Windows Is Collapsing!Windows Is Collapsing!

There are several news reports from a Gartner conference in Las Vegas this week that included a session titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve." Gartner may not be stellar at identifying industry trends, but they sure know how to pick controversial session titles.Given that Microsoft Windows has a near-lock on the corporate desktop market today, I suppose Gartner is right that there's nowhere to go but down. But "collapsing" is harsh, Gartner-analyst-dudes, and most likely way off base. This is one of those presentations where you hope that the news reports have it wrong, just to spare Gartner the embarrassment of looking so lame. I'll just touch on a few of the strange take-aways from reports on this session.

The Gartner-ites asserted that "Windows as we know it needs to be replaced" and that Windows may need multiple kernels because "one size doesn't fit all." Indeed, that may be why Microsoft already has Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Mobile, and Windows XP Embedded, not to mention those still-kicking classics like Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Most developers can't write good code for even one version of Windows. Now we have two desktop versions out there -- XP and Vista; Vista suffers because XP still gets more developer attention by virtue of larger market share. More versions of Windows just make this problem worse.

Gartnerian logic says the large Windows code base makes it impossible to do anything more in a new version than just deliver a few incremental improvements. I guess it depends on how you define improvements. In my eyes, Vista's sin was not in making too many incremental improvements, but in adding too much bloat. That was compounded by a new device driver model, which (at least initially) prevented many devices from working properly. The early rumors on Windows 7 seem to indicate that Microsoft finally caught on to the less-is-more philosophy, but we'll see.

Finally, the analysts said that companies shouldn't skip Vista, but instead ease Vista in as old systems are replaced. That's supposedly because Windows 7 isn't going to be here until 2009. What's wrong with staying on XP until Windows 7 comes out then, since XP is supported through 2011? There's no reason for corporate IT to support two "collapsing" versions of Windows when they can support just one.

Perhaps the most important reason that Windows isn't collapsing is that nothing happens quickly in corporate America. Over the next 10 years, some companies may move to Macs for desktops and Linux for servers or portable devices. Others may outsource the functions through software-as-a-service companies and not care what OS is used. Yet I'm willing to bet that there will still be plenty of uncollapsed Windows in companies a decade from now.