such as Linux, Unix and Extensible
Markup Language (XML), Ballmer said.
Ballmer singled out XML and web services as the "big
breakthrough" of the next decade that will spur innovation.
"The fact that companies like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft have bet
on an architected approach to interoperability is huge," he
said.
Even while promoting interoperability, Ballmer scoffed at
arguments that his company's operating system creates a computing
"monoculture", and took a swipe at those who would see Linux
replace Windows on servers and desktops within companies.
Microsoft's platforms offer better interoperability with the
company's other technology, such as .net, reducing the total cost
of ownership of Windows compared with Linux, which is
available free, but often requires significant effort to integrate
and maintain, Ballmer said. He cited a Microsoft-sponsored study by
analysts Forrester Research and a similar study by Gartner to
bolster his claims.
Technology research groups have published different findings
about the cost benefits of using Linux compared with Windows, with
some, including IDC, finding the cost of owning Linux to be less
than Windows, and others finding the opposite true.
On the touchy issue of security, Ballmer also dismissed the
notion that Linux is more secure than Windows, saying that Linux
would be attacked just as frequently as Windows if the open-source
operating system had as large a share of the operating system
market as Windows.
"If you have two popular operating systems, both will get
attacked - whatever is popular is going to be attacked," he
said.
While not perfect on security, Microsoft has a defined process
for addressing security vulnerabilities, compared with the open
source community, which he called "all over the map", when it came
to addressing vulnerabilities in Linux, Ballmer said.
Finally, Ballmer argued that companies should be wary of the
lack of indemnity from lawsuits, such as the suit filed by SCO
Group against DaimlerChrysler, IBM, Novell and others over parts of
the Linux operating system that SCO claims infringe on elements of
the Unix operating system that it owns.
"In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims," he
said, noting that Microsoft could be forced to swallow a $550m
(£307m) judgement if it loses its ongoing case with Eolas
Technologies, but that its customers would be protected.
"I am not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt," Ballmer
said. "I just think people should go out and research this for
themselves."
Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service