Reminds me of the conversation in Matrix.

At first Neo’s new world seems rather unreal to him, and he begins to doubt that he has entered a new world at all.“This can’t be…” he begins to protest. Be what?” Morpheus responds. “Be real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel and smell and taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world you knew…it exists now only as part of the neural-interactive simulation we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo. THIS is the real world. Welcome to the Desert of the Real!”

Windows XP resides on my desktop as a virtual machine. Its like I am in the real and I can see the matrix (WinXP) and interact with it but I don’t need to live with it.

Free your mind…

Amit Jindal
Aquevix

Why do I hate windows? Or do I?

Actually I don’t. I use windows more than Linux and I appreciate the tools and utilities available on windows. Microsoft Office rocks!
But the core of the problem is Windows itself. There are viruses, malware, activex, hanging programs, then Microsoft itself.

For past 3-4 months, windows xp had become so slow on my computer that with a fresh boot, opening windows explorer was a 2 minute job. Never mind that my laptop is a 2 GB Ram, 7200 RPM, Core 2 Duo. So what’s the deal? Is it windows itself that is ageing on my machine?

I certainly do not appreciate installing 100 different programs from 40 different disks, searching for their serial numbers, activating products, calling customer service to explain why I am activating again, defragmenting and the lame command prompt (Yes, PowerShell sucks).

Since most of the machine at Aquevix are Linux Servers, it was a no-brainer that Windows may not be the best choice for me.

So here I am exploring an unfamiliar territory of living purely with Linux.

Wish me luck.

Amit Jindal
CEO, Aquevix

With Android and iPhone on the shelves, and most developers developing for these platform it is simply a matter of time before Microsoft is history on phones.

Microsoft Calling. Anyone There?

Microsoft’s engineers and executives spent two years creating a new line of smartphones with playful names that sounded like creatures straight out of “The Cat in the Hat” — Kin One and Kin Two. Stylish designs, an emphasis on flashy social-networking features and an all-out marketing blitz were meant to prove that Microsoft could build the right product at the right time for the finickiest customers — gossiping youngsters with gadget skills.

The quick demise of its smartphone, the Kin, highlights Microsoft’s struggle to produce cool products for young buyers with gadget skills.

But last week, less than two months after the Kins arrived in stores, Microsoft said it would kill the products.

“That’s a record-breaking quick end to a product, as far as I am concerned,” said Michael Cronan, a designer who helped drive the branding of products like Kindle for Amazon and TiVo. “It did seem like a big mistake on their part.”

The Kins’ flop adds to a long list of products — from watches to music players — that have plagued Microsoft’s consumer division, while its business group has suffered as well through less-than-successful offerings like Windows Vista and Windows for tablet computers.

In particular, the Kin debacle is a reflection of Microsoft’s struggle to deliver what the younger generation of technology-obsessed consumers wants. From hand-held products to business software, Microsoft seems behind the times.

Part of its problem may be that its ability to intrigue and attract software developers is also waning, which threatens its ability to steer markets over the long term. When it comes to electronic devices, people writing software have turned their attention to platforms from Apple and Google.

Meanwhile, young technology companies today rely on free, open-source business software rather than Microsoft’s products, so young students, soon to be looking for jobs, have embraced open-source software as well.

“Microsoft is totally off the radar of the cool, hip, cutting-edge software developers,” said Tim O’Reilly, who publishes a popular line of software development guides.

“And they are largely out of the consciousness of your average developer.”

via A Youthful Market Spurns the Wares of Microsoft – NYTimes.com.

Young developers have always been the primary reason for Microsoft success. Developers who are familiar with programming are cheaper and technology is more predictable. This results in higher productivity, low costs and attractive ROI.

With Microsoft losing developer interest in mobile platforms, it is only a matter of choice before Microsoft mobile is no longer a platform.

Lets not forget that phones are also revolutionizing small device computing. I mean who would have thought of 1 GHz processor (Samsung Galaxy S with Android, 16GB internal memory) in a phone? I have a laptop slower than that.

Who cares?

Amit Jindal
Aquevix

When we are in school, we are told how to do something and we simply follow and get it done. However in software development most often, there is no one to tell what to do and how to do anything. If your project managers are well versed, the developers aren’t and if developers do have some knowledge of software processes, the management is already running late with project.

How to find the right balance?

Additionally, with any process, the two biggest challenges are 1) To correctly document the requirements that all stakeholders and programmers can understand. 2) To validate their understand if they actually understood what we think they understood.

Then there is a third one, TIME.

As time goes by these understandings become vague. Customer thinks that what they said is completely clear. Programmers think it should be obvious how to do something in software to customers. There is no clear language or guidelines on how to visually document requirements and user specifications that can be re-interpreted in the same way all the time.

Then there is the problem of remembering what is requirement number RQ012539023. Did I mention that requirements change…

I am currently fighting with several methodologies to define a clear cut structure to requirements analysis. Hope it gives me something I can use.

Moreover, somehow I just couldn’t bite the idea that we need a antivirus, a firewall, security settings and the huge laundry list that goes with Windows. Oh, don’t forget the CALs. However I personally have not been able to migrate to Linux completely because of several reasons. Not that I am making excuses but really these are not easily replaceable:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Project
• Adobe Photoshop
• Nokia OVI Suite

Apart from these there are many small utilities that I simply cannot abandon due to our development cycles. However I have decided to try to make Linux my primary machine.

So which is the lucky platform?

I am going to try Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. This seems like a reasonably stable OS. Before this I have tried Ubuntu 6/7/8.04/9 and all have failed one way or the other. Not just these, OpenSuse, Fedora, Linux Mint, debian 5; the list is exhaustive. Linux is vastly superior on servers, no doubt. But on desktops, I still don’t think its ready.

Today was Day 1. I tried using KeePass (.NET version) and started getting missing references error. Apparently some DLLs are not in correct default path. When I searched, I didn’t find anything that directly solved my problem. In the end, I ended up not using Keepass for now (till I get some time).

I think the real problem is that when something doesn’t works in Linux, it is _really_ hard to figure out what’s wrong. And even if we do figure out, its even harder to fix it.

So let me see how long I can cope with this and if I will be able to completely surrender to Linux.

So long.

Amit Jindal

Aquevix (http://www.aquevix.com)

The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft’s Business Will Collapse

A few weeks ago, the market delivered its verdict on the relative future prospects of Apple and Microsoft.

Apple’s prospects are better, the market said. And in the past few weeks, that vote has only become more decisive.

The market still thinks Microsoft’s long-term prospects are pretty good, though.  The stock is trading at a respectable 14X P/E.  The company has cash flow gushing out of its ears.  The consensus is that Microsoft will keep growing, just more slowly.

But the odds are increasing that even this will prove to be wishful thinking.

Before we begin, a quick review of where Microsoft’s revenue and profits come from.

Microsoft has a lot of different businesses, but as you can see from the chart below, the vast majority of its profits come from Windows and Office.

Microsoft Operating Profit

And now on to Microsoft’s predicament…

The world has changed radically in the past few years.  The Internet has continued to free app-makers from dependency on Windows or any other desktop platform (and, thus, from dependency on Microsoft).  Apple’s iPhone has revolutionized the mobile business, unleashing a whole new wave of personal computing devices.  Apple’s iPad seems on its way to supplanting the low-end PC business.

Importantly, none of these trends depend in any way on Microsoft’s original monopoly and cash cow, Windows.  None of these trends generate so much as a dollar of revenue or profit for Microsoft.  (Microsoft is nowhere in mobile.  Or tablets.  And it is reasonable to think that, in these two huge growth businesses, nowhere is where Microsoft will always be).

Google, meanwhile, is trying to do the same thing to Apple that Microsoft did to Apple 15 years ago: Separate software and hardware and create a ubiquitous software platform for the world’s developers to build on.  This is a smart strategy, and it’s resonating in the developer and consumer communities: Google’s Android and Chrome started slow, but they’re gaining momentum rapidly.  What’s more, Google is not just undercutting the alternatives on price–it’s giving away its products for free.

Once again, the Chrome/Android momentum has nothing to do with Windows.  Once again, it doesn’t benefit Microsoft in any way.

Now take a look at what Microsoft’s biggest Windows customers–Dell, HP, and the other big PC manufacturers–are up to. Dell is in talks with Google to begin developing devices designed to run Chrome (and who can blame it–if it doesn’t do this, it will be left behind in the next wave of consumer devices). And HP just bought the wreckage of Palm so that it would have a better mobile operating system with which to compete against Apple.  From Microsoft’s perspective, these last two developments are disasters.

The Future Will Be PC-Centric? Only In Microsoft’s Dreams

As recently as a few years ago, Microsoft was still arguing that the future would be Windows-centric.  Sure, there would be millions of connected devices, the company said, but they would all orbit around the desktop PC, which would remain the center of the personal tech universe (and, thus, remain an ongoing source of immense “platform” profits).  The explosive uptake of iPhones, iPads, and Android-based devices is increasingly making this view seem preposterous.

The desktop PC isn’t the center of anyone’s universe anymore. The Internet is. And the Internet doesn’t require Windows.

In fact, it’s not hard to envision a future in which the “desktop PC,” as Microsoft currently defines it, becomes an oddity–a strange throwback to a world in which a single local hard drive (or a box of floppy disks) constituted the center of someone’s work life.

(Consider the absurdity in today’s world of syncing a mobile device with a single desktop PC.  What about all your other devices? What about the inconvenient location and single-point-of-failure of that single PC?  Why not just sync that PC–and every other device you own–with the cloud!  You don’t need a fancy operating system to do that).

In short, the monopoly platform characteristics that have protected Windows all these years are breaking down.  The PC’s relative importance in the world of personal technology is dwindling, and Microsoft has not been able to transfer Windows to other platforms. Google will soon be offering a free alternative for remaining PC-like devices, which, at the very least, will put pressure on Microsoft’s margins.

Add all that together, and there’s little good to say about the future of the Windows platform.

And Now On To Office

And then there’s Office, the other huge source of Microsoft’s profits.

Google has launched an Internet-centric version of Office: Google Apps. For now, Google Apps is inferior to Office for everything except collaboration. But it has all the hallmarks of a classic disruptive technology.

Specifically, Google Apps is cheaper, easier, and more convenient to use than Microsoft Office.  How do we know this? Because Google Apps is taking over the low-end of the market.  Google Apps is also steadily improving its features and migrating toward the middle of the market, which is what disruptive technologies do.  And it is already causing Microsoft to have to offer its own free Internet-based version of Office and cut the price of its latest version of desktop one to remain competitive.

(Pause for a moment and consider that: The only way Microsoft can compete with the free version of Google Apps is to offer a free version of Microsoft Office to match it.  Even if Microsoft Office were indisputably superior to Google Apps, which not one review we’ve read has suggested, how is that going to help Microsoft preserve its massive Office profits?)

Big companies are starting to ditch Microsoft Office for Google Apps.  If this becomes a trend, Microsoft’s second huge cash cow will be under immediate threat.

When will that happen?

Maybe not this year or next year.  But in all likelihood soon.

So, Remind Us Again What There Is To Be Excited About In Microsoft’s Future?

Microsoft Operating Profit

Take another look at the chart of Microsoft’s operating profit. The vast, vast majority of that profit comes from two businesses that are under aggressive attack.

What’s more, Microsoft has no obvious way to parry that attack.

One of its two huge competitors, Apple, is miles ahead of it in the growth of the most exciting and fastest-growing segment of the market, mobile devices. The other–Google–is giving away its competitive products for free.  Microsoft will NEVER be able to do that.

(Analysts are applauding and stomping their feet for the 4 percentage points of search market share Microsoft has clawed back in the past year. What they’re overlooking is how much Microsoft has PAID to gain those share points.  The odds are that Microsoft will never be able to build a large, profitable search business of any kind, let alone one that could fund a complete transformation of its business model into giving away Windows and Office for free.)

Right now, the investors are concluding that Microsoft will gradually become the equivalent of a technology utility–a boring but necessary provider of the software that runs the world’s business community.  A smaller, more optimistic crowd is still arguing that, one day, Microsoft will be able to turn its fortunes around, and fight its way back into an industry leadership position.

What almost no one is talking about is a third possibility, one that becomes more likely by the day: The possibility that, a couple of years down the road, Microsoft’s business may just completely collapse.

via The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft’s Business Will Collapse.

Amit Jindal
Aquevix

So why was Microsoft platform so bad?

No it is not third party applications. No it is not lack of CPU or memory. No it certainly NOT user error. No there are no missing updates. In fact there are no updates.

But of course it has its perks. Like all Microsoft products it comes with the problem of Virus and you can buy anti-virus.

Just today I came across a non related article. Here’s what infoworld has to say:

Microsoft’s real problem is Ballmer

Microsoft axed two top execs for mobile and entertainment, but giving more control to Ballmer is only going to make its problems worse

Whole lotta shakin’ coming from the Redmond, Wash., vicinity, and I’m not talking about an earthquake. Yesterday Steve Ballmer beheaded his president of entertainment and devices, 22-year veteran Microsoftie Robbie Bach. Bach’s top design guy, J Allard, went with him, though Allard is apparently being kept on in some vague advisory capacity probably to keep him out of the hands of Google.

According to Allard, “no chairs were thrown.”

Note that Bach is claming this is a “retirement” and was entirely his decision. I’m not buying it. If that were true, they’d have someone new in the wings to replace him, and Microsoft would be rolling out a big sheet cake with Bach’s name on it. That didn’t happen. This is a sudden, major reorg of a key part of Microsoft’s business.

Bach got the boot because Microsoft is taking it in the assets in the mobile space, and the Redmond Behemoth has belatedly realized that’s where its future lies.

Yes, the Windows Mobile OS sucks harder than an asthmatic at an oxygen bar, but I’m not entirely convinced that’s Bach’s fault. An interface that’s barely tolerable from 18 inches away with a full keyboard and mouse is completely useless on a 2- or 3-inch screen and a teensy keypad. And yet for years Microsoft has insisted on bringing the Windows to Windows Mobile.

Whose vision was that? It wasn’t Bach’s. Windows on every device? Windows to control your phones and your TVs and the lights in your house? Windows in your car? That belongs to our favorite semi-retired billionaire, the churros-munching, hurricane-battlin’ Billy Gates.

So with Bach gone, Steve Ballmer is taking over Microsoft’s mobile operations. That’s a little like saying, “Son, you crashed the car, so I’m going to hand the car keys to this gorilla and let him drive for a while.”

via Microsoft’s real problem is Ballmer | Adventures in IT – InfoWorld.

Doh!

Should have guessed it. My bad.

Red Hat’s CEO: Clouds can become the mother of all lock-ins

Cloud architecture has to be defined in a way that allows applications to move around, or clouds can become the mother of all lock-ins, warned Red Hat’s CEO James Whitehurst.

Once users get stuck in something, it’s hard for them to move, Whitehurst said in an interview. The industry has to get in front of the cloud computing wave and make sure this next generation infrastructure is defined in a way that’s friendly to customers, rather than to IT vendors, according to Whitehurst.

Lock-in comes in many different guises, including the inability to move workloads among different clouds, the difficulty of extracting data from the cloud and being forced to use the underlying virtualization platform chosen by the cloud provider.

Cloud Computing Deep Dive

Red Hat is focusing much of its efforts on the first of these potential issues. Certifying cloud partners is the most important thing Red Hat has been working on this year, according to Whitehurst. Making sure workloads are mobile in the new cloud-based environment is critical, Whitehurst said, and that is what its Premier Cloud Provider Program is about.

“Our customers can run the workload in their data center or migrate it to multiple cloud providers… and we’ll support you on it and your ISVs will support you on it,” said Whitehurst.

The cloud certification program was announced last year, and Amazon Web Services was the first cloud provider to get certified. Since then, NTT and IBM have been added to the list of certified partners and more are on the way, according to Whitehurst.

For a cloud provider to be certified it has to use a virtualization platform based on VMware’s ESX hypervisor, Microsoft’s Hyper-V or Red Hat’s own hypervisor, which is based on KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

To be able to move a workload from a data center to a cloud or between two clouds, a connecting API (application programming interface) is needed, and there are a plethora of different ones being developed. Fewer would be better, according to Whitehurst. However, the real challenge isn’t the API, but ensuring that the application will run with the same performance when it has been moved. That is what Red Hat is focusing on. Getting an API in place that allows a workload to be moved is only 10 percent of the work, Whitehurst said.

The next step is also being able to move also licenses along with the workloads, according to Whitehurst. In April, Red Hat announced Cloud Access, which will let enterprises use their subscriptions to support either traditional on-premise servers or servers hosted on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.

Red Hat isn’t the only company that wants to make it possible for companies to move their workloads among data centers and clouds. For example, VMware is developing the vCloud Service Director, previously code named Project Redwood. However, the tool is still being beta tested, and the plan is to ship it before the end of the year, according to Richard Garsthagen, senior evangelist at VMware in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

via Red Hat’s CEO: Clouds can become the mother of all lock-ins | Cloud Computing – InfoWorld.

At Aquevix we don’t hate the cloud. We simply are more cautious to  not get wet when it bursts.

Anyway, the conference did not turn out as useful as I had hoped. The initial talks were about Cloud Selling. Cloud is the future, cloud can bring literacy in lives of poor, cloud can feed the hungry and so on.

But when you look at the cost of Cloud, its on cloud 9.

How frequently do data centers go out that Clouds don’t? In the end, clouds also live on a data center, although distributed.

To me cloud computing seems like just a distributed hosting provider that is charging premium amounts for a new technology.

I seriously doubt this is the future of Windows platform.

Mr. Steve Ballmer, you are wrong again.

Just to re-iterate, Gandhi ji BURNED foreign good. He did not buy Montblanc.

Just how stupid you have to be?

These images jar with German pen maker Montblanc’s launch of a $25,000 pen to mark the 140th anniversary of his birth. Some see it as an insult to him.

One group has filed a lawsuit to try to stop its distribution. Montblanc says it is intended to honour Gandhi.

‘A simple lifestyle’

The $25,000 (£16,000) gold and silver limited edition pen has an engraving of Mahatma Gandhi, the man seen as the father of Indian independence and revered as a global spiritual leader.

It is a mockery of the great man and an insult to the nation

Dijo Kappen

Critics have questioned if the Montblanc pen is the best way to honour Gandhi. The Center for Consumer Education in Kerala has filed a lawsuit to try to stop distribution of the pen.

“Mahatma Gandhi advocated a simple lifestyle,” Dijo Kappen of the centre said.

“He was, of course, a nationalist and, in the nature of the independence movement, the only thing he promoted was Indian-made goods. It is a mockery of the great man and an insult to the nation… to use him as a poster boy.”

via BBC

One of these days, we will introduce a collector’s button that says “Montblanc is stupid”.