Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Bill Hilf, Industry Conferences

Tales from the road, Vegas, and the Microsoft Technology Summit…

billhilf — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:45:00 GMT

I recently spent time in South East Asia. As always these trips are enlightening, but as I wrote before one of the most important missions of these visits is to understand the health, growth and diversity of the local software economy. And it’s not just the Microsoft related software economies, but how all software is growing in a country. Indonesia is a particularly interesting example, with thousands of islands, over 250M people, and broadband and PC penetration in very low single digits, the potential for a powerful and unique software ecosystem is very real. While I was there I had a chance to talk with computer science students at BINUS International in Jakarta which was personally very motivating. The Philippines has extraordinary characteristics related to SMS or ‘texting’ (in 2005, over 250M text messages a day) and the use of mobile devices and technologies. With 6% GDP growth and the rapid growth and utilization of technology such as mobile devices (and also some very exciting online gaming businesses such as LevelUp!), I expect the Philippines to boom in the software world.

In Thailand I visited Software Park and discussed local software growth with one of the premier software incubation agencies in Bangkok. Take a look at their Software Gallery (photo on right), creatively showing off all the published software from the companies incubated at the park. Software Park was a very cool place to visit, certainly a vibrant and passionate development environment but they also have amazing elevators, no buttons inside the elevator car, you tell the security guard what floor you need to go to, and they key it in. At first I thought it was just for security, but it is also a much more efficient system as the sequence is always point-to-point, no randomization or mistakes.

I also spent time with members of the Thai software community, where we originally planned about an hour, but ended up going on for about two and a half once we got into questions. The discussion was great and I want to thank everyone who attended for spending the time and all the questions.

One fascinating trend in each of these emerging markets is technology generation skipping. With the fast growth and size of population, it’s not uncommon for the market to jump over an entire generation of technology. Indonesia is a good example, with such low broadband usage (and infrastructure) many users are simply going direct to 3G wireless versus moving from dial-up to broadband. I’ve seen this in other countries as well – it’s exciting because this type of exponential growth is fertile ground for big and surprising innovation. It’s an awesome time to be a software developer in environments like this.

Next trip couldn’t be more different, Las Vegas for Mix 07 – where Sam and I will be attendees only (first time actually ‘attending’ a conference for me in years, which I’m excited about). There will be some very cool stuff at Mix07 – such as WPF/E, opening up Windows Live data, Open Source applications using the .NET platform (with my friend Andi Gutmans from Zend on the panel), and a panel discussion called “Can’t ASP.NET and PHP Get Along?” (all session info here). I think it will really be a great event, in addition keynoting will be Ray Ozzie and Robbie Bach and Scott Guthrie (if you want to see a rock star demo don’t miss Scott’s talk). Here are a few preview ‘buzzcasts’ to give you an idea of what’s in store. Vegas baby!

I’m looking forward to being back in Redmond this week, Monday I talked with folks at the Microsoft Technology Summit. I enjoyed the conversation; hope the attendees did as well (some blog coverage here).

-Bill

Software in Thailand

MichaelF — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:01:00 GMT

On a recent visit to Thailand I had the opportunity to meet a variety of customers, open source community members, government officials and new Microsoft people. A great part of my job is the opportunity to understand the state of the software industry in different countries around the world – both in developed and emerging countries. It’s fascinating to see the patterns of similarities and often surprising to learn about the myriad of country-specific characteristics that influence the evolution and growth of a software industry. My visit to Thailand was remarkable in both of these areas. I visited at a time where the government was under some unstable conditions – although the environment is amazingly under control and calm. The state of the Thai software industry is relatively segmented, with some areas quite advanced and some under significant early development.

The role of Microsoft in a country like Thailand is somewhat different than in many large developed countries. In countries like Thailand, Microsoft participates heavily in the growth and health of the software industry. Certainly we do this in large countries as well, but it’s much more direct and hands on in countries like Thailand. Naysayer’s will claim this is so we can just ‘sell more’ to new audiences. Of course we care about software sales (we’re a commercial software business!) but in these environments we prioritize the condition of the software ecosystem as it’s the basis for any near or future business. For example, the Microsoft general manager for a country like Thailand (Andrew in the photo below – far right) will spend a good portion of their time working on country-wide initiatives for improved software education, or in cross-vendor forums focusing on improved software security, or in helping the government plan for software infrastructures for future natural disasters (tsunamis, for instance). What I find interesting, is that many people, particularly in the U.S., don’t often see this side of Microsoft and it is a very important part of our role as a business, community and industry leader to help the entire software ecosystem grow and prosper.

Related to this, one of my trip highlights was a dinner in Bangkok with some of the leading science and technology thinkers in the Thai government around the future of IT in Thailand*. Below is a photo of (left to right): Dr. Chadamas Tuwasetakul, Assistant to Director, National Electronic and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC); Dr. Pairash Thajchayapong, Senior Advisor to National Science and Technology Development Agency; me; Dr Thaweesak Koanantakool, Director, NECTEC; Andrew McBean, General Manager, Microsoft Thailand.

We had a great discussion about software for children in K-12 classrooms, the benefits and challenges to delivering country-wide computing infrastructure for environments that have numerous IT challenges (such as very few technical support staff). We also talked about commercial and free software, Microsoft’s position on OSS, standards, interoperability and our future product line – particularly Windows Vista and Office 2007. It was a great and opinionated discussion and I learned much from Dr. Tuwasetakul, Dr. Thajchayapong, and Dr. Koanantakool, their insight was highly valuable.

The software industry is going through tremendous growth in Thailand. I feel there is much to be learned from watching these next frontier software ecosystems, to see how they develop their industries in this new era of software economies, how they learn from other economies, countries and trends and most importantly how they create a software legacy that is both prosperous and uniquely Thai.

O’Reilly blogger Allison had an interesting term, technodiversity that I think is a great way of thinking about ecosystem evolution. I believe strongly that intellectual invention, innovation, and both pragmatic and expressible interoperability are keys to achieving this type of technodiversity. In an upcoming blog entry I hope to dive more into this area of pragmatic and expressible interoperability to describe why this often fuzzy term ‘interoperability’ is crucial to growing ecosystems. Warning – expect unusual correlations to trains, newts and other seemingly random but (to be illustrated) relevant examples to the subject.

bill

* To be fair, earlier in the day I spent time with James Clark, long time OSS/XML developer and now part of SIPA (Software Industry Promotion Agency) and the leading OSS promoter in Thailand, and I would include James as one the leading thinkers on software in Thailand as well.

Distributing the Future: Open Source at Microsoft

jcannon — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:58:00 GMT

Last week, O'Reilly Media posted portions of two conversations that took place at the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing. One between Tim O'Reilly and Brian Behlendorf about lessons from Apache and CollabNet, and the onter between Bill Hilf and Danese Cooper of Intel about Open Source at Microsoft. O'Reilly was kind enough to allow us to re-post these discussions on Port 25 - we're hoping you enjoy the lively, and frank discussion as much as we did. Details below...

From O'Reilly:
Distributing the Future August 21, 2006: "Open Source at Microsoft"
Total running time: 33:40

0:50 Software as Service
There's a lot of software that you use each day without downloading to your own machine. From the O'Reilly Radar's Executive Briefing at OSCON, CollabNet Founder and CTO Brian Behlendorf talks to Tim O'Reilly about the lessons he's learned from Apache and CollabNet. (9:42)
10:32 Microsoft on Open Source
It can't be easy being the person who speaks for Microsoft about its Open Source strategy. Microsoft General Manager for Platform Strategy Bill Hilf talks to Intel's Danese Cooper about licensing, the Open Document Format, and more generally, about Open Source at Microsoft. (22:26)

Production Notes
The initial montage is from Tim O'Reilly, recorded at OSCON '04 in a phone interview with Doug Kaye of IT Conversations, and used with permission. "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet" is a quote from author William Gibson that Tim used with attribution.

Credits include special thanks to David Battino for composing and performing the theme music. David can be found at Batmosphere.com, and he also edits O'Reilly's Digital Audio site. David provided a lot of help and feedback getting this program launched. We used Soundtrack Pro, Bias Peak, and Audio Hijack Pro to put it together.

Daniel H. Steinberg is a developer, a longtime technical writer, and currently spends most of his time podcasting for O'Reilly.

Mindedness

jcannon — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:00:00 GMT

A couple weeks ago I was put in the ‘hot seat’ at the O’Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at OSCON in Portland. Danese Cooper from Intel had a lineup of questions to ask and we had fun (really) discussing many of the issues about Microsoft and Open Source. In his blog, Tim mentioned one of my quotes from this session about dealing with ‘close mindedness’ around the issues of Microsoft and OSS, as it’s something that I deal with daily. Being on the hot seat answering these types of question and dealing with close mindedness is part of my job, I’m not complaining, but I did think it was worthwhile to expand on what I meant by this comment.

In 2 ½ years in this job, I’ve learned a lot. But maybe one of the most interesting is related to the seemingly obvious fact that everyone has an opinion about Microsoft. Good or Bad, but rarely indifferent – for what it’s worth, this is not common of most companies. There are many reasons why this happens, of course, but it does introduce an opinionated, subjective element into every conversation I have.

In many ways, this perspective (and bear with me here) is not unlike how many people feel about country music. Most people have an opinion about country music – some love it, some hate it, but rarely do you find people who hear country music who don’t have an opinion one way or another. Many people hear country music at some stage in their life and make a judgment call on country music forever – this happened to me with some really old recordings from Marty Robbins I heard on my Dad’s eight track player when I was six. In a similar way, I meet people who view Microsoft through their experiences with NT 4.0 or even Windows 95 and assume that the products we have today must be the same as they experienced back then. I realize people don’t think we still sell these specific older products today, but their perception is rooted in these product experiences. Of course this happens with all sorts of things, not just music and technology, but it does build a ‘mindedness’ about the subject that is often dated and stale.

This is topical for me as I just returned from a trip to Montana where I attended my first country music concert. Up to this point, I’ve been listening to Marty Robbins-era country on occasion, mostly Johnny Cash, so my perception about country music is behind the times to say the least. Sure, I’ve heard country now and again, but not really listened to anything recently. So sitting in this concert at the Montana State Fair in Great Falls, listening to a present day country star, Trace Adkins, I realized a lot has changed. Sure, there’s still the hat, boots and giant belt buckle thing, but the music has changed – lots more pop, rock and of course more contemporary lyrics.

Back to the initial ‘close mindedness’ issue. The issue I typically face is one of perception, typically a historically based perception. I’m talking about perceptions of both Microsoft and open source software here, and both external and internal to Microsoft. Sure, I realize there’s always history, good and bad and indifferent, but in some of my conversations, I hear a lot of opinion based on rather old experiences. IMHO, what really helps progress any conversation is taking this historical experience with a complete and open minded understanding of the present day and then making an assessment – good, bad, or indifferent.

What we’re trying to do with Port 25 is to bring some contemporary insights into what Microsoft is doing in OSS. I’m also hoping it allows people to take a look at our software overall, to see what we’re building and why (if you pull the ‘port25’ off the technet.com url you can find a load of useful Microsoft technical information, including software downloads and howtos). We’re a commercial software company and we strive to build great products – sounds like marketing and it is, because we’re proud of what we do. So you may see some hats and boots here and there but you’ll also probably hear some rock and roll in the music now too. And I’m not here to sell you. You may decide you don’t like our music, and that’s fine, because what I’m hoping for is a more accurate, up to date perspective so that the conversations and mindedness can strive to be more open and more productive. This is my approach both externally and internally, and about both Microsoft software and open source software.

Changing perceptions is challenging but important. And it takes time. For me, I’m attending my next country music concert this week here in Seattle, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Although it’s certainly not Marty Robbins or Johnny Cash, I’m starting to appreciate the changed genre. Just don’t expect to see me wearing giant belt buckles anytime soon.

Bill Hilf interviews Matt Asay at OSCON 2006

MichaelF — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:33:00 GMT

Matt Asay, formerly of Novell, now VP of Business Development at Alfresco and co-founder of OSCON took some time out of his busy conference schedule to sit down with Bill for an interview. Matt, author of the AC/OS Blog (Matt Asay on OS) is a vocal supporter of Open Source Software and has some interesting insights on where commercial Open Source Software is headed.

In this interview Matt and Bill discuss Open Source business models, monetization opportunties for open business apps, and thoughts on the first days of OSCON.

Here is a link to a recent blog post by Matt that further explains some of the concepts he mentions around Open Source business models.

Big Thanks to Matt for taking the time to join us on Port 25!

Video: Bill Hilf interviews Matt Asay at OSCON 2006

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Tim O'Reilly sits down with Bill Hilf at OSCON2006

MichaelF — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:09:00 GMT

While we were at OSCON this week we were fortunate enough to get some time to sit down with Tim O'Reilly. I dare say Tim, author of the O'Reilly Radar, needs no introduction but just in case: Tim is an Open Source Software advocate as well as the Founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc. He is also one half of the duo that founded OSCON along with Matt Asay. While this is his first time on Port 25, Tim also joined Bill Gates at Mix 06 for a conversation and Q&A session.

In this interview Bill and Tim discuss the redefinition of "Open Source", Web 2.0, and some other topics that arose in the first two days of the conference.

Stay tuned: Monday we will post another interview from the conference between Bill and Matt Asay wherein they discuss mixed environments and commercial OSS trends. If you haven't already, sign up for our RSS feed and we'll notify you when this interview is published.

Video: Tim O'Reilly sits down at OSCON 2006

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What you see everyday...

admin — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:28:00 GMT

I’ve been traveling in Brazil recently, one of my favorite countries, and meeting with various customers, developers, IT professionals, government officials and topping it off with a talk at Linux World Brazil in Sao Paulo. On my flight over I was reading a translated version of TEMA magazine which discusses the Brazilian federal government’s IT spending. An interesting statistic from a 2003 study by the Department of Logistics and Information Technology is that Microsoft is just barely on the ‘top spend’ list of commercial software providers to the Brazilian Federal Government. In terms of money spent by the government on software, Microsoft comes in at number eight. Many would believe or would guess that Microsoft is the ‘big gorilla’ in the Brazilian market, which is why the Linux/OSS versus Microsoft debate in Brazil always seems so dramatic in the press. But, alas, we are number eight, in terms of money spent by the state.

According to this study, the biggest software suppliers to the Brazilian federal government (in Brazilian Reals):

Net Control (R$15.4 million)
IBM (R$10.6 million)
Oracle (R$5.7 million)
Borland (R$4.2 million)
Funcate (R$3.8 million)
Serpro (R$3.7 million)
Autotrac (R$3.3 million)

Of course, this is just software costs you can imagine what that IBM number looks like if you add in services and hardware.

The reason, I believe, for the misperception that Microsoft is the single ‘foreign’ vendor is because most people ‘see’ Microsoft everyday on their desktops. So Microsoft becomes a singular metaphor (or poster child) for commercial software. The misperception even carries to the academic world, such as Benkler’s Wealth of Networks from Yale Univ. Press, where he discusses the role of free software, giving governments, “freedom from reliance on a single foreign source (read, Microsoft)” – page 333. But if this is true, shouldn’t free software also reduce reliance from the other sources of commercial software in Brazil (players 1-7 above)? Of course it should, but that’s not the general perception because some of these others, such as IBM, have put on the cloak of ‘open systems’ to market themselves as free software loving champions. But if that were really true, I wonder where all that money is coming from and then going to? So the bigger question is: how much do these commercial companies generate for the Brazilian software economy relative to what they are profiting?

This is very important for Brazil, particularly as it relates to exporting to developing nations; for example, from 2002-2005 Brazil has increased total value of exports to Africa, Middle East, and Asian from US$13.4 billion to $28.8 billion (Ricardo Neiva Tavares, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Economist, 27/5/2006). Generating revenue to Brazilian companies through software exports will be an important part of future growth in this area.

From a Microsoft perspective, we are seeing real value for Brazil using our software to build their software ecosystem, a few statistics about Brazil and Microsoft:

Professionals that develop software provide services and offer training on the Microsoft platform: 313,500 (source: IDC)
Software developers on the Microsoft Platform: 80,000
Companies that employ these professionals: 15,000
Taxes corresponding to the MS ecosystem: R$ 1 billion
Freely-trained public employees: 10,200
Security: since October 2003, 110,000 trained professionals in Brazil

In my time here in Brazil I will have an ear out for how people are using OSS and how they are interoperating with commercial software – the best lessons are always found ‘in the field’ – and it will be interesting to test how much ‘what you see everyday’ effects the perceptions and how this holds up to reality in the cold light of day (or maybe a little warmer light of day here in Brazil).

-Bill

P.S. – adding to this on my return home, after I wrote the above. Indeed the veneer of ‘free’ has faded in Brazil like it has in most countries as businesses enter into their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th ‘wave’ of Linux/OSS usage and realize that there are certainly still costs with ‘free’ software, such as in management, integration, security, people, etc.

New Friends from Linux World Brazil

admin — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 19:49:00 GMT

New friends from Linux World Brazil

I’m recently returning from Linux World Brazil where I presented on ‘OSS and Microsoft.’ One night in Sao Paulo I had the opportunity to chat with two of the leading OSS technologists in Brazil – Cesar Brod and Helio Chessini de Castro. Cesar has an interesting background, working at Tandem from 1992-1998 and at various companies throughout Brazil, including his own consulting company. Cesar is involved with Linux International and was also one of three finalists for the Free Software Community Award in 2004. Helio is well known in Brazil as one of the key developers of Conectiva and a prolific KDE and Linux developer and instructor. He currently works for Mandriva (who acquired Conectiva to form the Mandrake+Conectiva distribution). If you’ve spent time in the Conectiva or KDE developer world, you certainly have heard of Helio.

We had a great conversation about the Linux/OSS environment in Brazil, particularly the history of this community. Cesar echoed a statement I’ve heard from quite a few other OSS developers about those who ‘do’ actual technical work in the OSS community and those who ‘talk’ about it. His point was that there has always been a developer community in Brazil – before OSS hit the scene – and Cesar has tried to keep this community focused on the real work, not simply the rhetoric and politics. Cesar is a well regarded OSS participant and has some great stories about his early days at Tandem, how he discovered Linux (an alternative from flying back and forth from city to city to use a Unix machine) and how the OSS community has evolved. Both Cesar’s and Helio’s pragmatism, honesty, and open mindedness show their experience and wisdom – I hope to continue our discussions in the future.

Cesar was also kind enough to introduce me to his friend John “Maddog” Hall. Maddog is well known in OSS circles and although we’ve heard about each other, this was the first time we had the opportunity to meet face to face.

(From left: Maddog, Me)

Maddog’s keynote was right before mine, so I had the chance to see him present on ‘Total Value’ of software. It was interesting, and although I disagreed with some of his points (and the ‘blue screen of death’ jabs – come on, used any Microsoft software since 2003?), Maddog is a good presenter and hit some important points about standards, competition and choice that I agree strongly with. Shortly after our presentations I had the chance to talk with Maddog. We had a good conversation about change at large corporations (Maddog is a former Digital guy), and software trends. Despite the name, Maddog is a balanced industry veteran who I could talk to easily for hours, his perspectives and insight are valuable and although I think we may disagree on some points, there are many others where we find harmony.

I have visited Brazil many times, and I was honored to speak at Linux World Brazil, but this may be one of the most useful of my trips as I was able to meet customers, partners, Microsoft teams, government officials and developers and thinkers in the OSS world. New friendships are always important to me, but it’s the cascade of new thoughts from all of these various discussions that keeps me awake on my flight back to Seattle.

-Bill

VC Summit 2006

admin — Wed, 17 May 2006 16:05:00 GMT

VC Summit 2006

Last week I attended the Microsoft VC Summit at our Silicon Valley campus. Before Microsoft and IBM, I helped to build four start-ups, three in the Bay area, so spending a day with a couple hundred VC folks talking about industry trends and business models and in general networking with some great people, was a lot of fun. I did a Q&A onstage with Scott Sandell from NEA on Microsoft, Open Source, our strategy and the relationships to the venture capital community. One of the questions that we spent a good deal of time discussing was the impact of open source software to the venture community. It was an interesting discussion about defining and measuring a successful open source software company. In my opinion, many of these companies are either evolving or starting out with business models that incorporate open source ‘components’ with commercial components (Greenplum is a good example of this), largely because selling support and services for non-differentiated commodity software is not proving to be a sustainable revenue generating model for most of the commercial OSS companies.

Steven Weber’s ‘The Success of Open Source’ discusses this in detail, and Stephen Walli and Matt Asay have been blog-debating this recently as well. I’m interested in business models and I’m interested in analyzing the history of business models. I think one aspect that is often left out of this discussion is that some of these OSS companies have been around for a while, so there is a reasonable history to look back at and measure. Red Hat and MySQL were both founded around 1995 (if memory serves me), and many others can be tracked back six, seven plus years as well. So the question that was discussed at the VC Summit, as well as just this week in the blogosphere, is what qualifies a commercially successful OSS company, and (importantly for investors) how do they rank comparatively to other commercial software companies that VCs may be considering as a potential portfolio company? These venture specific conversations were, of course, very much focused in benchmarking revenue and profitability. I talk a lot about the evolution of commercial and open source models and I think this type of analysis will influence the evolution as vendors, customers, and the investment community start to take a realistic look at the pros and cons of the model. For more information on the VC summit, Don Dodge has a good summary here.

MES 2006

admin — Tue, 02 May 2006 14:08:00 GMT

Swimming is my cure for jet lag. I am currently at the MES 2006 (Microsoft Executive Summit) in Mumbai (Bombay), India – an annual event for the top 250 CIO’s in India. I’ve been here a couple days and have been waking up at 3am, so my cure has been a pre-dawn swim in the hotel pool. The hotel I’m staying at has a nice pool, right next to Powai lake and it’s protected forest, where I later learn is a natural home to leopards and alligators, which keeps me alert while swimming solo.

MES 2006 is a great opportunity to meet many of the top CIOs, IT decision makers and partners in India and I’ve been enjoying it immensely. I did a presentation on our platform strategy, people-ready businesses, and in particular how we think about ‘coopetition’ in this strategy. One of my favorite things about this job is talking to customers about their IT environments, issues and dreams. What has been fascinating about my conversations here in Mumbai has been the many different ways customers have designed and architected for interoperability. From banks to manufacturing companies to consulting services, almost every customer or partner I’ve met with has an interesting story about interoperability in their IT environment. No surprise really, heterogeneity is part of any large IT system, but the recurring theme I’ve noticed here is the pragmatism and clarity of focus on where and when interoperability is needed. And if you’ve ever spent time on the roads in Mumbai, you’ll realize that interoperability is part of everyday life!

One Microsoft partner I had dinner with explained a very large, multi-tier system they build and sell which uses Windows, Unix systems, and a mainframe – all for one application (it is a large and critical application, so this isn’t really overkill for what they do). Although they want to eventually migrate from the mainframe for cost reasons, they have chosen technologies to get the job done as best suited their needs and skills. And – importantly – they factor interoperability into every architectural plan, RFP, or design that they think about – it’s as important to them as feature functionality or testing. It’s a core part of their maturity model. So what do they look for to qualify something as ‘interoperable’? Open and mature standards that have industry wide acceptance. They also understand the difference between open standards and open source, and gave me a very lucid walkthrough of the differences. Simply put, they explained that open source is a development and distribution model and open standards are specifications that can be applied to interfaces and technologies to enable data exchange. It is that clarity that, I believe, has helped them to design for interoperability with their eyes wide open.

One more thing. I had a customer meeting where I heard a great description of IT value. We were talking about software utilization, the dreaded ‘application backlog’ that many CIO’s face (CIO magazine has a great column on this here). When I asked about their deployment experiences with Microsoft software, the customer told me a story about their instant messaging deployment. Within 48 hours of deploying Microsoft Live Communications Server for instant messaging and collaboration, they had over 16,000 people utilizing the product. He then said, “Listen Bill, it is actually quite simple, when I can deploy software that immediately 16,000 people start using on their own because it’s important and useful to them, that is value.” Clear and simple definition of value: people use it on their own volition - something we should all remember.

Although swimming does help jet lag, coffee is equally important, so it’s now time to go find some. Until next time, may you avoid stray leopards. -Bill

Linux World Boston 2006

admin — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:14:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to be the first person from Microsoft to keynote a Linux World conference. Although the concept may sound unusual, I’ve been attending Linux World conferences from the start and I have had technical speaking sessions in the past, both when I was with IBM and also last Summer at Linux World San Francisco. However, being invited to do a keynote at Linux World was exciting and I thought I would walk through my presentation here. The title was “Interoperability: Dealing with the Diversity and Heterogeneity of Today's IT Marketplace”

When I walked on-stage the audio/video guys at the convention center played the Rolling Stones ‘Start me up’, also known as the Windows 95 launch music, which got a few chuckles – I thought it was funny, at least.

I started with a little self-deprecating humor, showing how the Microsoft team came out as the ‘Evil Empire’ in last Summer’s Linux World Golden Penguin bowl (the insane looking stormtrooper in the middle is me) where we, the ‘Nerds’, faced the ‘Geeks’ (a team from Google) in a trivia contest.

After confessing that I was a little tall for a stormtrooper, I then continued along, talking about our OSS labs, the charter for the lab and the machines and software we use there. And we employ a team of great OSS experts, from all different backgrounds (affectionately known as the ‘penguins’ internally).

I then talked about the history of interoperability, from the silo’ed stacks on the 80’s (IBM, NEC, HP, Digital) to the massive amount of choice available today at all levels of the IT stack:

It’s important to frame up where interoperability is needed – as we all know there is no universal ‘interoperability layer’ where everything just magically works together, so it’s important to clarify the architectural level’s where we need interoperability and also what things need interoperability between them:

I then showed a video of the interoperability work we are doing with JBoss. But rather than show vendor talking heads, I showed how one of our mutual customers was using JBoss on Windows server.

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I spent some time talking about managing mixed environments, which is also covered in more depth here and here.

I always like to get into the contentious parts of the Microsoft/Linux debate, it keeps it exciting, so I showed a slide with Linux running on Windows:

Which is simply Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 – not really that ‘shocking’ but it keeps the audience awake. I then explained the work we are doing with supporting Linux on Virtual Server 2005 and that, in addition to the announcement that Virtual Server 2005 would be a free download, we are also announcing Virtual Machine additions for Linux guests as a free download. These virtual machine additions help Linux guests run more effectively in Virtual Server 2005 (video, mouse improvements, clock and heartbeat synchronization).

The other main point I made was that we are announcing Microsoft Product Support for Linux distributions running as guest OSes on Virtual Server 2005:

Which is something we run in our lab in a fairly big way, below are some screenshots of the management interface showing the various Linux distributions running as guests on Virtual Server 2005 (not all the version you see below are part of our formal support described above – but they run just fine for us). We run about twenty different Linux distributions on Virtual Server 2005 on a 4-way Opteron HPDL585 system with 8GB memory.

We had a lot to talk about around Virtualization, and one of the areas I discussed in the keynote that I think is really compelling is our news with XenSource, and many other partners, on the use of the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format as the default format for storing Windows virtual machines. XenSource licensed the VHD format which gives them the ability to run and store Windows virtual machine images on Xen enabled technologies, such as their XenEnterprise product.

These announcements in total are significant for the current and future interoperability between Windows and Linux virtual machine images. I know from our experiences in the OSS labs with these virtualization technologies, that there will be many powerful new scenarios for IT environments in the future, such as new models for server consolidation and backup/disaster recovery systems.

Moving on from virtualization, I then discussed some of the Unix interoperability technologies we have in Windows Server 2003 R2. Called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA), which Jason Zions discusses in depth here on Port25.

Another new area for Microsoft is high performance computing (HPC) – a domain near and dear to me as I spent a lot of time working with Linux clusters while I was at IBM. Many of the HPC systems in the market today run Linux or Unix, so since we’re launching a new product called the Microsoft Windows Server Compute Cluster Edition, I thought it would be cool to show how our new product interoperated with a Linux-based HPC cluster. Dr. Michael Athanas from The BioTeam (a genomic research software company) came up on-stage to demonstrate their tool, called iNquiry, accessing both a Linux cluster (based in the Boston Data Center) and a Windows Cluster (which was on the stage). The on-stage machine was a RocketCalc box – a 4-node, 8 CPU box made in Kent, Ohio. The core of the demo was executing side-by-side queries on genomic sequences against both clusters, launched from a scientific logbook in Excel. As Dr. Athanas said, “As a researcher, what matters to me is that I have the scientific computing power available when I need it, and that the data comes back in a usable form – not what flavor the back-end system is.” Given the complex data analysis associated with the genomics project, having familiar, easy-to-use tools like Excel to seamlessly interact with HPC resources is a significant step forward for end-users.

After this demo – which was very cool IMHO – I jumped into a more philosophical discussion on the evolution of applications and the role of standards in interoperability. The key points here were about the difference between physical standards (such as the railroad gauge standards for railroad tracks) and the world of software standards. Because of the pliability of software, we can adapt standards in a market-driven process versus creating de jeure standards too early in the evolution of a technology which can limit the progress and innovation of software.

This is happening right now, and I showed a few examples of this market-driven standardization – mashups. By illustrating some of the creative work happening by developers using map services (Google Map, MSN Virtual Earth) and other data services, mashing up new apps based on the utilization of Web services and other standards, we can see real-time market-driven standardization – data and formats being translated between systems and services and aggregation by developers and authors around emerging standards. Two of my favorites, one using National Park data and MSN Virtual Earth with Atlas and one using Google maps and SMS messages through cell phones at GarbageScout.com:

GarbageScout Mashup with Google Maps	Outdoor Explorer Mashup w/ Virtual Earth	Zillow Mashup w/ Virtual Earth & Birds Eye View

Sample Pictures. Click to Enlarge.

I then finished the presentation with an overview on how we compete and collaborate in different areas (JBoss, IBM, Oracle, SugarCRM, etc.). I announced this site, Port25, and then gave some reflections based on my experience in OSS over the past thirteen years, primarily focusing on the evolution and maturation of the commercial and open source marketplace.

All in all, I was happy with how it all turned out and I hope the audience enjoyed the talk as well – I know I enjoyed delivering it. That’s an overview of my Linux World keynote and although I really don’t prefer typing and pictures versus talking through these ideas, I thought it would be useful to put this up on Port25. Let me know what you think.

Sample Pictures of the Open Source Lab. Click to Enlarge.

We also run a few operating systems in the lab:

Solaris 9,10
Java Desktop System
AIX5L 5.1
RHEL4 AS & ES & WS (32 & 64-bit)
RHEL3 AS & ES (32 & 64-bit)
RHEL2.1 AS (32-bit)
RedHat 9 (and earlier)
Fedora Core 2-5
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 (UnitedLinux 1.0)
SuSE Linux Standard Server 8
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, 10
OpenSuSE
Novell Open Enterprise Server
Windows Server 2003 (32 & 64-bit) all versions and SPs
Windows XP (SP1, SP2)
Windows 2000 Server
Windows Vista Beta 1, Beta 2
Mandrake Linux 10
FreeBSD 5.2.1
FreeBSD R4.1
LinuxFromScratch 6.0
Gentoo
Asianux
Freedows Std 04
Rocks 3.3.0
Arch Linux 0.7
Ark Linux 2005.1 SR1
Crux Linux 2.1
Debian (buzz – sarge)
Foresight Linux 0.8
Libranet 2.8.1
Mandriva 2005LE
MEPIS 3.3.1-1
NetBSD 1.6.2
OpenBSD 3.5
OpenSolaris
Slackware 10.1
SuSE Pro 9.0, 9.1, 9.3
Tinysofa 2.0
TurboLinux 10
Ubuntu 5.04
Vector Linux 5.0.1 Vida Linux 1.1
MacOS X