Will Microsoft start fading in the corporate world now?

[EphesiaNZ]

Just saw this article regarding Google's ever increasing adoption in the corporate sector.

Was it those Pawn Star dudes that MS got to diss Chrome OS a while back? Sorry guys, keep to your junk world...

 

[Peacemonger]

If you're talking corporate and enterprise, Windows Server 2008 (and even 2003) pretty much dominate, and Windows Server 2012 is slowly being adopted. It seems pretty stable and likely to continue to dominate the enterprise server market (at least the applications that cannot run on Linux).

Regarding desktops, I agree with you. While Windows 7 (and possibly 9) is the gorilla in the room, a lot of organizations and universities are switching to Google Apps, especially for e-mail.

A lot of organizations may not be able to migrate away from thick client Windows desktops for many reasons. Audit and compliance is one of them, and Chrome OS is a baby. System administrators like and understand their Group Policies that get enforced on Windows desktops and it would be impossible to enforce that on non-Windows desktops.

Also, many companies don't have fast enough networks (particularly if they have many locations and offices) that would support a thin client environment like through desktop virtualization via Citrix or VMware or what have you.

For example, I have some IT experience in the banking industry, and while it would have been AWESOME to have thin or zero clients at each bank branch location, the network was too painfully slow and unreliable that if they lost connectivity to the main corporate datacenters, all the branches and tellers and bankers would be left with nothing that works.

We're gradually moving towards more desktop virtualization, but we're not quite there yet.

Small and medium businesses and universities with one campus can more easily adopt. Large corporations and enterprises? No way. I'd like to see it, but it will take several more years.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

We're gradually moving towards more desktop virtualization, but we're not quite there yet.

Small and medium businesses and universities with one campus can more easily adopt. Large corporations and enterprises? No way. I'd like to see it, but it will take several more years.

Yeah I can agree with most of what you say about the enterprise space but that's down to the static behaviour of CTO's and CIO's who don't know anything else.

There have been several large organisation that have moved to Linux notably, the local governments of Munich and Vienna. India, China and Russia are now committing to it in a big way with a few other governments booting MS Office etc in favour of free software. We could also include the likes of Netflix that extensively use FreeBSD and also Linux to deliver there goods worldwide. I could go on listing tons more but you have Google for that - ah another big Linux user

Linux in the enterprise space is probably more a non-american thing in general probably due to that big gorillas hold on that market but the american government now uses RedHat Linux for some stuff and NASA continues to increase their use with Linux, noting the recent upgrade of the ISS from XP to Debian (choice move IMHO). And lets not forget uncle sams spy agency, wonder what the NSA uses to crunch all that data? Doubt it would be server 2012.

As far as virtualization goes, remember VMWare is a Linux solution which may be overtaken by Docker at some point as Google have now taken their offering to deliver a cloud based virtualization solution.

The next five years are going to be very interesting. Will Microsoft survive? of course they will but i would say they might look a lot different to now. A good move for MS would be to buy RedHat Linux - sounds silly? lets wait and see.