10
April
2008
|
21:29 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Windows is Collapsing

Windows is collapsing under its own weight, Gartner analysts charged this week. (TechNewsWorld)

It takes Microsoft too long to introduce new versions of Windows, and once a new version is released, it takes significant time for the ecosystem to support it and for the release to stabilize. Organizations need to wait for that support and stability and then deal with the enormous task of deployment and management for increasingly nebulous benefits. For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable.


Accepting all that, empires don't really collapse, they just kind of buckle and groan, News.com's Ina Fried says in a meandering sort of way. After all it took the Roman Empire about 150 years to finally call it a day in 476 AD.

It might not take that long for the Redmond Empire, though, because the grounds are rapidly shifting out from under Microsoft's entire model. Applications are moving to the browser, operating systems are moving to non-PC devices. While Apple is leveraging OS X for the iPhone, Microsoft can barely get 6 percent of customers to adopt Vista. Google is readying Apps and Docs for a serious push against Office.

All of which means, says Arrington, that Microsoft really, really needs that Yahoo deal. "Online advertising revenue is their only real hope of long term survival."