Hyper or Hyped?

SQL 2008 was launched at the same event, with the same release date as Hyper-V. As the year will still be 2008, we can't accuse them of false marketing, although launching Visual Studio 2008 last November had me checking my calendar.

To demonstrate their new swag of goodies in Canada, Microsoft created a fictitious company called Fourth Coffee, which could suggest the recommended intake prior to confronting any 2008 product. In this company, SQL 2008 identified a shortage of coffee cups and Visual Studio created the Web site. It might have made more sense to use the Visual component of that often overlooked business resource called staff, who could have just looked in the cupboard to see if cups were running out. The purpose was to demonstrate the time-saving advantages of upgrading to all new Microsoft products in a realistic setting. Another time-saving method would be to leave things the way they are, thus saving three months of testing, upgrades, user resistance and workarounds. That option wasn't being promoted.

Yet after all Microsoft's effort to build and popularize their new products with the masses, a Computerworld poll found less than 25 percent of respondents plan to upgrade to Vista or Office 2007 in the next two years, with two thirds actively looking at alternatives first.

These include looking at Open Systems, an area Microsoft has not dominated and previously only begrudgingly participated in. Novell's SUSE Desktop and Server earned $38 million, up two-thirds from last quarter, so it's no wonder Microsoft felt the need to hold a glitzy pre-launch of Server 2008 and SQL 2008.

However, Microsoft is increasing its openness, having made available 30,000 pages of APIs.

It's a masterful stroke releasing useful information buried in an enormous wad of data that's near impossible to sift through, though it's not original. In Yes Minister, when Jim Hacker demanded Open Government, Sir Humphrey Appleby gave him every piece of governmental correspondence each night to read. After two nights of carrying home boxes of paperwork, Hacker soon stopped searching for information, as will hackers the world over.

Still, we can't knock Microsoft for (finally) embracing the world of Openness. I may adopt the same strategy myself, by installing Linux on my systems. To paraphrase Fred Astaire's Top Hat song: "I'm . . . putting on my Red Hat, Freeing up my Lap-top, Brushing off Mi-crosoft." It doesn't quite scan, but I'll fix that in the next release.

Microsoft's third bid for supremacy is the Internet search arena, where the company launched a takeover for Yahoo which everyone said was a sound business decision. Everyone except Yahoo, who continue to resist with the looming battle looking more drawn out and more expensive than the antitrust battles with the EU.

The EU are being very unfair to poor Microsoft. They place onerous restrictions on Microsoft's ability to run their business like everyone wants to run their own business: maximize customer purchases by upselling, bundle complementary products and minimize profits on certain items to increase pressure on competitors. Yet the EU recently allowed Google to buy Double Click, making Microsoft's job even harder to dominate the online world.

Winning new customers takes between four and eight times the effort of retaining existing customers (depending whose sales course you've booked on). For Microsoft, it's even harder as the only non-MS customers left in the world are Macophiles, Linux heads and babies under 12 months, and it will be easier to win over infants than Mac lovers.

That new, thin Apple notebook is very attractive, isn't it?

Bruce Kirkham is a veteran IT satirist and professional speaker ­specializing in leading edge technologies and scepticism, who views the IT industry not so much as "dot com" as "dot comedy"