10 Things Microsoft Fumbled in 2007

Edward Nigma-esque device hidden in the basement of the Microsoft campus from reading our thoughts, but it may not hurt to try.)

So with that in mind (and tongue partly in cheek), let the list-making begin!

1. Virtualization, Shmirtualization

I attended a Microsoft Reviewer's Workshop a few months ago, and Microsoft put a brave face on their virtualization efforts. Sure, Hyper-V looks promising, as do some of their other recent announcements in the virtualization arena. That said, Microsoft has a bit of catch-up work to do. VMware has a sizeable lead in server virtualization, both from a market share and technology perspective. Paul Venezia at Infoworld suggests

VMware has made in the areas of live migration, virtual machine management, and other areas.

Sure, Microsoft put the smack down on Lotus, Netscape, and WordPerfect on their way to world desktop domination, leaving those companies as damaged goods, ripe for takeover or dismemberment. But for every company like Digital Research and Novell, companies like VMware and Google have proven that it is possible to compete with Microsoft. VMware has two things going for it that most of these other Microsoft competitors never had: a demonstrably significant lead in technology, and a dominant, entrenched market share with large enterprise clients. I

Microsoft to catch up.

2. Chasing Google

Speaking of Google, here's another area in which Microsoft has been sucking the exhaust fumes of the competition. Google has emerged as the desktop search standard, and Windows Live Search -- despite numerous name changes and shifting marketing strategies -- is still battling with yahoo for second place.

It's clear that Microsoft has made big strides in their race to catch up with Google, but Microsoft has a long way to go to reach parity. Google is beginning to nibble around the edges of the dominant Microsoft Office suite with their online Google Docs effort, and Google's push into mobile phones indicates that Microsoft will have to defend yet another market segment from Google

Has Your Xbox 360 Failed Yet?

I'll admit I'm wholly biased here, since I'm the owner of an Xbox (which died back in 2004), an Xbox 360 Steering Wheel (which needs to go back for warranty service), and an Xbox 360 (which displayed the infamous blinking ring of death last year). Microsoft did replace our Xbox 360 in record time -- it arrived before Christmas -- but I'm an admitted Microsoft video game skeptic now. In the span of time between the death (and subsequent resurrection) of our Xbox 360, my kids picked up their Nintendo Wii controllers and haven't looked back.

I'm trying hard not to imagine Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy supervising the Xbox hardware quality control team, but it's not easy. Given these hardware issues, a recently-filed lawsuit over Xbox Live

And it could get worse: the PlayStation3 is gaining share thanks to price cuts and big upcoming game releases (think Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Resistance: Fall of Man 2), and the included BluRay DVD player in every PS3 seems increasingly like a sharp move on Sony's part -- BluRay now appears to be the victor

Channel 9, a Microsoft video blogging initiative. Microsoft was clearly doing its homework by generating some background info on Vogelstein, but the idea of someone compiling exhaustive dossiers on journalists seems, well, a bit Orwellian.

The FBI did the same thing during the Cold War when they were looking for communists, but does a tech journalist writing about a video blog rate the same treatment? Now I

Zune remaining a viable device as a stand-alone media player. The latest Zune may be a vast improvement over the original, but Microsoft appears to have arrived at the digital music party a few years too late.

There's also a big question about where Microsoft takes Zune in the future. Will it maintain the device as a low-cost, high-feature alternative to cheaper iPod models? Or will Microsoft introduce mobile phone capability to the Zune and then alienate their Windows Mobile phone partners? Microsoft has been very tight-lipped about the future of the Zune, so who knows?



6. The Eastern Front: Microsoft

Microsoft much. Microsoft recently settled a long-running legal battle with the EU over bundling issues with Microsoft Windows, and it now appears that the European court is back for another swipe at Microsoft, this time over two new complaints. The first is from a group of software makers known as the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, and they claim that Microsoft hasn

Microsoft software operates, making it difficult for them to create applications that work with products like Microsoft Office. The second complaint is from Opera Software, a small Norwegian software developer that produces the Opera Web browser. Opera claims that Microsoft is still using its dominant market share in desktop software to unfairly restrict competition with competing web browsers.

One can imagine that Apple and Google

French and German.

7. Marketing Moniker Mashup 2008 SP1

I'm no marketing genius, but I'd like to send this one out to Microsoft's marketing department. I'm sure their ranks are filled with people who are far smarter than I am -- likely sporting MBA degrees from prestigious schools with ivy-colored walls, and bearing business cards stamped with very long titles -- but I have to ask: What are you guys thinking?

Here at Windows IT Pro, we've had to correct each other several times about the differences between various Microsoft product names and marketing strategies over the last year, and we cover Microsoft on a daily basis. Case in point: The branding strategy behind Microsoft's online efforts is positively Byzantine. Windows Live is supposedly all about online applications like email, sharing photos, and communicating with friends. But Windows Live Writer is an offline application for writing and editing blog posts. Despite the name, Office Live Small Business doesn't actually have anything to do with Microsoft Office -- it's essentially a web hosting solution. Then we have Office Live Workspace, which doesn't have anything to do with creating Office documents online -- it's basically an online storage space for Office files and documents.

But wait! There's more marketing confusion ahead. At last count, there are eight planned versions of Windows Server 2008 (not counting the many 64-bit versions, which would bring the total to more than a dozen). Then there are bundled Server 2008 products like Windows Centro, which has been renamed Windows Essential Business Server. Okay...so does this mean that other Windows server products aren't essential?

Maybe Microsoft has a big template on their wall that directs staffers to create product names in the form of "Microsoft Noun Adjective " or "Microsoft Adjective Noun " If that's the case, I'd really prefer something a bit more distinctive -- even something like "Windows Live Jive" or "Microsoft Happy Office 2008" -- at least they would be easier to tell them apart.

I'm convinced that the marketing department of Microsoft is filled with brilliant, dedicated, and genuinely nice people. But if the Windows IT Pro editorial team staff is frequently scratching our collective heads about parts of Microsoft

Vista marketing strategy, and rightly so: Does Microsoft really need to have four different versions of Vista aimed at the home and small business markets?



10. We all Scream for WGA

Falling somewhere below the approval ratings for President Bush and the Democratic Congress is Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), Microsoft's copy protection scheme for their Windows products. Some industry wags have suggested that WGA is a misnomer, as it is neither genuine nor an advantage. There

WGA the best way to prevent piracy?

A major failure of the WGA system in August 2007 resulted in many legitimate owners of Windows being notified that their software was unauthorized, essentially implying that these paying customers were slimy software pirates. According to a post on the official Microsoft WGA blog, the outage was caused when

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