MS moves into 'get Longhorn on the road' mode

If Windows didn't exist, Microsoft would be a far poorer and more obscure company - if, that is, it still existed at all, because most of its contemporaries from the 70s don't. So, what is wrong with this sentence: '[Microsoft has formed a new division, the Windows Core Operating System division, to focus closely on Windows OS technologies and to drive Longhorn development.'? Yes, you're quite right. The correct answer is, 'Er, shouldn't it have one of these already?'

Indeed it should, and indeed in some senses it did have, but the reasons why Microsoft feels the need to conduct a reorganisation now speak volumes about the way the company develops software. Although Windows is key, from a revenue and business development point of view leveraging market share in other areas is more important for the company and its bean counters. Some years ago when Bill Gates and Steve Baller were inventing the .NET vision Ballmer said that Microsoft intended to make the leap from a product company to a services one, and while subsequently this flip has not exactly been visibly successful, it's been an imperative that has had a major effect on overall development.

Microsoft in general has a need for all sorts of miscellaneous stuff to be part of the grand vision of the Windows Platform (whatever we might be choosing to call it today), so the Windows Platform becomes an ever-shifting, ever-expanding pile of stuff, and it becomes ever more impossible to build and ship new revs.

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