Poor old Microsoft is having a tough time of late. On Thursday last week, supergeek and company chairman Bill Gates sent out an executive memo in which he wrote: "As we increasingly rely on the Internet to communicate and conduct business, a secure computing platform has never been more important. Along with the vast benefits of increased connectivity, new security risks have emerged on a scale that few in our industry fully anticipated."
Two days later much of the Internet, and even banking systems, were brought to a standstill by yet another worm that takes advantage of holes in Microsoft`s software, in the process proving how much our world now relies on the Internet.
Microsoft must now look for new markets to keep the company name alive.
Alastair Otter, journalist, ITWeb
The timing of the SQL Slammer worm couldn`t have been worse (or better, depending on your position), but there is another coincidence. The memo was also a follow up to the launching of the so-called Trustworthy Computing initiative, exactly a year ago, in which Gates made security a top priority for the company. He even took 8 500 developers at the company out of production and sent them on a 10-week security training course.
It would seem this was all for nought as the project`s anniversary was marked by one of the biggest attacks by a worm in computing history. It may not have had the staying power of Nimda or Code Red but it arguably wreaked more havoc than those two, even shutting down payment systems and bank machines both locally and internationally.
Open source problems
The software giant also seems to be losing ground on the open source front. As fast as it offers special deals to governments and users alike, sentiment appears to swing against the proprietary vendor. A fact not improved by predictions like those of Meta Group, which sees the company being forced to port many of its applications over to Linux as early as next year.
In SA, the battle for government business appears to be all but lost with senior state officials vociferously advocating the use of open source. Some are even "coming out" and admitting their departments have been using open source for as long as they can remember.
So where to for Microsoft? There are many options facing the company; but giving up its source code is unlikely. Instead, the Redmond giant is slowly refocusing on other areas of work, notably the recent announcements of its entry into the watch industry and its concerted push into handheld devices, phones, games consoles and tablet PCs.
It is highly probable that the days of desktop and server Windows domination are coming quickly to an end. As they do, the company is looking to move away from being solely a software-maker to one that makes products that happen to run a flavour of its software. This is a smart move, and one that will ensure that Microsoft is still around in the next decade, although it could be a very different company.
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