title: Microsoft isn't the solution to all problems link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/microsoft-isnt-the-solution-to-all-problems/ author: phil2nc description: post_id: 9775 created: 2015/06/10 11:43:29 created_gmt: 2015/06/10 15:43:29 comment_status: closed post_name: microsoft-isnt-the-solution-to-all-problems status: publish post_type: post

Microsoft isn't the solution to all problems

OK, the grammar is bad, but it's a direct quote from what I think is the best screeds about Redmond I've read in a long time.

Microsoft isn't the solution to all problems. Their approach to management interfaces, UIs, or even how they treat their customers, partners and staff sure as hell aren't great. They are one possible solution to today's problems, with a passable hypervisor and shitty management tools. They also have a fetish for subscription licensing and getting my data into an insecure country run by madmen.

That was written by Trevor Potts, in response to a comment made to a recent article he wrote in The Register entitled, If hypervisor is commodity, why is VMware still on top?. There's a lot of even better stuff in that and some other replies Trevor posted. It's pretty clear that he speaks from experience. What he says rang like a bell to me, someone who got their start in IT as a newly minted MCSE and thankfully later had the opportunity to not only work with serious enterprise operating systems but also to learn real-life system administration from people who really knew what they were doing. The article itself was thorough and well written, and offers insights not only into the technology under discussion, but also the impact of internal IT culture (what we used to call the "eighth layer of the OSI model: politics") on technology decisions. Once again, anyone who hasn't actually regularly worked in a big company IT environment for at least a half decade or more probably isn't going to understand some of that (contractors may or may not count, especially if they're the kind that parachute in for a few days before getting exfiltrated to their next assignment), but there's enough in the piece to provide everyone some food for thought.

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