The recently announced joint Hewlett-Packard/Microsoft Application-to-Infrastructure Model Partnership has intriguing possibilities for both companies and their respective and overlapping installed customer base. However, it remains to be seen how quickly and efficiently the two industry giants can deliver products and market the merits of the solution. Now $250 million is huge investment even for two high tech powerhouses like HP and Microsoft. So we know this is a serious committment.

To recap, HP and Microsoft said they will invest $250 million into their Frontline Partnership. The deal aims to deliver full, integrated stacks that support Microsoft’s Exchange Server and SQL Server, including management, virtualization and cloud implementations. The resulting product offerings will consist of pre-packaged application solution bundles that incorporate the aforementioned management and virtualization capabilities. The two companies said the pact calls for them to partner on engineering, R&D, marketing and channel sales.
Still, the announcement left many industry watchers with more questions than answers. As my colleagues Charles King and Merv Adrian noted in their Breaking News Review in the January 14 special edition of Charles King’s Pund-IT, HP and Microsoft “have worked closely for years, share tens of thousands of common customers and channel partners and have long supported each other’s interests.”
So what’s new about this announcement? That question should be answered during the coming months. A $250 million investment is considerable even for two high technology titans. It now remains for HP and Microsoft to execute on their promise to produce solutions that thoroughly integrate the two companies’ infrastructure and applications stacks to ship pre-configured and optimized solutions for Microsoft’s Exchange Server, and SQL Server, virtualization, cloud computing converged infrastructure and pre-packaged application tools.
But perhaps the most immediate and daunting challenge is for HP and Microsoft to deliver a product roadmap that also includes specific details about the pricing, training and services the two firms will commonly deliver. Above all, companies must market and sell this deal to the legions of skeptics. The high tech industry has witnessed numerous high profile partnership deals announced amidst much industry fanfare never to be heard from after the initial press releases.
Remember the Cisco Systems/Microsoft Directory Enabled Network (DEN) initiative of the late 1990s? No. Not many people do. Announced with great fanfare, this dream team was supposed to incorporate the functionality of Microsoft’s Active Directory into Cisco routers and provide network administrators with a more comprehensive means of managing various devices on their network. In reality, the Cisco/Microsoft DEN initiative was a partnership on paper only. There are dozens of similar examples. Hence, the skepticism that greets such announcements is understandable.
This is all the more reason for HP and Microsoft executives to follow up on last week’s announcement with quick, decisive action and not just more fodder for the PR Newswire. For example, when can we expect to see the first fruits of the so-called “deeply optimized machine environment” that will provide turn-key, pre-packaged and pre-integrated server, application, networking and storage solutions? Who are the specific target users and how will they benefit? How will Microsoft and HP license and service these products? Those are just a few of the questions that need to be answered.
Non-Exclusive Partnerships Sometimes Make Strange Bedfellows
The partnership also has especially intriguing implications for HP which now has pacts in place with all of the major virtualization providers, including Microsoft’s biggest rival, and VMware. The new HP/Microsoft Application-to-Infrastructure is a non-exclusive three year partnership. It’s worth noting that HP already has a deal in place with VMware, whose ESX Server is the market leader in server virtualization. Microsoft also gets a boost from this deal. Microsoft’s Hyper-V has been gaining ground, particularly among small and mid-sized corporations. However, it has a long way to go to catch up to ESX Server’s installed base, particularly among large enterprises, so this pact helps keep Microsoft competitive. Additionally, HP also delivers a full suite of management solutions that integrates VMware’s vCenter offering with HP’s Insight management product. HP and Microsoft intend to similarly integrate HP’s Insight and Microsoft’s Systems Center. So again, this helps Microsoft broaden the appeal of its virtualization appeal to its existing base and makes it a more attractive solution for prospective customers.
The partnership with Microsoft put’s HP in the proverbial cat-bird’s seat: it now has a full line of its own servers that runs all the VMware products and similar plans to support Microsoft’s SQL Server and Exchange Server. This gives HP the ability to offer a full line of integrated hardware and services customers their choice of virtualization vendors, while remaining agnostic.
From Microsoft’s perspective, the partnership with HP also has immediate value: it allows Microsoft – at least on paper – to keep pace with VMware, by working with HP, a top OEM hardware vendor and services provider, which is no mean feat. Former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz who now runs VMware is intent on rejuvenating that company and he knows that the way to solidify and expand VMware’s influence is to increase its stake in management and applications. Just last week, VMware purchased Zimbra, the open source Email and collaboration unit of Yahoo for a rumored $100 million. Not coincidentally, Zimbra describes its Collaboration suite as the “next generation” Microsoft Exchange server.
Microsoft clearly felt the need to respond in kind.
The plethora of technology and partnership deals such the HP/Microsoft Application-to-Infrastructure pact, serve as a reminder of the intensity of the IT industry’s competitive landscape – particularly in burgeoning markets like virtualization and by extension, nascent markets like cloud computing. No vendor can afford to rest on its laurels. They must continue to upgrade their product and services offerings to keep pace with the competition.
Microsoft and VMware will continue to try and top one another, and HP is the beneficiary of this ongoing rivalry. Let’s hope the end users are also winners, too.

For the second year in a row, IBM AIX UNIX running on the Power or “P” series servers, scored the highest reliability ratings among 15 different server operating system platforms – including Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX and Windows.

Those are the results of the ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey which polled C-level executives and IT managers at 400 corporations from 20 countries worldwide. The results indicate that the IBM AIX operating system whether running on Big Blue’s Power servers (System p5s)  is the clear winner, offering rock solid reliability. The IBM servers running AIX consistently score at least 99.99% or just 15 minutes of unplanned per server, per annum downtime.

Overall, the results showed improvements in reliability, patch management procedures and an across-the-board reduction in per server, per annum Tier 1, Tier 2 and the most severe Tier 3 outages.  Among the other survey highlights:

• IBM leads all vendors for both server hardware and server OS reliability as well as the fewest number of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 unplanned server outages per year. IBM AIX running on the System p5s had less than one unplanned outage incident per server in a 12 month period. More impressively, the IBM servers experience no Tier 3 outages. Tier 3 outages are the most severe and usually involve more than four hours or a half-day worth of downtime and can also result in lost data.
• HP UX also performed well though HP servers notch approximately 25 minutes more downtime than IBM servers, depending on model and configuration – or just under 40 minutes per server, per annum downtime.
• IT managers spend approximately 11minutes to apply patches to IBM servers running the AIX operating system, which is again, the least amount of time spent patching any server or operating system. The open source Ubuntu distribution is a close second with IT managers spending 12 minutes to apply patches, while IT managers in the Apple Mac OS X 10.x. Novell SuSE and customized Linux distribution environments each spend 15 to 19 minutes applying patches.
• IBM also took top honors in another important category: IBM Power servers and AIX experience the lowest amount of the more severe Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages combined of any server hardware or server operating system. The combined total of Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages accounted for just 19% of all per server, per annum failures.
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 showed the biggest improvements of any of the vendors. The Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems running on Intel-based platforms saw a 35% reduction in the amount of unplanned per server, per annum downtime from 3.77 hours in 2008 to 2.42 hours in 2009. The number of annual Windows Server Tier 3 outages also decreased by 31% year over year and the time spent applying patches similarly decline by 35% from last year to 32 minutes in 2009.
• This year’s survey for the first time, also incorporated reliability results for the Apple Mac and OS X 10.x OS platform.  The survey respondents indicated that Apple products are extremely competitive in an enterprise setting. IT managers spend approximately 15 minutes per server to apply patches and Apple Macs recorded just under 40 minutes of per server, per annum downtime.

The long awaited successor to Windows XP and Windows Vista, will ship several months earlier than planned. Expectations are high industry-wide.

Windows 7 is crucial to Microsoft’s over-arching software business and technology strategy for the next two years. Although it is an incremental upgrade and not a major overhaul of the underlying Vista kernel, Windows 7 represents a crucial upgrade for both consumer and corporate customers.

Practically speaking, Windows 7 must do what Vista didn’t: deliver near seamless, plug and play integration and interoperability with the overwhelming majority of Microsoft and third party applications, device drivers, utilities and hardware peripherals. As a standalone operating system (OS) Vista was fine. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a standalone OS. The lack of backwards compatibility between Vista and third party software and even incompatibilities in the file formats between Vista and Office 2007 and other Microsoft products was a nightmare for corporations and consumers alike.

As a result, there is no margin for error. Windows 7 must fulfill users’ expectations, business and technology needs from the first day it ships. Microsoft will not get a second chance to make a good first impression. Failure to do so could send customers running to rival desktop platforms like Apple’s Mac OS X 10.x and Linux distributions, or even online options such as those being pitched by Google. . And if Windows 7 does not deliver the features, integration, interoperability and reliability Microsoft is promising, it may well create a domino effect that adversely impacts the upcoming releases of related solutions like Exchange Server and the Office platform.

Integration and interoperability are the most important criteria, besting even cost, when it comes to choosing a new technology. The results of ITIC’s May 2009 Application Availability survey of 300 businesses worldwide found that 60% of business said integration and interoperability with existing and legacy applications tops the list of “must have” items in new software application and operating system purchases. Cost came in a close second with 56% of the respondents followed by ease of use and installation (55%).

The stakes for Windows 7 are also high because of intensified competition. Rumors abound that Microsoft pushed up the release date by at least three months so that Windows 7 hits the streets in advance of the low cost netbook version of Google’s Android. Microsoft also faces increased competition in its decades-old rival Apple. During the past two years Apple’s Mac OS X 10.x running on Apple’s Intel-based proprietary hardware has been making a comeback in corporate enterprises. Apple products do not represent a significant threat to Microsoft’s corporate desktop dominance, but they can nibble at the fringes, potentially dilute momentum [for Windows 7] and take some market share. In this ongoing global economic downturn, no vendor wants to concede any revenue or even a percentage point of market share.

Microsoft of course is acutely aware of these issues. In recent months, company CEO Steve Ballmer and Senior Vice President Bill Veghte have publicly stated that users were stymied by the incompatibility issues they encountered with Vista. They intend to avoid those problems with Windows 7.

Fortuitously, for Microsoft, there are many factors in Windows 7’s favor. They include:

• Pent-up Demand. To date, only 10% of the 700 survey respondents in ITIC’s 2009 Global IT and Technology Trends Global Deployment Survey have deployed Vista as their company’s primary desktop operating system. The results indicated that Windows XP remains the primary desktop OS for 89% of the respondents. Nearly half—45%—of the survey respondents indicated they would skip Vista and migrate from XP to Windows 7. The main reasons for this were cost constraints associated with the bearish economy, and reluctance to undertake a complex OS upgrade with manpower constraints.

  The prevailing sentiment among businesses is that they can afford to wait because Windows XP adequate met their business and technology needs over the last two years. ITIC believes this bodes well for Windows 7 deployments in the short and intermediate term. If 20% of the installed base of legacy Windows XP users migrate or indicate their intention to upgrade to Windows 7 within the first three or four months of shipment, Microsoft will be well-positioned. There is a reasonable likelihood of this, providing Windows 7 delivers the goods. And the advance word from customers interviewed by ITIC is generally positive.

• New feature set. Windows 7 will have six different versions, but to minimize the confusion that accompanied the Vista launch, only the Home Premium and Professional editions will be widely sold in retail outlets. Specific versions that are designed for enterprise use or developing nations will be aggressively marketed to those specific accounts and geographic regions, thus taking the guesswork out of purchasing. Most importantly: Microsoft says that every one of the versions will include all of the capabilities and features of the edition below it which will help to minimize upgrade woes. Corporations and consumers that want to move to a more feature rich version of Windows 7 can use Windows Anytime Upgrade to purchase the upgrade online and unlock the features of those editions from their desktops.

  ITIC interviewed several dozen Windows 7 beta users over the last several months and an overwhelming 9 out of 10 respondents expressed their satisfaction with improvements in many Windows 7’s core capabilities when compared to both Windows XP and Vista. This includes faster boot sequence, better reliability, improved security, a much faster and more comprehensive search engine, and more flexible configuration options. Additionally, Microsoft bolstered the inherent security of Windows 7 with DirectAccess and BitLocker To Go features. The DirectAccess capability is designed to provide remote, traveling and telecommuting workers with the same secure connectivity as though they were local by establishing a VPN “tunnel” to their corporate networks. BitLocker To Go extends the data encryption features introduced in Vista to include removable storage devices such as USB thumb drives support in Windows 7. Users can employ a password or a smart card with a digital certificate to unlock and access their data. And the devices can be used on any other Windows 7-based machine with the correct password. Users can also read, but not modify data on older Windows XP and Vista systems.

• Economical and feature rich Licensing contracts. Finally, the terms and conditions of Windows 7 licensing contracts promise to make upgrades easier on corporate IT budgets. In February, Microsoft said it would provide a license that will allow customers to directly upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. There is a caveat, though: users will have to wipe their hard drives and perform a clean install – so technically, it’s not an upgrade. Microsoft has not yet released pricing details for Windows 7 but ITIC believes the upgrade license will most likely cost 20% to 40% less than a new license.

  Additionally, corporations that purchased Microsoft’s Software Assurance Maintenance and upgrade plan as a standalone product or received it as part of their Enterprise Agreement (EA) licenses, are entitled to free upgrades to Windows 7 since it is an incremental release. Additionally, in order to make life easier for users (and to engender goodwill) Microsoft is letting the Release Candidate (RC) free trial license for Windows 7 last a full year until June 2010! And users looking for a discounted version of Windows 7 to run on low cost, minis or netbooks take note: Microsoft and Intel have agreed that in order for a device to be considered a netbook, the screen must not exceed 10.2” Prior to this, Microsoft allowed customers to get the Windows XP or Vista discount for or devices as large as a 12.1” screen.

In summary, all indications are that Microsoft has learned from its Vista mistakes. As a result, businesses and consumers stand ready to reap significant benefits in compatibility, features, pricing and licensing with Windows 7.