The folks at the Redmond, Washington, headquarters of Microsoft, could be biting their nails to the cuticles, anxious about the launch of some of the company’s betting-the-store products next week. The portfolio will include the Windows Vista, Mi-crosoft’s brand new desktop operating system in five years, Office 2007 application suite, and the Exchange Server 2007 e-mail system, but the most interest would be on Vista.
So, what’s next for Microsoft, and, more importantly, the Windows OS? CEO Steve Ballmer says, "There are a lot of requirements for any operating system. Hardware continues to evolve. We have new connectivity types, new chip architectures, new storage paradigms and storage types, we have the move to embrace software and service and what does that mean for the operating system."
"We’ve got new development models, richer graphics interfaces, new ways for users to integrate data across applications down at the client level, new form factors, mobility, tablets," Mr Ballmer said in an interview to InformationWeek, ahead of the launches. According to him, "We don’t live in a static environment, so we’re going to have to continue to move Windows along with the times and we’re going to have to continue to innovate, particularly in terms of the new application models and new end-user scenarios."
"You have other guys out there like Apple who are pushing on the end-user scenarios, in the case of Linux, on different application models. There are special-purpose devices which are trying to unseat the PC by just doing one thing and supporting the hardware for that really well," he said.
Mr Ballmer acknowledged that Microsoft had a "lot of competition and things to focus on, but at the end of the day, most people who make PCs, most people who use PCs, want one piece of software that brings it all together for them - the full value of the experience: Enabling the hardware, third-party applications, services, and put-ting the user in control. "Windows does the best job of that; Vista takes it to a whole new level with its new UI, built in services, hardware support. We just need to continue to run fast," he said.
The Vista, which is expected to be shipped to consumers in January, reportedly has between 50 million and 100 million lines of code, compared to the estimated 10 million that Windows 95.
Mr Ballmer said that the next "version of Vista will be compatible, it will support 99 per cent of the hardware that Vista supports; it will support a high percentage of the applications that Vista supports; it will support all the end-user scenarios and more that Vista supports." That remains to be seen, as does whether Vi-sta will perform as advertised.