I'm coming at you from the Walt Mali house in Universal Studios. In Orlando. In Orlando. And we're here with the Microsoft TechEd. Microsoft TechEd 2007. There is a war happening. What is that war? The war is between IBM and Microsoft. How so? On what fronts? All the fronts. All of them? At the moment it's a land war in Asia. Microsoft should not be fighting that fight. So, do you have the American Gundon ball again? Americans always get involved. Hold on. But officially. How do we put your post pro hard? I don't know. Are the Americans involved? So, what did you think of the SOA stuff over here all day? Because it seemed like the first time that we played a big way for Microsoft to say yes. Microsoft said the SOA word. That's right, the S word. The S word. I thought it was good. I think Microsoft said the SOA word, which is a start. Now they just need a story instead of can't wait. Right, right. And what was the character of that? Well, it began really good. It began by saying, "Gross roots. It's about developers. It's not top down. It's not modeling." But then, John Pereira, the GM, began to get a little bit more CDBP, I guess. Was it a CDBP or a GM? I forget. CDBP. Then he started getting prickly and he wanted to say that everybody else sucked. And that's when it wasn't so good. It was all modeling this. We went back to trench war. We went back to trench war. Right. Whereas, the best of the issue is being simple about developers, not like that big bullshit that IBM is trying to sell. Right, right. Not that IBM is only selling bullshit, but that's what Microsoft should say. Now, you are at the -- I guess we're getting into IBM territory -- but you are at the IBM SOA impact conference. So, what is that customer market? It's all about the big top-down. And do you think Microsoft is going to go after that or are they going to stay in their kind of mid to lower enterprise and every now and then a big enterprise or anything? Because that's always my question with Microsoft is can they jump out of their sort of desktop
2:03and the kind of like the realms they need to be placed in whether they want you or not in that area? Well, I think that that segmentation is possibly a false segmentation. It's not about like -- I like it. -- a small business, a medium business, and a large business. Sure, sure. It's really about just entry points. Well, I would tell you I was -- I had always thought of an energizer as a large business. So, it's kind of interesting to hear this characterize their IT department needs as a small job. Yes. Because you would think, you know, the energizer bunny and the razor piece and all that. That would be like, you know, Colgate-Palmolive scale. Absolutely. But I guess not. So, when IBM bought Informix and they did their initial customer segmentation, Sears was considered a medium-sized business. Ah, that's right. And so, when our friends at Sears Robot are a medium-sized business. Right. He questions what's big and what's small and -- Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's like today. They said, "Oh, yeah. We've missed British stockings or the UK, the London Stock Exchange." Right. Microsoft end-to-end. That's not actually true. They're on tandem. Some of the data is provided by Microsoft. That is true. Well, as we found out with the Virgin Megasport, there's always an AS400 program. There always is an AS400 somewhere in the shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That goes without saying. Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, it seems to me they've got lots of cool stuff. They just now need to say cool things about the cool stuff. And what do you think the coolest thing they can say would be? Uh, keep it simple. Make it simple, not complex. Don't be afraid of word service. Right, right, right. But don't make it a service play like IBM. Now, I've got to admit that I was flagging a little quarter of the day. Because I hadn't had much sleep in a long day. And so I thought I was going to be really excited when we got to the service part. Yes. Not SOA service. But service. Software, the service, or whatever. But then everybody was on AS400. But then I don't know if I was the person who just instantly turned off before the contest. But I'm curious what you thought. Oh, I thought that was the best session.
4:04Oh, yeah. And Markovic, I think A, he seemed the most engaged presenter of the day. So that was cool. That's cool. And then they also came up with this incredible, fucked out of the ass statistic that within 10 years, if possible, we will have... Yeah. That was, uh, that was, uh, that was duty. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That was good. That was actually good technique. The idea was that within 10 years, it's possible to be 30% of Microsoft Exchange business will be hosted by Microsoft. Wow. So they can all run everything. So I think it's bye-bye EDS. Bye-bye all the other providers. Right, right. And hello DOJ. Now, you know, that's the thing I've written about several times. Uh-huh. It always troubles me about the elder companies getting into the service world. Basically, how are they going to, like, either A, be comfortable with eviscerating all their partners, or somehow transition their partners into that world, right? Because the whole idea, well, the trick is don't worry about partners. Ah, so it's option A. Yeah. The question is how big is the revenue stream? Right, right. If the revenue is big enough, then it's time to shoot your partner. Yeah, you like that. So what got me was the audience was very bold this morning. That's true. I don't know if it's the IT pro audience, but it wasn't like... Sometimes you go to a Microsoft conference and everything, it's like, "We're going to resize this window automatically." Yeah, that's all right! Well, you know what they did the show? Was it either ECM in Boston last year or one of the MMSs? Probably both. Where they would basically show them using PowerShell. You know, like, "I've just configured 20 Exchange servers in, like, one line." That would have been cool! And then the crowd, like, goes wild. They would have shit themselves if they had done that to them. They had one segment where they had a little bit of PowerShell. PowerShell is what they should be showing. They should have just started today and said, "This is PowerShell." Right. They just impressed the shit out of everybody. They kept saying, "Here's this demo. Under the covers is PowerShell." Right, right. "Well, then show us what's under the friggin' covers." That's true. You know, I kind of think that a lot stronger messaging along PowerShell, and I really like the modern stuff they have. Yep. I think combining those two together in a very, like, focused outward messaging thing would...
6:04If Microsoft does that, the crowd would get excited. I mean, 'cause even 10 videos in 720p or whatever, it's, you know, whatever. But it's not even when they come on, Lauren. They're beginning to get it. Yeah. It's like, we're gonna talk about virtualization and management. Here's a command line. We're gonna configure a server. Right. Windows server core. Right. That stuff is good. Now, I wonder if Silverlight has PowerShell. I mean, it probably does, right? Because everything has a little CLR bind. You can PowerShell just such as whatever CLR stuff. But there again, what the fuck would you do with Silverlight and PowerShell? That's a great question. Well, you know, I was sitting on, when we were coming back, and when they announced... No, this was JavaFX. We were coming back from Java 1. It was this Enterprise Architect. He was very excited about JavaX. Not a characteristic of himself for just, you know, that Warby Enterprise guy. Yep. And he actually had a good point. He was an architect. He was like, I write all these rules to run our, you know, behind the firewall stuff. And I'm excited that there might be a UI technology. But it doesn't suck. So I can just have an easy-to-do UI thing on top of these utilities. And that, to me, was like, you know... I mean, you know my big thing is all this RIA stuff. Like, I'm always freaked out that they're working with that whole player. They're cooking the web? Forking. Forking the web! Okay. It must be my American accent. Must be that. But then I realized, really, they just make it a nice desktop. And that's how I calm myself down. Which might be a little self-deception. But that guy here, I'm driving home. So, maybe that is how you get the PowerShell's crowd excited about silver. And, in fact, that brings in Adobe because, of course, the customers that we saw doing stuff with Apollo, some of them were system management. Like, uh... So, EMC and eBay. Yeah. eBay has some pretty cool management stuff, front-ended with Apollo. What else? What else is there to say about, uh... Well, we had virtualization. We did have virtualization. We did have virtualization. Now, the, uh... I've been saving this question part of all. We have one-on-one. But there's... The thing that I'm kind of interested in is essentially... I mean, you know, as we've been labeled before, we're sort of all those sorts of standard things, right? So, I feel that virtualization really just needs to be standardized. Like, all this... VMware's and error virtualization or any crap like this...
8:04Right? So, I'm concerned with, like, let's just freaking standardized. I'm sorry, how do we do that? There you go. That's the question. We've got, uh... We've got Jason Adams now. We've got some... We've got some interop stuff going here. Right? So... And then we've got the whole, uh... Yes, we work with VMware. We'll fully post an image and convert it to our Meridian. Well, I believe they call that the embrace. Right, right. And so... My question is... When we deliver Meridian, we can extend... Exactly. So, you know, the idea here is, uh... You know, not getting quite set up again. But, like, how... I think VMware might be like these cigars. I think VMware might prove to be a lot like these cigars. They will not be extinguished quite as easily as you might expect. Yeah, yeah. You know, I was sent to be a brand this day. And they're, uh... They have a little bit of danger in part of them. There's two things I think they have danger in part of them. One, they're about to go public. Which is always a dangerous time. That is? You might leave, right? Or you might just get lazy. And I'll get lazy. It's true. And also, they have a grand big variety of, like, total everything. Which is sort of like, you know, when I go up to Thanksgiving and I see that buffet and there's a big turkey there, I want to eat the whole turkey. You want to eat the whole turkey? I understand. But you can't do that. No, you can't. Because you're just going to be sick and you've had all this bourbon. Yeah. It's not going to be a good thing. No, no. So, I mean, that's the thing I see with VM. I think they... They've got a big piece of meat on them. And we'll see what they can do. I mean... Are they booking the web? I don't think they have anything to do with the web. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now I get it. Yeah, I agree. I mean, they are so ambitious that you almost think they won't pull it off. But, I mean, I don't know. Very good. They also are successful in that walking. People love that stuff. Maybe they will. People love that stuff. That is true. Anyway, I mean, back to the Viridian thing. I mean, I just kind of feel like we just need to standardize ourselves. Like our virtualization stuff. Just having like two, three different things running around. Well, that's why Microsoft said it's going to work with Zen to kill VMware. Then we'll only have two. But then we'll have Sun. Does Sun count? Islar and Ed? They're clever in their marketing. They call it... Containers. So, they're kind of spurting around the edge of what's going on there and what's happening.
10:07And, you know, they're taking them more gorillas, sort of. Right. But they're just off in the hills. From a capability standpoint. I think that's a big point. Yeah. Absolutely. Because Linux definitely has a way to run. I think if they're Indiana stuff, it's in Shell. So, I guess we need to wrap up. We've been rambling. Well, we've had Neil film. Neil, what do you think? Neil? My arm's ache. I don't want to mischaracterize, in general, what you do. But I know that you're big into business IT alignment. That's exactly right. Exactly. And so, I'm actually pretty generally interested. It will never happen. What do you think about the business IT alignment stuff that we heard about today? Because I remember at MMS, if I remember some of your posts, you thought it could be a little bit more finessing of things. And so, do you think we've come somewhere since MMS? I think Microsoft is making the right noise, but it's when they move from the noise to the actual delivery. And so, what kind of milestones or sort of checks will you have to see if the… So, that's a good noise to signal ratio? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, how do you think we can track the signal as far as that coming out? Partly adoption. Right. Actually, Microsoft is talking to a different audience and the audience is listening. Right, right. So, the top-down SOA story, I agree, is a good one. The top-down SOA without… the bottom-up SOA without the top-down is just not going to work. Right, right, right. What do you think of SOA from the middle? Now, there's a novel question. Yeah, that's a fucking good question. Well, we'll leave it at that. It is a good question. Yeah. SOA from the middle. So, what are you going to be hoping to see next year? Should we come to this event again? Yeah. We should come to this event again. And what I want to see is an integrated story. Oh, good. So, more than the integration on PowerPoint. But just sort of like a whole architecture story that you could say, like, here, if you
12:17want to do the Microsoft way of developing something, here it is. Yeah. Well, here comes the fruit. Here comes the fruit. Here comes the fruit. Here comes the fruit. Watch out. We're fruit. We're being attacked by fruit. And the cheese. How about yourself, James? What are you looking for next year? I want a less integrated story. I'm into disintegration. I think that's what comes after integration. Integration sucks. Right. Aggravated or integrated aggravation. That's not what I'm into. So, I want less integration of the story. I want more clue train. And I want to have to come because more parts of Microsoft are paying us money so that we have to come because they're paying us money. Oh, that's a good wish list. Yeah. We'll see what happens if we get oranges, coal, or a good stocking stuffer. Thank you, guys.