Will Longhorn be short on features?

While Microsoft continues raising Longhorn, rivals are seizing the operating system's extended adolescence to develop competing feature sets of their own.

The already scaled-back version of Longhorn is still roughly 18 months from shipping, and with the expected technical advances by Linux competitors during that time, Microsoft's estimable industry influence to sell the product as currently constituted will be severely tested.

Even with the much anticipated WinFS  file system chopped out and sent back to its ostensibly eternal beta cycle, Microsoft believes the remaining technology goodies in the Longhorn bag will compel many business users and consumers to upgrade.

Microsoft, indeed, has put considerable resources into the Avalon graphics subsystem and Indigo technology for connecting subsystems via Web services. In addition to Avalon and Indigo, the first release of Longhorn is expected to have new information management tools including a built-in desktop search capability, management tools designed to significantly reduce deployments costs (including capabilities for image creation, editing and installation), and better all around reliability through a diagnostic infrastructure that detects and fixes problems faster.

But will even the sweetest of those treats taste a little stale by late 2006 as rivals deliver competitive offerings? And given that it has already said its unified file system will not appear in Longhorn, will Microsoft be able to deliver any killer feature that will inspire customers to upgrade?

Still far off into the future

With IT shops not anticipating any bold new features in the first version of the product, many are not planning to make a meaningful commitment to Longhorn any time soon after its release.

The IT department that runs MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), for instance, has standardized on Windows, but is not yet even thinking about Longhorn.

"We haven't had time to evaluate Longhorn," said CIO Steve Peltzman. "We change things like that when we have to. If I can spend money to save money, I'll do it, but unless it's significant I try to stay away from that."

What increasingly is shackling Microsoft to deliver innovative capabilities is the enormity and diversity of its user base, which makes sliding innovative features into Longhorn difficult even over an extended period of time.

"In my view they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can't offer best-of-breed in a few areas because they are so wrapped up in trying to satisfy the needs of all their different constituencies. Their attitude is 'we will do only the things we do well and do them the best we can,' whereas their competitors can concentrate on targeted and sometimes more interesting things," said Bill Cornfield, president of WSG Systems.