Ballmer bullish on future, bearish on Linux

BOSTON -- Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer addressed a gathering of software industry leaders here on Wednesday, touting his company's vision for a bright future, while casting doubt on alternatives to his company's Windows operating system, in particular Linux.

Speaking to members of the Massachusetts Software Council, Ballmer said he was excited about the promise of technological advances in the next decade. But Ballmer shed his visionary mantle soon after, taking shots at the open source software development community and warning participants to think twice before adopting open source products like Linux.

"I'm as fired up now as I've ever been in 24 years at Microsoft," Ballmer said. Noting the rapid adoption of technology such as PCs, the Internet and cellular telephones in the preceding decade, Ballmer said a new generation of software and hardware, driven by advances in speech recognition technology and multimedia, will revolutionize the way individuals work and live.

"In the next ten years, you're going to see more positive change than in the last ten," Ballmer said.

Noting the prevalent use of pen and paper by audience members, Ballmer wondered aloud why the content of his speech was not being captured and translated automatically, while also being synchronized with real-time video and a copy of his Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Advances in software in coming years would make such features practical, making "information workers" and those in fast-growing fields like healthcare more productive, he said.

Ballmer promoted his company's products as a key to that transformation, including the next version of the Windows operating system, dubbed "Longhorn," and the company's .NET computing architecture.

Joking about recent news regarding a curtailed list of features in Longhorn, Ballmer said that cutting back on the promised features at least allowed the company to announce a release date for the product, which was a "major accomplishment."

Despite the focus on the next version of Windows, Microsoft is also working to make its offerings more interoperable with products using other software platforms such as Linux, Unix and XML (Extensible Markup Language), Ballmer said.

Ballmer singled out XML and Web services as the "big breakthrough" of the next decade that will spur innovation.

"The fact that companies like Oracle (Corp.), IBM (Corp.) and (Microsoft) have bet on an architected approach to interoperability is huge," he said.

Even while promoting interoperability, Ballmer scoffed at arguments that his company's operating system creates a computing "monoculture," and took a swipe at those who would see Linux replace Windows on servers and desktops within companies.

Microsoft's platforms offer better interoperability with the company's other technology, such as .NET, reducing the total cost of ownership of Windows compared with Linux, which is available for free, but often requires significant effort to integrate and maintain, Ballmer said. He cited a Microsoft-sponsored study by Forrester Research Inc. and a similar study by Gartner Inc. to bolster his claims.