The Windows Phone App Problem

Posted on May 13, 2013 by

Last week the situation with Windows Phone Apps was once again in the news as the Marketplace/Store reached 145,000 apps.  On one hand we had many critics pointing out that the rate of growth for Windows Phone has slowed considerably.  On the other hand we had defenders pointing out that Microsoft has shifted its efforts towards having better app quality over a focus on rapid growth of the number of apps.  Defenders also point out that after a certain point quantity no longer matters as you’ll find all the apps you need in the store.  At 100,000 apps Apple’s App Store was considered saturated, yet today Microsoft’s 145,000 apps is considered so far from adequate that it is the justification for recommendations not to purchase a Windows Phone.

I’ve put my spin on this topic a number of times over the years, and this time I wanted to take a (mostly) objective look at the problem.  Microsoft tries to address the criticism by pointing out how many of the “Top 25″ apps are indeed available on Windows Phone.  They do that based on an overall list of downloads on other platforms.  Or they’ve focused on certain areas, like gaming and social networking.  And by focusing on trying to attract a few high profile apps.  I wanted to take a different spin.  I’m going to take a handful of categories that are important to me, and I believe many others, and see how well represented apps are in the Windows Phone Store.

Let’s start with Banking and ask a very simple question.  Of the Top-10 banks in the U.S. how many have apps available for Windows Phone?  Three.  And one of those is just for its credit cards.  Want to guess how many of those banks have apps in the Apple App Store?  All ten.

You might think this is just a banking problem, but it is anything in finance.  Windows Phone has apps for Zero of the Top-10 Mutual Fund companies.  Seven of those companies provide apps for the iPhone.  How about if you just want to do research on mutual funds?  Sorry, you’ll need an iPhone, Android Phone, or Blackberry for that.

Moving on, how many of the Top-10 U.S. Airlines have apps for Windows Phone?  Three.  For the iPhone it is eight.

Now the truth is I was going to do this for several more categories but it is too depressing for me to continue.  If you want to understand the situation with Windows Phone yourself step away from a few missing headline apps, and from the nice set of headline apps that have recently been announced on Windows Phone.  Step away from the “Is 145,000 apps enough?” question.  Instead pick a category of apps that are important and find a “Top 10″ list for those.  If it’s a real world category then pick the Top 10 businesses in the real world (as opposed to lists of what are downloaded on other platforms), and see how many of those have official apps in each of the app stores.  Try to find categories where Windows Phone has a passing grade.  Try.

Note: I did this comparison quickly so counts might be +/- 1 as additional search terms lead to discovery of additional apps.  But this won’t change the situation at all.

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Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows Phone | Tagged , , | 63 Comments

“Win Reviews”

Posted on April 23, 2013 by

Another review of a Microsoft product (or in this case service), another black eye.  The most recent controversy is over Bing, but let’s face it, a lot of the problem with Windows 8 is how the preponderance of reviews didn’t like how its new user experience played out on traditional desktop/notebook devices.  That negativity, echoed by the Power User class that the reviewers are part of, spread to the general public and became a major drag on acceptance of Windows 8.  People who have never seen nor used Windows 8 walk into computer stores asking for Windows 7 machines.  A computer store I was in yesterday keeps a supply of a third-party Start Menu add-on in-stock and offers to sell it to all buyers with new PCs.  “Does it make Windows 8 work just like Windows 7?” asked the buyer.  “Yes” said the sales rep.  How could Microsoft have avoided this?  Let’s time travel back to the pre-Internet days for a solution.

When I joined Microsoft in early 1994 I discovered what I then considered a somewhat odd way of driving product development.  I would sit in Bill’s reviews of product plans and many would have as a key goal of the release “Win Reviews”.  As an enterprise guy this was odd because at the time reviews played a minimal role in that space, but for end-user products reviews were critical.  Also, whereas enterprise software teams could talk directly to a high percentage of their (existing or potential) customers (CIOs, VPs of Operations or Development, DBAs, etc.) reviewers became a key proxy for end-users.

Recall that we are talking (effectively) pre-Internet.  The dominant force in communicating information about computer hardware and software were a handful of print magazines.  As the PC era reached its pre-Internet peak these publications had grown to the size of small (and sometimes not so small) phone books.  And they were filled with reviews of new products and comparisons of competing products.  Trying to decide between Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and Lotus Ami Pro?  Or Windows vs. OS/2?Articles in these magazines were going to weigh heavily in your decision process.

The major publications took this one step further by getting into a “lab war”, building out hardware labs and hiring technical staff so they could dig more deeply into products.  Even enterprise-oriented products like SQL Server found ourselves fighting lab wars in a couple of publications.  But whereas for SQL Server this was mostly a marketing activity (supporting reviewers by providing resources to help them make sure they’d configured the product correctly, understood the new features, etc.) for end-user products making sure you would come out on top in reviews became a product driver.

So “Win Reviews” drove actual product requirements.  This meant understanding what reviewers would care about, what they liked and disliked about various products, how you might wow them with your new release, etc.  It meant engineering the product with reviewers in mind as the proxy for your end-users.  One could debate if that was really the right thing to do for end-users, and I believe that’s one reason why “Win Reviews” fell out of favor as a product requirement driver.  Circa 1992 reviewers were probably a fair representation of the end-user community.  By 2002 PCs were so ubiquitous that reviewers just represented the Power User niche, and catering to them made it difficult to address the needs of the broader user base.  Somewhere between those two dates worrying about reviews moved out of the product requirements arena and became purely an outward-focused marketing effort.

For the most part this transition away from letting reviewers drive product requirements was a good thing.  It was facilitated by a dramatic growth in ability to directly communicate with the user community.  Of course there was the much mentioned explosion in telemetry.  And Microsoft (through a growing sales force and closer partnerships with OEMs, ISVs, consultants, etc.) greatly increased its direct communications with customers.  Plus the Internet provided a means for users to express themselves directly.  The way I found out how badly I’d missed the boat by leaving Declarative Referential Integrity out of SQL Server 7.0 was by following newsgroups and forums and getting blasted about it.  The formal communications channels had not brought it up at all!  So adding DRI became one of the top priorities for SQL Server 2000.

Now jump forward to the modern era.  On one hand you could expect that reviews should play a smaller role than ever in driving product definition.  But consider the marketing side of things.  When a market participant is the overwhelmingly dominant player they have little incentive to worry about reviews.  Reviews, in essence, can only benefit the underdog.  However, when markets are highly competitive reviews can make a significant difference in purchasing decisions.  Today every segment Microsoft plays in is competitive and often highly competitive, with significant areas in which they are the underdog.  Even in an area they are dominant, desktop computing, they have tremendous competition from their own legacy.  Windows Vista had to compete with Windows XP.  Windows 8 has to compete with Windows 7.  Reviews matter.

Consider where Windows 8 would be today if the preponderance of reviews had lauded it as a great follow-on to Windows 7.  Consider if Windows 8 had amongst its goals “Win Reviews”.  It would have taken a very small number of concessions to the purity of the evolution, and/or prioritizing taking a few steps further along the evolutionary path, to swing the balance of opinion on Windows 8 from negative to positive.  Windows 8 is a great release but to many reviewers, and the Power User class they are part of, it seemed like Microsoft was intentionally rubbing their noses in excrement.  And they’ve repaid the favor by lumping Windows 8 in with Windows Vista (which is a totally ridiculous comparison).

We see this in other areas as well, security being a prime example.  Microsoft Security Essentials/Windows Defender hasn’t been doing that well in published reviews by testing organizations.  When you look at why you discover that there is a disconnect between the methodology the testing organization uses and the way Microsoft thinks of its collection of capabilities.  The methodology often bypasses parts of Microsoft’s offering while exercising the equivalent parts of its competitor’s offerings, thus Microsoft comes across as having the weaker product.  Microsoft addresses this as a marketing problem, trying to get testing organizations to change their methodology and explain the situation to the public.  What it hasn’t done is step back and say “what do we need to change in the products to win the reviews?”

Given where Microsoft is in its various markets what it needs right now is the preponderance of reviews of all of its products to be overwhelmingly positive.  And you can’t get that via outward focused marketing activities.  What Microsoft needs right now is to take a tip from the PC software market of 20 years ago and make “Win Reviews” part of its product planning process.

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Windows | Tagged , , , | 65 Comments

Blacked Out due to CISPA

Posted on April 22, 2013 by

Honoring the CISPA Blackout today.  Check http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-join-todays-april-22-cispa-protest-7000014320/ for more information.

StopCispa

Posted in Privacy | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Touch Hate

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

There is a lot of hate for “touch” out there and I thought I’d talk about it a bit.  I can tell when I’m reading an unreasonable discussion because there is always something about having to stand there all day with your arms stretched out to touch the screen.  I stop reading when this is mentioned.  Why would anyone stand there with their arms stretched out constantly?  Microsoft certainly doesn’t require this, so anyone who makes that comment just isn’t paying attention.  Or rather, is just trying to be difficult.  Windows 8 was designed for multi-mode input.  While the priority for the first release may indeed have been to get something truly touch-friendly out there, and make Windows viable in the tablet market, that’s the beginning not the end.

I am using Windows 8 on numerous machines, most of which don’t have touch screens!  My Surface RT has a touch screen and I use the keyboard, track pad, and short-cut keys whenever the situation allows.  But even when my Surface is being used more as a notebook than a tablet, I still reach up and touch the screen from time to time.  Launching an app?  I usually touch the screen.  Need to share something?  I usually touch the screen to bring up the Share Charm.  Scroll through pages in an article?  Yup, I usually touch the screen.  Even touching links on a web page is often easier with the finger than with a touchpad-controlled mouse pointer (though this is not the case with a real mouse).  But a lot of the time, such as when I’m writing blog entries or doing email, my fingers never leave the Type Cover.  I find this mixed mode usage extremely natural.

My frustration with Windows 8 on most of the PCs I use is that they don’t have touch.  And worse, they don’t have multi-touch and gesture-enabled pointing devices.  I’ve played with the Logitech T650 touchpad and it makes the Windows 8 UI design much more palatable.  I’ve noted the same thing when playing with newer non-touch notebooks in stores.  If their touchpad supports the edge-swipe gestures and multi-touch then the Windows 8 UI is a pleasure to use.  If they are just old-fashioned mouse simulators than you really notice the seams between the UI and your hardware.    Microsoft did not optimize Windows 8′s user experience for older hardware, it supports them as a convenience to users.  Microsoft optimized Windows 8 for new hardware, including things that haven’t yet come to market.

Even if you don’t like the idea of reaching out and touching your screen there are a lot of new things coming in terms of Natural UI that Windows 8 is simply a prep for.  I’m surprised that Microsoft hasn’t yet released a next-generation Kinect specifically for controlling Windows devices, with native support in the OS and first-party apps as well (of course) with Windows RunTime support.  But that will come.  And then there is the Tobii REX, which I’d love to add to my existing non-touch PCs!  In both cases we’re looking at new ways to control your PC.  Ways that would be impractical with Windows XP, Windows 7, or WIMP in general.  Why do I say that?  Because they don’t have the precision that WIMP-based interfaces require.  While Kinect enables completely new scenarios, both it and REX can be used to supplement (rather than replace) traditional keyboards and mice in classic “Desktop PC” scenarios.

Still looking for options?  In the past we’ve seen examples of projection keyboards.  Imagine a version that when you “touched” a function key it switched from projection of the keyboard to projection of the screen on the horizontal surface in front of you.  And then let you manipulate the UI using touch and gestures on the projection.  Once again this is far more feasible with Windows 8′s “Modern” or “Metro” than with classic WIMP.

Something less dramatic?  Logitech almost has it right, almost.  I want a mode where the touchpad functions more as a virtual overlay on the touchscreen and lets me touch things rather than mouse over them.  I’d switch to “mouse” mode when editing documents or other higher-precision pointing activities, but stay in “touch” mode for most UI manipulation.

Microsoft is not saying that touch is the “be-all and end-all” of user interface, it is just making it and similar technologies first-class citizens.  Are there tradeoffs involved in such a move?  Of course.  Some are short-term (e.g., one main window with one snapped window in Windows 8), some are long-term.  But they aren’t abandoning the mouse and the need for precision pointing.  Or the physical keyboard.  And they aren’t insisting on a future where you have to stand there for hours with your arms stretched out in front of you.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Windows | Tagged , , | 64 Comments

Xbox Always-On

Posted on April 7, 2013 by

I’m not much of a gamer, so I’ve not really had a strong opinion about the Next-Generation Xbox (“Xbox 720″) Always-On controversy that has gripped the web lately.  I have no idea if its true or what the details may be, and the truth is that the devil is in the details.

Presumably the Xbox will require an Internet connection in order to run games and that the reason for this is to enforce the Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme.  From what I can tell the real controversy is about DRM and not the actual need for an Internet connection.  People hate DRM in every form, style, intent, etc. that mankind has come up with.  Even the people who insist on protecting their intellectual property with DRM actually hate DRM, they just can’t make the business model work without it.  But in this case the controversy isn’t about DRM specifically, it is about the notion that the next generation Xbox’s DRM scheme would eliminate the resale and rental models for games.  Right?

So let’s explore “Always-On” along two dimensions.  First I want to talk about the raw requirement for an Internet connection and then I’ll dig into the DRM topic.  Yes I know most of you care more about the DRM part, so skip ahead if you want.

I’ve tweeted one point about Always-On and it was something I learned from a friend some time back.  They live in a rural area with only Hughesnet satellite Internet available to them.  Hughesnet has a Fair Access Policy (FAP) that limits how much data you can use in any given 24-hour period after which they slow your connection down to dial-up speed for 24-hours.  My friend had to disconnect his family’s Xbox from the Internet because he’d go to get online to do work and discover his kids use of the Xbox had caused the FAP limits to be exceeded.  Metered connections of one sort or another are all that is available to tens of millions of Americans, and even supposedly unlimited service actually has limits.  Outside the U.S. metered connections are more common.

So when Always-On is mentioned as part of the Next-Generation Xbox I’m left to wonder if Microsoft is paying sufficient attention to the details of what this implies.  To give an example of a case where they did not take DirectAccess.  It has an always-on management channel that will, in the background, ship updates to your system whenever it is connected to the Internet.  In its first release there was no way for an administrator to say “don’t ship updates if this is a metered connection”, and so hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes of data would be shoved down to your PC no matter what the implication.  This was a significant inhibitor to adoption of DirectAccess, particularly outside the U.S.

So the question is, how much attention is the Xbox team paying to networking issues like metered connections and poor connection reliability?  The truth is that addressing these is not rocket science, it is just prioritizing dealing with them.  For example, can I specify subsets of Xbox functionality that can use the Internet connection?  Can I say, “yes you can use it to maintain DRM but you can’t use it for anything else”?  Can I decide if I want updates downloaded automatically or only with my permission?  Etc.  Another example is when one says “always-on” what does that really mean?  A lease-based mechanism would seem to provide any imagined benefit while handling poor connectivity and reducing bandwidth usage.  In other words, once you check DRM for a game it takes a lease that could last for 24-hours, 72-hours, or perhaps even 7 days before you have to renew it.  You don’t actually have to go out on the network every time the game is played.

Although the real noise in the system isn’t about the network usage, in practice that could become the real problem if Microsoft hasn’t paid attention to the details.

So what about DRM?  DRM frustrates us all both because it intrudes on usability but also because it restricts us from doing things that we feel we are entitled to.  For me the most important variant of this is that when I purchase something I feel it belongs to me and not to a specific device.  I should be able to use it from any device I own, or in fact anywhere in my household (e.g., my wife should be able to watch the movie too).  This becomes more and more true as the price of whatever purchase I make goes up.  At $.99 I do not feel put out by the need to buy something for each of the devices I or my family want to view or run something on.  At $5 I am annoyed (and somewhat impeded) by it.  At $50 I am outraged.  Many new top-tier console games are running around $60, so you know where they sit in my personal hierarchy.

In this context I understand why people would want to be able to create secondary market for games that cost $50 or $60.  That’s a lot of money to spend for something that you, or your kids, lose interest in after a few days or weeks.  You want to either buy a used copy for less, sell the new copy you bought when you lose interest, or rent a copy because you know you won’t be playing the game regularly.  And so you have a particular market dynamic that has been working for much of the last two decades.

But the world is changing.   Game prices for mobile devices are an order of magnitude less than what you pay for those on a gaming console.  Are you getting more for your money on the console?  Of course you are.  Are you getting 10x worth?  For hard-corps gamers maybe, for most people probably not.

Let’s review the game console business model.  Consoles use a subsidized business model.  They are sold for far less than the cost to manufacture (let alone market, sell, and distribute) in return for a share of the sales of all games sold.  So Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo lose money on every console sold, but when you buy your 5th or 6th game they start to make money.  And it isn’t just their games, it is any game on the console.  So buy EA’s FIFA Soccer 13 for an Xbox and a portion of what you’ve paid to EA actually goes to Microsoft.

There are billions of phones, 1.3 Billion PCs, hundreds of millions of tablets, but only about 60 million (of the market leading) Xbox 360s in the world.  For even a top-tier console game that means the potential unit market is actually quite small. Game development costs are high.  Marketing costs are high.  And you’ve got to share the wealth with the console manufacturer.  Combine that with pricing pressure coming from the mobile gaming segment and one has to wonder if the current console game business model is sustainable.  I posit that it is not.

Which brings us to the Always-On DRM question for the Next-Generation Xbox.  If one combines that model with $60 games the result is a total disaster because it is effectively a price increase in a market with severe downward pricing pressure.  But what if this is really about changing the console game business model.  What if you wanted to, nee had to, drive the price of top-tier console games down to $30 or even $20?  The game publishers still have to make a profit on a relatively low-volume product.  Microsoft still has to get enough of a cut to make the Xbox business profitable.  What if the way to do that was to kill the resale and rental markets but drive the price of a new game down to less than they currently go for on the used market?

From the standpoint of business people inside Microsoft and the game publishers this seems like a win-win situation.  Game unit sales volume would go up dramatically.  Opportunities for in-app purchases and other ancillary sales would go up dramatically.  And the cost of a game to the end-user would drop.  There is no loser in this, except for the people running resale and rental businesses.

The bottom line on both my networking concerns and the broader DRM concerns is that not only don’t we know if there really is an Always-On requirement, if there is we don’t know any details.  Microsoft could be giving us something that will make the Next-Generation Xbox far more attractive to a far larger user base, or instituting business practices that kill of the console gaming business entirely.  We just don’t know.

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

PCs are the new Mainframe, and not in the good sense

Posted on April 4, 2013 by

Every time I write something about Microsoft’s strategy, and suggest the classic desktop PC (and the desktop, indeed the WIMP model itself,)  is becoming a niche offering, I get inundated with comments challenging my position.  Now this just in from Gartner, unless Microsoft gains traction in tablets and smartphones in the next four years they will become irrelevant.  Microsoft itself realized this years ago which is why they’ve stuck with banging their head on the wall to make Windows Phone succeed and started the re-invention of the PC with Windows 8.  From a sheer numbers perspective, phones and tablets dwarf PCs and moreover are displacing PC usage in increasing numbers of areas.

The traditional PC market is in long-term irreversible decline.  That doesn’t mean it goes away, mainframes are still with us for example, or if it does (as happened with minicomputers) that it goes away in the next decade.  But sales volumes will rapidly shift to smartphones, tablets, and tablet-inspired devices.  Microsoft can cannibalize its own traditional business or watch Apple and the Android cartel do it to them.  Microsoft’s approach is to try to redefine the PC to encompass the so-called post-PC world.  That’s a tough thing to do, and one can question details of the route that Microsoft takes, but they have no choice.  Despite what many Windows 8-haters believe.

One recent comment on this blog challenged Microsoft’s move away from the traditional desktop with the assertion that Apple remains committed to that market with OS X.  Let’s be clear here, despite Apple’s relative (to previous decades) success with OS X the Mac is a pimple on the overall PC market.  The much maligned Windows 8 has already passed any version of OS X in market share and will pass the combined market share of all versions of OS X by the end of this year.  If you want to hold OS X up as proof of the vitality of the traditional PC market you may be demonstrating the opposite.  That the much-loved OS X hasn’t been able to exceed single digit market share range despite Microsoft’s travails with anti-trust restrictions on its business practices, the Vista debacle, and a general malaise towards the company suggests that the desktop is a niche.  Few want to pay the costs of moving to OS X because they don’t see that as a meaningful change.  Their personal and corporate attention is on the much more impactful paradigm shift that is under way.

One could also challenge the assertion that Apple is investing in OS X.  It’s more like a cash-cow.  Years ago they reportedly cut the size of the OS X team and moved the resources to IOS.  Even in the last couple of days there have been reports of resources being taken off of OS X to help with the development of IOS 7.  Apple continues to invest enough in OS X, and refreshes of the Mac product line, to keep it generating healthy profits.  But the full weight of the company is behind IOS and the non-desktop world not OS X and the desktop.  I wonder if critics would have been happier had Microsoft put a skeleton crew on producing Windows 7.1, 7.2, etc. while the bulk of its resource went into producing a Windows-based “Tablet OS 8″.

Microsoft has been in the toilet for over a decade now yet neither OS X nor the variety of attempts at Desktop Linux have made a dent in its desktop dominance.  On the other hand, IOS and Android are kicking the c*** out of Microsoft.  Apple and Google have taken advantage of a paradigm shift away from WIMP as a usage model and the “desktop” as the place most people do computing.    And now that is spreading from being secondary devices (or consumer toys as some try to position them) that reduce Minutes per Day (MpD) usage of PCs (and lengthening the PC replacement cycle) to replacing traditional PCs outright.  Retail is a very visible example of this, where iPads are replacing in-store PCs and PC-based cash registers as the primary device used by store employees.

Microsoft may fail to make the transition and become irrelevant just as Gartner asserts.  I think the Windows team made some rookie mistakes in putting out Windows 8.  Those are things they can recover from, although the delay in getting to a place where the reinvention of Windows garners more praise than hate makes their cause significantly more difficult.  On the positive side it looks like both Windows Phone and Windows are shifting some of their attention back to the Enterprise market where their traditional strength lies.  That’s probably a strategy they should have pursued from the beginning, but fear of “keep doing what you’ve done and you’ll keep getting what you got” caused the pendulum to swing too far to the Consumer.  Again, not technically irrecoverable but certainly a huge speed bump in achieving business success.

Microsoft has a long and difficult road ahead of it and they will make mistakes along the way.  But they really have no choice in whether or not to attempt the journey.  The traditional PC is the new mainframe.  And even for the mighty IBM, mainframes are just a niche business as this point.  When it comes to computing the phrase “change or die” has never been more appropriate.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Windows, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

What will the follow-on to Windows Server 2012 be called?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by

Let me start with “I have no idea”.  Don’t like that answer?  Well, I’d bet on Windows Server 2012 R2 based on post 2003 release history.  But let’s explore this further.

With the latest revelation that Windows Blue is likely to be called Windows 8.1 I ended up in an amusing Twitter stream of speculation about Windows Server naming.  Microsoft has maintained a consistent naming convention for server (of all flavor) releases since 2000.  I’ll give some history of this, speculate on what happens this year, and speculate a bit on the future.

Back in the mid-90s when Microsoft decided to name both client operating systems and Office (e.g., Windows 95 and Office 95) by year rather than version number Jim Allchin declared that his products (Windows NT, SQL Server, etc.) would never adopt that naming convention.  I want to say that Jim said “Over my dead body” but my memory is fading enough that I won’t promise he actually said that.  Anyway, Jim didn’t die when 5 years later he agreed to adopt the calendar-based naming convention for Microsoft’s server products.

Prior to 2000 each of the server products was on its own development schedule and had little in the way of coordinated marketing.  But as it turned out 2000 was going to be a big year for product launches with most of the server products bringing something to the table.  Paul Flessner, who had become head of the Server Applications Division, and others were of the belief that marketing individual products to IT departments was no longer the way to go and that Microsoft should put more emphasis on marketing the family over the individuals.

There were two problems with marketing the 2000 wave of products as a single family.  The first was that it wasn’t really developed that way.  Of course there were the usual efforts by each team to coordinate certain features and usage scenarios, but it wasn’t as front and center in the product planning as one would have pursued had the family concept been around when we started as opposed to coming out of marketing later.  The second, and easier to fix, problem was that product naming conventions left little guide as to the relationship between the products.  That could be fixed, and was fixed, by adopting a common family naming convention.

This was the coming out party for .NET and so the naming convention that was adopted was .NET yyyy.  Yes, oh so briefly, SQL Server 8 had become SQL Server.NET 2000.  All the other server releases followed this pattern.  My SQL Server 8 developer conference was hijacked to become the .NET Developer Conference (“Featuring SQL Server.NET 2000″), a mistake for which I will never forgive Paul :-)   It didn’t take long before the .NET was dropped from the name of all the products but they retained the convention of using the year rather than version number to indicate specific releases.  So SQL Server 2000, Commerce Server 2000, Exchange Server 2000, etc.

Over the years this has been rejiggered in a number of ways.  For a while all these products were marketed together as the “Windows Server System” which included Windows Server itself as well.  And while no serious attempt was made to force all the products to release in waves, as the Office team does, there has been an increased level of coordination.  For example STB maintains a set of criteria that all of its products must meet in order to be allowed to ship.  Think of it like an internal logo program that is used to achieve some consistency across server products.

Initially management of the Server family was purely virtual.  While Paul Flessner ran the Server Applications Division (which at the time owned Exchange Server too) he did not own Windows Server (which remained in the Windows organization) nor Developer Division.  But he did have an overall business ownership role across them.  Microsoft is not a good organization for matrix management, so eventually all of the servers  were consolidated into what we now know as STB with Eric Rudder as its leader.

Bob Muglia took ownership of Windows Server, reporting to Eric, and sought to accelerate its development (which had been slowed by the Windows’ teams effort to transition the client OS to the NT kernel, followed by the Longhorn debacle).  Bob instituted a system in which Windows Server would release more frequently than Windows itself, alternating releases without kernel changes with those in which Windows had a release of its own (and thus a revised kernel).  These non-kernel releases were given the designation R2, the first of which was Windows Server 2003 R2.  In time the kernel vs non-kernel differentiation became meaningless and the true meaning of R2 became a way to designate a minor (or perhaps more appropriately positioned as a “.5″) release.  Other server products adopted the convention, although they have not used it very extensively.

Without any significant changes in branding we have STB on-premise products with a fairly clear naming convention.  The product is either the product name followed by the year, or it is the previous product release name followed by R2 (or R3, R4, etc. though that has rarely happened).  That means a Windows Server Blue would either be named Windows Server 2013, Windows Server 2014, or Windows Server 2012 R2.  Let me explain the 2013 vs 2014 thing.  There is some concern that a product shipping in the 4th calendar quarter of the year would seem dated just a few months later if it used the actual year of release in its name.  So sometimes Microsoft will use the subsequent year in the name.  But my bet on Windows Server Blue is that it will use the Windows Server 2012 R2 name.

Although I’ve heard some rumbling that Windows Server Blue might actually bring more dramatic improvements to Windows Server than Windows Blue is bringing to Windows 8, I have my doubts that they could bring so much to the table that they’d want to use a major version name.  Not only that, but being the conservative upgrade types that most IT leaders are, Microsoft might want to send a message of stability rather than one of change.  Depending on what kinds of changes are in Windows Server Blue they may be able to get IT departments to switch deployment efforts mid stream from a Windows Server 2012 to a Windows Server 2012 R2 effort.  It is unlikely they could get them to switch mid-stream to a 2013 named release.  So I think the dynamics point towards Microsoft using the R2 naming convention in this case.

There is a third reason for Microsoft to use the R2 convention, which is that the entire server product family branding scheme is getting rather dated.  At some point Microsoft will want to re-brand all of the products to better communicate their appropriateness for cloud and hybrid environments in addition to on-premise.  Is 2013 the year in which they will do this?  Overall for the company it is a year of consolidating the position they established with the 2012 product wave.  So maintaining a notion of stability where changes are more incremental and meant to mature the 2012 wave makes the most sense.  But if I factor out Windows 8 and focus on how solid a release Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, etc. are then a rebrand of the server products seems more reasonable this year.  Still, I’m betting against it.  Why?

As many have noted the value of the “Windows” brand is in decline.  For one thing it doesn’t carry much cachet with consumers any more.  For another, Windows 8 isn’t your father’s Windows and future versions will make this even more obvious.  So Microsoft could in fact be on the cusp of a more dramatic re-branding than just changing how server products are named.  If that is in the cards then it makes no sense for the server products to change before the company has figured out an overall re-branding.  And given I think they won’t want to make such a disruptive change in 2013, the server naming conventions likely won’t change in 2013 either.

For me the bottom line is that Windows Server 2012 R2 is the most likely name for Windows Server Blue, followed by Windows Server 2013 as a second possibility.  Anything more dramatic wouldn’t be a total shock, I just don’t expect it.  Anything more off the reservation, but not part of a major re-branding, would just be silly.

(Update: I forgot to mention that Windows 2000 originally got that name because it was supposed to be the follow-on to Windows 98 SE.  When the team was unable to finish all the app and driver compatibility work a final follow-on in the Win 9x family was added to the plan.  Since Windows 2000 had already taken that name the Windows 9x release was called Windows ME.  So the Windows 2000 naming was not the result of the name syncing scheme described above, but rather the bridge from the client OS use of that scheme to the server use of it.)

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