Joshua

Yesterday, Microsoft executives revealed that the company is
reorganizing its Platforms Group around a new division that will be
charged with developing core Windows technologies. The company
announced the Windows Core Operating System Division to employees and
moved 3000 of the Platforms Group's 14,000 workers into the new
division. Senior Vice President Brian Valentine, who has overseen
Windows development since late 1998, when Windows NT 5.0 morphed into
Windows 2000, will run the new division, which will concentrate on the
Windows core code, including its kernel, networking stack, and
localization technologies. Corporate Vice President Chris Jones, who
was previously responsible for the core technologies in Windows
Longhorn, the next major Windows version, is also moving to
Valentine's new division.
This week's reshuffling is a visible example of Group Vice
President Jim Allchin's desire for engineering excellence; the
executive says he has worked for months to figure out how to best
structure the company to deliver the highest-quality Longhorn release
possible. "[The Windows Core Operating System Division] creates a very
visible center of gravity for advancing the engineering excellence of
Windows," he said. "It's basically a new improvement in the processes
of how we're building the core parts."
Longhorn, Microsoft's most ambitious software product to date, will
likely ship in late 2005 or early 2006. Valentine says the
reorganization won't affect Longhorn's ship date. "This
[reorganization] isn't a statement about Longhorn's schedule," he
noted. "It is about the way we build products." Other executives
reiterated Valentine's comments about the Longhorn schedule, noting
that the reorganization will simply improve Longhorn's quality and
security.
Other divisions in the Platforms Group will concentrate on specific
Windows markets, such as consumer computing, business computing, and
storage management. A separate group of employees, the Windows
Engineering Leadership Team, will work under Valentine to ensure
consistency and compatibility across all Windows versions. And a new
Windows Leadership Team, which will be comprised of company
executives, will work to ensure that Windows meets customers'
ever-changing needs. "If you look at the work we have done with the
[Tablet PC] and Windows XP Media Center on the client side or the
[Small Business Server] product on the server side, those are the
examples of the new agility we hope to increasingly enable," Jones
said. "We expect this will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of
our development processes as well as give us an increased emphasis on
the quality and architecture of our systems."

__________________
The Apexer formerly known as SnotRocket.

"Like I ****ing said, "Ok, so I hear it may be a repost. Blah But I had never seen it, so..." **** you Canta." -Jenny 12/4/2003

Grumpy

i agree, they should first deal with XP because they havn't fixed all the holes yet. I bet once they release the OS its going to have alot of techincal diffculties.

Microsft should open there eyes and see where XP is at.

Jeffbx

Well, they are improving it... every time they release a new OS, they're improving on the problems with the last one. Remember back in the day when you had to set IRQs & load device drivers manually? IMHO, XP Pro is far & away the best OS to come out of MS. WIndows Server 2003 is no slouch, either.

Of COURSE any new OS is going to have driver issues, but that's up to the hardware manufacturers to address, not MS. There will always be security holes, too. There is no such thing as a totally secure system unless you unplug the modem & the network cord & turn it off. Even then I wouldn't be so sure.

Sure, they're money hungry, but last time I looked, that's the goal of a corporation - to make money. The fact that people are willing to pay for the products makes me as a shareholder pretty happy.

I hate to sound like the MS cheerleader, but I've worked with MS technologies for years, and I think they're doing a great job. The Linux people manage to keep them on their toes, the hackers ensure that they stay vigilent about security, and they still manage to put out some pretty darn good software.

Joshua

No suprise, but...

bbrian

Uhh.. they'll never fix all the holes. It isn't possible. Software has bugs.. It always will. I can't wait for longhorn. The new sql based file system will lead to all sorts of new innovations.

Who says they aren't addressing problems in XP? They are just NOW shutting down Windows 98 support. Hello? It's 2003, almost 2004. They should have dropped support for it a long time ago.

Hell, if I call Cisco with a router that is running 1 release behind they won't even talk to me until I upgrade. I called MS last week on a SQL Server 6.5 problem and had NO problem getting suppport.

Bires

Aren't we forgetting that its TWO YEARS away!?! I'm sure they will be doing a lot of tweaking until then.

__________________
Five years...

Joshua

/me hugs my copy of XP.