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April 29, 2008

Microsoft Stops Fighting Linux, And Tries To Give It A Big Bear Hug Instead

Erick Schonfeld

20 comments »

linux-penguin-small.pngIs Microsoft finally learning to love the penguin? After years of fighting Linux and denying its very usefulness, Microsoft has recently changed its tactics. It is trying to be more open, even if that’s an attempt to appease European regulators. And today, it is announcing the beta of new data center management tools that—gasp!—recognize that some companies might be running something other than Windows on their servers. Now it will support two flavors of Linux (Red Hat and SUSE) and two flavors of Unix (HP-UX and Sun Solaris), all from one management console. The name of the software is System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions. Yeah, I can’t remember that either.

What Microosft is signaling here is a new tactic in the war against Linux, which it realizes is not going anywhere. So if Microsoft can’t beat Linux, it will try to smother it with love by offering a way for IT folks to manage and control all of their servers using Microsoft software. But it is a little late to the game. HP’s Openview, Tivoli, and BMC already offer such capabilities. Microsoft can still make inroads, though, by competing on price and ease of use.

Embracing openness and other software is also a good idea. Microsoft new data center management software supports open standards such as Web Services for Management and OpenPegasus. At the same time, Microsoft is also announcing new virtualization management software (System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008) that will let IT managers control virtual machines running on EMC’s popular VMWare, as well as Microsoft’s own virtual machines. (Virtualization is a big trend in data centers that effectively splits and segregates jobs on one physical server into many virtual ones). For those interested in more, you can read all the gory details in the press release.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » MSがLinux戦の手を休め、大きなボディロック的抱擁を仕掛ける

    April 29th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

  2. An understandable description of Microsoft Mesh.

    April 29th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

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  1. Technology PR

    April 29th, 2008 at 10:53 am

    Microsoft already took a step towards embracing Linux when it partnered with Novell in 2006. Under that agreement, Novell and Microsoft decided to collaborate and make it easy for customers to use both Suse Linux and Windows. Read this news on WSJ if you want more details
    http://online.wsj.com/public/a.....61109.html

  2. Peter Urban

    April 29th, 2008 at 11:05 am

    Comment on TechCrunch: Microsoft Stops Fighting Linux {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/vxcXxCO95s_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Comment on TechCrunch: Microsoft Stops Fighting Linux ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/z6m44Izd57″}}}

  3. Michael Koby

    April 29th, 2008 at 11:06 am

    Technology PR, that agreement was 2 fold, it was one part good publicity and one part give Novel indemification on Microsoft’s supposed patents that might be found in Linux. That move however has led to collaboration on the Silverlight/Moonlight/.Net/Mono projects which is a good thing in my opinion. But the agreement was really nothing more than PR indemfication move.

    Microsoft’s “Be More Opne” mess they announced earlier this year is more of an embrace of Linux that than the Novell pact. And this looks like they might actually follow through on this time :-)

  4. Kevin Kris

    April 29th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    First they ignore you.
    Then they laugh at you.
    Then they fight you.
    Then you win.

    Looks like logical next step for linux is to WIN.

  5. Rajesh

    April 29th, 2008 at 11:46 am

    “What Microosft is signaling here is a new tactic”

    Spelling mistake: “Microsoft” –> “Microosft”

  6. Masseratti

    April 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am

    “a new tactic in the war against Linux”

    We linux0rs are not at war with M$.
    They are in a war with themselves.
    And they will end up killing themselves.

  7. MattW

    April 29th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Consider that Apple increased their PC market share by 32.5% in first quarter, whereas Linux grew by….something smaller? Perhaps Redmond would rather fight someone they believe they can beat, rather than fighting apple.

  8. HabsQ

    April 29th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    After this we’ll see the next Windows using Linux’s kernel… Sounds very interesting.

  9. Brian

    April 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    “Consider that Apple increased their PC market share by 32.5% in first quarter, whereas Linux grew by….something smaller? Perhaps Redmond would rather fight someone they believe they can beat, rather than fighting apple.”

    Or it could be that there’s no market for managing Apple’s OS in most major datacenters. Apple does great in the home market, considerably less so in the enterprise.

  10. smcnally

    April 29th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    MS SCUM2CRAP

    ?

  11. Internet Lawyer

    April 29th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    Embrace and extend, this is smart move on Microsoft’s part. The monopolist view no longer pays dividends, so they must play by different rules. This is not surprising. Monopolies are predictable precisely because they must make the rational move. Ditto Google. You can predict that they will continue to dominate everything that is reachable by their DNA until they are forced to embrace and extend. Rational business decisions have their own built in limitations. They tend to kill innovation because a monopolist must first and foremost protect the monopoly. They can’t afford to cannibalize their own market dominance in pursuit of the next new/new thing. Sure they will be fast followers or simply crush or buy everything in sight, but they won’t see the true innovator coming. It is the way it works. IBM. Microsoft. Google. Some new kid on the block.

  12. jro

    April 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    “Consider that Apple increased their PC market share by 32.5%…”

    @MattW: can you provide a link that backs up this percentage? And are you talking about hardware or OS, or something else more specific?

  13. Marc

    April 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Haha… Microsoft is not embracing anything. This is not a smart move either. This is being backed up against a wall and being forced to capitulate and take a subservient position in the marketplace rather than being publicly executed.

    This inherently defensive play is the first of many that will reduce Microsoft’s share in market even further. Combine this with fact that they will lose a huge share of the desktop OS market over the next 5 years. They will be relegated to the same markets as companies like Adobe.

  14. Bashar

    April 30th, 2008 at 12:03 am

    And who actually wants Windows to manage Linux?

  15. InfinityTech

    April 30th, 2008 at 2:32 am

    All of you who believe Microsoft has suddenly changed its spots are naive at best… actually no, you’re just plain idiots.

    Microsoft’s history of monopoly abuse is so well documented that there is no need to repeat it here. In the last twelve months I and my colleagues in this industry have watched with disgust some of the worst behavior we’ve ever seen from this monopolist. And again, it is well documented. Make no mistake, Microsoft is an insidious cancer on the industry we would all be well rid of.

    To say that those of you who think Microsoft has suddenly turned all nicey nicey have not been paying attention is being far too nice; You are a willfully ignorant bunch of mentally challenged lemmings.

  16. LinuxGeek

    May 1st, 2008 at 12:15 am

    Looks like Micro$oft has finally read the writing on the wall, so they’ve decided to embrace *nix instead of fighting it. But…WHO in their right mind would want to use winblows to administer *nix servers? Certainly not me. Anyway, with Ubuntu and other Linux distros making installing/using Linux easier than ever–and certainly easier, FASTER, and more straightforward than installing/using winblows–M$ knows it’s going to lose considerable market share in the desktop realm over the next few years, so I guess they have to do SOMETHING to try to cling onto whatever they can, be it server or desktop…

  17. Christopher W

    May 2nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    I agree with InfinityTech MS is not playing nicely at all. Although I have to wonder how many of you will hold onto windows for that “needed” app? I jumped ship when XP came out as I liked Windows 2000 then they killed it. Making Windows more likable by making it pretty. Really not a solution and neither is this. If Microsoft truely wanted to play along they would make MS Office 13, IE8, DirectX 11, Windows Media Player 12, and all of their new apps available under Linux natively. Not only that they would allow for something better than wine and offer open source code that would allow for running Windows app “Q” on the Linux Desktop or even Free BSD.
    To Internet Lawyer:
    The new kid on the block is really two new kids on the block mobile internet and *AHEM Open Source Software. The mobile market is pwned by Linux on mobile devices iPhone is only the first of something huge. If apple were smart they would have opened the iPhone to allowing people to build apps for it.
    To JRO:
    Apple says themselves that 32.5% and Linux grew by like only 1.2% however the 1.2% spike is larger than the 32.5% in sheer numbers just google it i remember reading it somewhere. You will see Linux own the desktop market really soon like within the next say 2 years. When Microsoft decides to push Windows 7 back a few more years people will wake up and remember Vista and Windows ME.

  18. nilesh

    May 6th, 2008 at 3:10 am

    M$ is stupid.

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