Intel CEO mum on Vista's impact
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Paul Otellini surprises a few reporters when he clams up over Microsoft's operating system.
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The net must be changed to help it cope with what the future holds for it, according to chip maker Intel. In a keynote speech at an Intel conference, chief technology officer Pat Gelsinger said new uses for
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(InfoWorld) - To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the mega OS release has been greatly exaggerated, Microsoft's COO said this week. In a part-speech, part-presentation at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, COO Kevin Turner echoed comments made earlier this year by CEO Steve Ballmer that Windows Vista is not the last major update of the company's client operating system. Tuesday, as Turner dubbed Vista and the simultaneously-unveiled Office 2007 "huge, big-dog releases," he also promised more would come. "Certainly, this last year has been an unprecedented year for Vista and Office and the launch," Turner said. "And we are still committed to the desktop. There will be another release and launch of a Vista-type operating system. [And] there will be another release of Office." Turner's assertions parroted those made by Ballmer Jan. 29, just before Vista and Office 2007 went to retail. In New York on the launch eve, Ballmer said Microsoft had "plenty more where that came from," referring to Vista and its follow-on. At the time, speculation had mounted over whether Microsoft would, or even could, again mount a Vista-sized effort, in part because Ballmer himself had sworn that the company would never again take five years to craft a new OS. Analysts and pundits, meanwhile, were predicting the decline of the desktop operating system's importance as Web 2.0 applications made inroads and companies like Google offered apps and other tools that ran on any browser. Microsoft, their thinking went, would be forced to update its platforms, whether operating system or application, much more frequently and with smaller-scale upgrades to mimic the always-updated Web. Microsoft did concede some points there. For post-Vista development, Microsoft said it would return to a goal of releasing major OS upgrades every four years with at least one minor release between each major. There's reason -- more than one, actually -- for Turner taking the time to repeat the message, said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "You don't want this audience to abandon Windows, so it's important to remind them that Windows is still the most interesting operating system to develop for," Cherry said. Such reminders are especially important now, added Cherry, because of a July survey that said the percentage of developers targeting Windows had declined 12 percent in the past year. But Microsoft has other reasons for belaboring the point. "It's obvious that there will be future major operating system releases," Turner said. "There will be thinner OSes, certainly, and some may choose to use them. But there will be changes to hardware that will require changes in the OS, and fundamentally, as the number of changes add up or the significance of what you're changing does, the more important it is to do a major update." Incremental updates, in other words, only take you so far. "We always talk about the operating system as the pipes and the rest as the fixtures, right? Well, this is like when you're remodeling a house. There is a certain amount of things you can do in the bathroom. You can change the shower head, say. But you can't move the shower to another room without changing the pipes." On other topics Tuesday, Turner urged Microsoft partners to cash in on the 2007 releases of Vista and Office. "You know what I see? I see one thing in FY [fiscal year] '08, I see money," Turner said. "I see monetization. I can smell it and hear it, see it, okay, because this is the year that we're going to monetize that innovation."
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In a rare admission, an Intel executive says the Itanium chip family still isn't living up to
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InfoWorld - The president of virtualization software leader VMware Wednesday questioned the strategy of rivals that are integrating virtualization functionality into their operating systems.
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Intel Corp. yesterday offered a few more details about its plans for enterprise server processors but was silent on its plans for an upcoming dual-core Xeon processor.
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There's been yet another product delay at Intel.
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Microsoft COO Kevin Turner this week echoed comments earlier this year from CEO Steve Ballmer that Windows Vista won't be the last major OS update to come from the company.
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(InfoWorld) - The president of virtualization software leader VMwareÂ on Wednesday questioned the strategy of rivals that are integrating virtualization functionality into their operating systems. Diane Greene made the comments at the third and final day of the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco. VMware, a subsidiary of storage vendor EMC, doubled revenue in EMC's latest quarterly report, compared to the year ago quarter, as enterprises embrace VMware's virtualization software to make more efficient use of the servers in their data centers. Rivals such as Red Hat and MicrosoftÂ have responded to VMware's dominance by integrating virtualization into coming new operating systems. Red Hat isÂ introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Â next week and Microsoft's new Windows server OS is due later this year. But Greene, in discussing virtualization with analysts for the investment firm, said she wonders how effective the competition's virtualization features can be. "Traditionally, the operating system manages the hardware and manages the application. Once you virtualize with a hypervisor, that is now what is managing the hardware, not the OS," Greene said, in a presentation that was distributed via webcast. "Now the operating system is just managing the application. So certainly Windows and Red Hat are moving to integrate virtualization into their OS, but part of the value proposition seems to be lost when you do that." Spokespeople for Red Hat did not respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman for Microsoft said its OS easily supports virtualization. "Resource management has always been part of operating systems. Today, vendors such as Sun, Novell, and Red Hat incorporate virtualization into their operating systems," wrote Patrick O'Rourke, a senior product manager for Windows Server, in a prepared statement. "We are making investments across Microsoft to offer our customers a complete set of virtualization products from the desktop to the datacenter. All assets, both virtual and physical, [are] managed from a single platform." VMware is a strong contributor to the earnings of parent company EMC, which also sells storage hardware and security software. Greene also is executive vice president of EMC. Revenue for VMware increased to $232 million in the fourth quarter of 2006, 101 percent more than a year prior. The growth comes from increased demand for VMware Infrastructure 3, a virtualization software suite for servers and storage networks. VMware's growth prompted EMC to recently announce plans toÂ spin off 10 percent of VMwareÂ in an initial public offering of stock. EMC executives said they anticipate releasing the prospectus later this month for the IPO, expected about midyear. Greene noted the stock sale will benefit VMware employees as well as potential shareholders. "Our stock-based compensation will track our performance and that is the ideal model," she said. Also at the Morgan Stanley conference, Greene acknowledged that virtualizing servers, which helps them use more of their designed capacity, may suppress server sales growth. But she said many customers are upgrading servers as they introduce virtualization into their operations. Those new servers are more high-end products, with greater processing power, and should yield higher margins for server vendors. EMC reported fourth quarter 2006 financial results Jan. 23, posting net income of $389 million, or $0.17 a share, on revenue of $3.21 billion. It edged out analysts estimates of $0.16 a share.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- With Intel Corp. apparently poised to announce the latest stage of its restructuring effort, speculation has centered not on whether the world's largest chip maker would be cutting jobs, but on how many.
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The head of Taiwan-based personal computer maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, hit out at Microsoft&#39;s Windows Vista operating system, saying that the &quot;entire industry&quot; was disappointed by it.
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Paul S. Otellini, the probable new chief of Intel, may have to lead the chip manufacturer in an industry where the race may be for creativity, not speed.
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Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday that sales forecasts for its new Vista operating system may be "overly aggressive."
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Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds said Intel, as the market leader, needs to keep &quot;moving people down the path&quot; of new technologies.
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Intel-rivaling chipmaker does not immediately explain why its first-quarter sales will fall short of its previous estimates.
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InfoWorld - Intel's resignation from the One Laptop Per Child Project's board of directors will have "no impact" on the group's operations, since the chip maker contributed little to the project since joining last year, OLPC President Walter Bender said in an interview.
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A strong demand for its computer chips brightens otherwise dismal year for the maker of semiconductors. By Laurie J. Flynn. SAN FRANCISCO -- Eking out a strong finish to end a disappointing year, Intel Corp