Computer Weekly asked The Corporate IT Forum if it had any questions to ask Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer as they were interviewing him. So how could we refuse?
With our latest Corporate IT Forum Reality Checker suggesting that corporations may skip Vista altogether and go straight to Windows 7, we asked why large businesses should upgrade to Vista rather than waiting for a software platform that could be released at the end of 2009.
And this is an extract of his full response.
“We dialed-up security in Vista, but we had to break backwards compatibility to make it secure,” he says. As a result, applications have needed to be re-engineered for Vista, slowing down the take-up in business.
Ballmer is adamant this will not happen again. “If we have to break backwards compatibility each time, we may as well get out of the operating systems business.”
The next version of desktop Windows, called Windows 7, will be an easy upgrade for Vista users. “We will not be changing the underlying software architecture in Windows 7.”
So, does this answer your question?
1 response so far ↓
1 Ian Farr // Oct 3, 2008 at 10:39 am
He didn’t answer the question directly, and proceeds to say the Salesforce has it wrong, whilst in the same breath saying Microsoft will offer the same SaaS option! Interestingly he chose to mention Saleforce and not Google - who must be more of a threat with their browser and apps (and a logical next step of offering this on Linux). Thin clients and virtual desktops are now becoming a stronger contender for the next upgrade - whether the server based element is Windows or Linux based must concerning Microsoft and hence their offering a variety of options to see what we bite on. We certainly have not bitten on Vista
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