[oclug] News link: Well now, that's kind of interesting.

[Mark Harrison (Groups)]

GR Gaudreau wrote:

>Linux is viewed by M$ an enemy of propriatary software, therefore I 
>doubt they're "making nice" with Linux. Something is afoot and I'd bet 
>dollars to dog shit that it isn't good.
>

/me pops head above parapet for a moment.

It's possible that Microsoft are fed up of getting savaged by their 
large corporate customers.  It's not just "haven't removed support 
for"....Steve Ballmer was onstage on Wednesday in Vegas running Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3 (the distro for people who like long 
names).

Commenting on support for Linux, Ballmer said: "As much as that hurts my 
eyes, I know that's an important capability for the virtual server 
technology for our customers."

This rings true from my experience - I'm doing a fair bit of strategy 
consultancy work for one of Europe's top 100 firms at the moment.

Their new "architectural standards" document has just been agreed by 
their architecture board, and specifically endorses Linux as the 
preferred alternative for "non-critical systems". (They use big iron and 
manufacturer Unix for critical systems.)

Use of Microsoft software for servers now requires a specific case to be 
made to their architecture board, and responsibility now lies with the 
project to demonstrate that Windows Server is necessary. (Result!)

Server virtualisation is something that they're looking at - since the 
big-server world is still not sure whether it wants to go down the 
superserver + virtualisation route or the fabric computing (blade 
arrays, SANs, etc.) route. The use of Windows Virtual Server 2005 might 
be Microsoft's toehold back into that kind of client.

Mark