A year after Windows 7's release, Microsoft is starting to update its other product lines, including two new Small Business Server (SBS) offerings, a Windows Home Server (WHS) upgrade, Windows Phone 7, and Internet Explorer (IE) 9. Let's examine each of these coming releases, as well as Windows 7's deployment record with businesses, and the return, probably unnecessarily, of the Slate PC. Here's what you need to know.
Small Business Server "Aurora" Update
As Microsoft ships a near-final, public release of its upcoming Windows Small Business Server product, code-named Aurora, in late August, it appears that this intriguing "cross-premise" server offering will ship in final form by the end of the year.
With the caveat that I sometimes feel like the patron saint of small business computing, I think Aurora could be a game changer: This amazing product offers all of the Active Directory (AD)-based identity, security, and computer management that businesses need, but without the complexity.
And, I expect, without the cost: Though Microsoft hasn't yet revealed Aurora pricing, it's going to have to come in well under regular SBS pricing. This could be a mainstream, high volume product.
Of course, the success of Aurora won't hinge on pricing alone. What makes this product really work is its logical targeting of the real needs of small businesses. There's no need for a true admin or an IT pro; instead, the simplified system administration can be easily delegated to different people in the office.
New users can add their own PCs to the domain, and Aurora automatically copies all their data and settings over to a new domain account. And Aurora, like the WHS products on which it's based, offers excellent, centralized image and file backup of all connected PCs.
Where Aurora really shines, however, is storage: Using WHS's Drive Extender solution, newly added internal and external hard drives can be added to a bottomless pool of storage that doesn't need drive letters and offers data duplication functionality at the share level. Everything a small business really needs is available onsite.
The "cross-premise" promise of Aurora means that additional services—email, calendaring, communications, document collaboration, and more—can be added either via traditional on-premises servers (Exchange, SQL Server, and others) or via cloud-based services like Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.
And, of course, you can mix and match as your needs—and checkbook—allows.
After the misguided disaster of Windows Essential Business Server, Aurora is a breath of fresh air and proof that Microsoft really does understand its different business market segments.
WHS "Vail" Update
In tandem with the near-final Aurora code release, Microsoft also issued a second preview release of its upcoming WHS version, code-named Vail. This product looks and works much like Aurora, but with two important distinctions: It utilizes workgroups and Windows 7-based homegroups instead of a true domain, and its storage features are oriented around media sharing, as you might expect of a consumer solution.
But don't write off Vail so quickly: In many ways, Vail is an ideal solution for very small businesses as well as individuals, and if even vastly simplified domain management seems like overkill, this could be an interesting solution.
But the real advantage of Vail over Aurora is interoperability: An Aurora server must be the first server in a new domain, so you can't add Aurora to existing domain environments.
But if all you're looking for is the amazing storage functionality in Aurora, Vail features Drive Extender too. So it's an ideal storage solution for any smaller environment.
The Great Windows Phone 7 Debate
Microsoft and its partners will launch Windows Phone 7 this October, and although we've discussed the software giant's innovative new smartphone platform here in the past, there's an interesting debate emerging in the days leading up to the launch.
That's because Windows Phone, unlike its predecessor, Windows Mobile, and unlike leading competitors such as Google Android and Apple iPhone, doesn't support much in the way of PC-based sync.
That is, while you can—in fact, have to—use the Zune PC software to sync media with the devices, Microsoft is providing no interfaces for synchronizing with Outlook or other desktop-based productivity solutions.
And this is causing some predictably painful reactions in certain quarters.
The solutions Microsoft does support are cloud-based in the sense that they connect with Windows Phone over the air. These include Exchange and Exchange Online, Gmail/Google Calendar, Windows Live/Hotmail, and to a lesser extent Facebook and Yahoo! Mail. Microsoft is also supporting any IMAP- or POP3-based email accounts as well.
By supporting only direct connectivity between the phone and online accounts, Microsoft is shutting out PC-based middlemen, and not just Outlook, but also previous generation sync solutions like ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center.
This is a bit forward-looking. But it's also the right decision, arguably, given recent industry trends and the dangers associated with relying on a single PC as your central data store.
Windows Phone is going to be less than ideal for those businesses that require the full set of AD and Group Policy device management features. That's because unlike Windows Mobile, Windows Phone will support only a subset of those features at launch, meaning that Microsoft's previous generation mobile platform will stick around for an additional year or two.
Windows 7 Racks Up Impressive Numbers
The more time that goes by, the better Windows 7 looks. By the end of July, Microsoft had sold over 175 million copies of the OS, at a rate approaching 10 units per second. Amazingly, sales are actually accelerating, in part because of generally improved PC sales. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said recently that PC makers will sell over 400 million PCs in calendar year 2011, up from the 360-370 million previously predicted.
But the best news for Microsoft, perhaps, is that businesses are biting: Over 65 percent of enterprises are already migrating to Windows 7, and many of them are jumping on board with Office 2010 as well. In an admittedly unscientific poll of my own readers, I was swamped by positive stories about Windows 7 migration experiences, with only a few reporting they had to hold off because of compatibility reasons with specific user groups.
There are lots of factors at play here, of course, including an improving economy, a near-decade's reliance on an increasingly creaky Windows XP, and a general consensus that Windows 7 really is better than previous Windows versions, with important productivity gains. But regardless of the reasons, it's pretty clear Microsoft is looking at its biggest success story in a long, long time.
Slate PC Returns from the Dead
With Apple's iPad selling well despite some frustrating problems, Microsoft and its PC maker partners are racing to provide suitable alternatives. Well, maybe "racing" isn't the right word. Although some solutions will be in the market by the end of 2010, we're looking at early 2011 before the real iPad killers arrive. And by then it might be too late.
So why the 2011 requirement? That's when Intel will release its Oak Trail "system on a chip," which will apparently offer much better power management and performance than the company's current Atom and i-series chips. This is amazingly bad timing for Microsoft, as all of its partners appeared to be caught by surprise by the iPad despite months of warning.
Since we're looking at 2011 anyway, Microsoft should forget about Windows on a Slate PC—that ship sailed several years ago, when virtually no one bought any of the first generation Tablet PCs—and think about porting its well-executed Windows Phone 7 OS to a tablet-type device.
Unlike the iOS behind the iPad, Windows Phone OS would actually make sense on a tablet, and in fact seems like it was designed from the get-go for that kind of form factor. Sadly, Microsoft continues to insist it has no plans for such a thing.
IE Might Actually Be a Contender
Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here—after all, IE remains the de facto choice in corporate environments thanks to its unparalleled central management and deployment capabilities—but it appears as if Microsoft's much-maligned web browser might be poised for a comeback. Usage in IE had been on a near-linear freefall for a few years, thanks first to Mozilla Firefox and then, more recently, because of a surge of interest in Google's Chrome browser.
But that all changed in 2010. First, IE's overall market share decline evened out, then stopped altogether, and since May 2010, the browser has actually gained market share, while both Firefox and Chrome have stalled. Meanwhile, IE 8 has consistently outgrown the competition, and is the most frequently used web browser.
Critics will point out that IE 8 is bundled with Windows 7, and that Microsoft's OS popularity must be helping the browser. Fair enough, but IE 8 growth has also come during a period in which European Union-based Windows installations have triggered a browser ballot screen anytime a user has picked IE as their default browser. Combined with the heightened competition, then, IE's recent successes have in fact come during a time in which the browser has faced unparalleled opposition.
And now IE 9 is on the way. Through much of 2010, IE 9 was almost a science experiment, with Microsoft focusing on the developer-oriented underpinnings of the product. The effort paid off: Not only has Microsoft embraced the standards-based web, it's also found a way to leverage unique Windows integration features like hardware acceleration to make its next browser even more desirable.
By the time you read this, Microsoft should have debuted the first IE 9 public beta. My sources tell me that IE 9 will be lean and mean in ways that the bloated IE 8 isn't, and I hope that's true: One of the primary selling points of Google Chrome, in particular, is its stripped-down UI that gets out of the way and lets the content you're viewing take center stage.
If Microsoft can duplicate that experience and combine it with its standards effort and hardware-accelerated rendering, IE 9 could be a much bigger deal than previously expected. And that's an amazing turnaround for a product that many of us had written off less than a year ago.
PDC 2010
Microsoft sporadically holds a developer-oriented event called the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Each PDC has a theme: There was a Windows 7 PDC in 2008, and before that a few Windows Vista/Longhorn PDCs. And this year, it's happening again, on October 28 and 29, 2010, when Microsoft will hold PDC 2010 in Redmond for the first time. It's smaller (and shorter) than usual and will focus on cloud services, mobile development, tools, browser strategy, and gaming. I'll be going, so if you're in Redmond then, drop me a line (thurrott at sign gmail.com).
