Microsoft and management - steady as she goes
If there’s one thing Americans know how to do, its conventions. It seems that every town has its venue, and every association worth its salt will organise an event at least annually. In San Diego this week, Microsoft’s management summit cohabited the downtown convention center (sic) with the Society of Realtors and the American Association of Airport Executives. Take away the logos and defocus the eyes a little, and it becomes almost impossible to tell the difference.
It is surprising then, as I sip a beer at the airport on my way home from MMS, that I feel strangely puzzled. Everything was there – the executives bounding onto the stage for the keynotes, the hands on sessions with the experts, the exhibitors and their stands, the embroidered shirts and the giveaways. All the same, something didn’t feel quite right. After four days steeped in the place, the technologies and the messages, I think I’ve worked out what it was.
Microsoft management is in transition. From being a supplier of tools to help support its own products, which begat Systems Management Server (SMS) and then Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), the company is moving towards supporting a more holistic view of management. This much is obvious – we’ve all heard about the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) and Microsoft’s desire to manage heterogeneous (a.k.a. Microsoft plus Linux) environments. At the conference Microsoft announced acquisitions such as
AssetMetrix, aimed at rounding out the existing offering, in this case, software licensing. "Note that there is no 'Buy Now' button," said Bill Anderson in the demo of how this would be integrated. "We're not that evil!" quipped Kirill Tatarinov).
This is a long term play, and its going to take time. What’s less obvious is how this impacts Microsoft’s core customers for management products. While the company has made progress
since this time last year, Microsoft freely admits that it is unlikely to be able to tackle the “big four” enterprise management framework players – IBM, HP, CA and BMC – head on, by poaching their customers. Instead, Microsoft is initially looking to provide a more comprehensive offering for existing users of Microsoft management tools – potentially, but not exclusively, in conjunction with the enterprise frameworks.
As a company, Microsoft is looking to up the ante, to claim a seat at the table of enterprise management. It isn’t yet ready to do so: the gaps in its portfolio can’t be filled by announcements of future products, however committed it is to delivering on its roadmap. While Microsoft has a long-standing relationship with ITIL, this is largely to be found in its proscriptive advice (as the Microsoft Operations Framework, MOF) rather than being reflected in the products themselves.
In the short term at least, Microsoft’s customers will see little difference other than a rebranding of SMS and MOM to come under the “System Center” moniker. Customers will wait at least a year for the third pillar of System Center, the planned service desk, complete with configuration management database and ITIL-oriented workflows. Here’s the paradox: while Microsoft is talking the talk of enterprise management, it’s not yet walking the walk. More importantly, neither should it, not in the short term.
For the big four, “the walk” has often resulted in over-expensive, over-complex frameworks that have never quite delivered on their potential. In addition, such products, and the companies that provide them, depend quite heavily on services to supprt their implementation, something Microsoft has neither the desire nor the current capability to replicate. At the San Diego conference there were three thousand attendees, already versed in SMS and MOM. Microsoft has built its management business from the ground up, delivering practical tools to solve real problems. Whatever the company delivers over the next 18 months, it cannot afford to alienate its existing customer base – any new offerings will need to be as practical and grounded as the tools they replace, as it is the existing customers that are the most likely buyers of Microsoft’s next generation products.
It may be sorely tempting for Microsoft to paint a visionary picture of management, to pitch DSI alongside HP’s adaptive infrastructure or IBM’s autonomic computing. To do so would be folly, as these visions have largely been proven as guff. IBM is now distancing itself from matters autonomic , and HP is downgrading its hyperbolae to refer to the “adaptive infrastructure”. Microsoft's areas of strength are in the mid-market and in the Microsoft-centric shops in larger enterprises. While the goal may be heterogeneity, if it wants to retain its existing customers, Microsoft does not have the luxury of treating DSI purely as a marketing campaign. It has to deliver real results, to real people, solving real problems, or it will be perceived as a failure.
There’s the rub: Microsoft needs to present itself as “player”, all the while keeping its feet on the ground. The message may be big, but the audience is currently small, and that’s the way it should be, for now. A few years ago, at another user conference from another vendor, I was talking to a customer just after the keynote. “Those guys out there,” he said, indicating the execs who had just been speaking, “have no idea what its really like inside a data center.” Microsoft may not yet have a seat at the table, nor does it yet have the wherewithal to offer enterprise management across the board, but it does have the benefit of tangible, practical experience in its own domain. By working from the ground up and linking DSI to solving the real problems of real people, Microsoft stands the best chance of success.
