Tech Note: Will 2012 Be the Year of Microsoft?

First it was the iPhone.  Then it was the Android phone.  Then the iPad, followed by the Android pads.  Ever since the iPhone hit the market the world has been changing and the call for the death of the PC has been sounded.  The big company sitting at the top of the PC heap has been Microsoft and so many times now the death of Microsoft has been sounded.  This has been in part, because Microsoft has seemingly made no move to throw their hat into the market.  Well all of that will change in 2012 and the big question is will Microsoft be able to survive. 

Note I said survive.  Many people believe that if Microsoft is unable to make a big surge this year that they will fade away as an impactful company.  You can find plenty of articles out there written by people who have already written Microsoft off.  Of course I can remember when people had written off AT&T and we all know how that's played out. 

Anyhow I thought I would give a preview of what's to come from Microsoft in this next year. 

The first product that's going to hit the market is the Kinect for PC.  Kinect was a stunning big seller at Christmas this past year for the XBox.  Well Microsoft is quickly following that with Kinect for PC.  The release of this product is really more about staging than anything else.  The idea is to get the product out to get more development for the product.  Something like Kinect for PC could turn out to be very interesting later on this year when Microsoft rolls out Windows 8, I'll discuss that in more detail later. 

If you haven't seen it here is a short video put out by Microsoft to promote the sort of developments that people are already envisioning for Kinect. These of course are developments with the current Kinect device. It is envisioned that the newer Kinects will be able to pick up motion as close as 20 inches. That means you could be sitting at your desktop and using Kinect.



The next big rollout will be Windows 8. In fact this whole year is really all about Windows 8.  There are two versions of Windows 8 and they are both very important to Microsoft's success this year. 

I'll start first with Windows 8 Server.  Windows 8 Server is rolling out with a lot of new features but there are two major pieces to focus on.  First Server will take virtualization to a new level for Microsoft.  Not only in terms of virtualizing servers but also in supporting virtuialized desktops.  We were already on the road back to dumb terminals, now called thin clients, but with Windows 8 Server Microsoft is trying to take it all to the next level.  If you are a company and you want to provide a streamlined full blown desktop environment, Windows 8 Server will make this easier.  This means one server hosting many virtual machines that give full 3D video experience to the end users through a thin client.  Of course we'll never know how good this product works until it hits the market and gets used, but if it works as envisioned by Microsoft we could see a drastic shift in the Enterprise landscape. 

The second piece is something that is too technical for me to fully understand, but in essence Microsoft is redoing their file storage system.  All file storage systems struggle with the quantities of data we are asking our systems to handle today and so Microsoft is taking their first steps to replacing their current file management system with a new one.  They will roll this out initially with Windows 8 Server and will follow for desktops later on in stages.  Long term this should be more stable storage and faster storage for users of Windows devices as well as more adaptive storage.  Think down the road when you have a Windows 9 tablet and you're running out of storage space on the 128G card you have installed.  But your tablet can take a second card so you add a new 256G card.  The nice thing is with this new file management system you can turn those two cards into one through the Windows 9 interface without losing the data you already had stored on the first card.  That's the dream of what this new file management system is suppose to be leading to. 

Of course the term you will hear most often mentioned by Microsoft in terms of Windows 8 Server is the cloud.  In a world where you have users with smartphones, pads, and workstations you want those users to all have access to their applications and software from device to device.  Windows 8 Server is designed more than anything to provide a backend for providing a cloud to your users.  Again this is something that is aimed specifically at the enterprise customers, but also for people developing online systems.  As part of this whole mix comes another release from Microsoft this year, their new app store for Windows 8.  One thing Microsoft is doing to go straight at their enterprise customers is allowing companies to create their own in house Windows 8 stores.  This means as an enterprise you would have the ability to control what apps are available to the devices on your system as well as develope in house applications that are not made available to the public.  Microsoft makes their money from their enterprise base and its obvious from the work they've done around Windows 8 Server they are trying to ensure they keep that enterprise base. 

Though Windows 8 Server is important for Microsoft the key piece to their success is Windows 8.  Windows 8 is being designed to be the single operating system for PCs, pads, and phones.  In essence they plan on turning your smartphone into a fully functional PC and as you move from one device to the next you will have the same interface, the same apps, the same everything.  It is not clear how well they will be able to pull this off right out of the gate, though if you see previews of the Windows 8 pad they revealed at Build 2011 you can see they are going to be pretty close to pulling it off.  The big questions software developers have had is will they really be able to build one application that would work on all three devices, and consumers want to know if I purchase the app for one device will it work on the others.  This is still a question I have not heard answered and it is perhaps the most critical question that Microsoft will have to answer, but it is obvious that this is their intention.

One reason I said that Kinect could turn out to be interesting in how it relates to Windows 8 is that Windows 8 is designed to work in a touch environment. Well with Kinect you can potentially turn any computer into a touch computer. We could be moving into a world where by default you have a Kinect device connected to your PC just so you have the same hand gesture experience with your desktop that you have with your pad and your phone.

As always of course Microsoft is committed to supporting applications built for older operating systems and so that adds a bit of clunkiness to the package, but assuming it works as advertised Windows 8 on pads could change everything.  For the first time you would have a pad that really could replace every computer in your house, and if the phones can share apps with both your PC and your pad and give you a fuller experience then again this could pose a real challenge to Android and iOS. 

As it stands right now Windows has less than 2% of the smartphone market and of course 0% of the pad market.  A company that looks at technology marketshares came out this week with a report that estimated by 2015 Microsoft could have 15% of the smartphone market.  That is mostly based on the assumption that Nokia will be able to maintain their 15% as they replace their old OS with new Microsoft based phones, and this projection has been the first bit of good news for Microsoft in quite a while.  But in reality I believe many people think that the impact could be even greater, if Microsoft is able to pull off this marriage of devices as they hope to.  Many people believe Microsoft has waited way too long to get into the battle, but I would personally say that the wait will have been fine as long as when they do enter the market they enter it with software that works better than all of their competition.  That's a tall order I know, but the potential is there. 

There are problems that both iOS and Android have not been able to overcome in their systems.  iOS for instance cannot do true multi tasking as of yet and it is not expected that those changes will be coming anytime soon.  Android is struggling to maintain their devices with patches and updates and so their user base is not getting the full experience they might expect.  But more importantly these devices and their apps cannot be tied back to a PC, and cannot be used to replace a  PC.  If you can give the consumer, both the enterprise consumer and the home consumer products that can do all of these things Microsoft envisions, the potential for growth in the market is limitless. 

If, however, Windows 8 flops.  If it fails to be stable and robust and felxible as they envision it to be, then it really could mark the end of Microsoft.  In many ways it is an all or nothing year for Microsoft and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.