Another Microsoft Blow

It's been a bad year for Microsoft.  It's actually been a bad few years.  The giant has become hated by many, and has had to compete against loyal Appleites and Linuxbies.  Open source is a mighty lure and cloud computing delivers a death blow to their monopoly.  Developers are the backbone that produces the miracles, and developers are flocking to the competition.  Some previous employees are also heading up projects, like the one below:

LAS VEGAS--VMware Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz is racing to turn VMware's products into a platform for Web applications and services. To succeed, Maritz, who once served as the third-highest ranking executive at Microsoft, is pulling pages from his former employer's playbook to fight the battle.

Though deep in the weeds of technical infrastructure, VMware's lead in virtualization puts it in a position to create a new platform for cloud computing. Its software sits between a computer's hardware and its operating system. VMware wants to take advantage of that layer of technology it's providing to build a new foundation for computer programming.

But just as Windows couldn't have thrived on its own, neither will VMware's platform. So Maritz added a developer piece to VMware's business two years ago, paying $420 million to acquire SpringSource, which makes enterprise and Web application development tools. And he moved to bolster the company's developer evangelism business, hiring his one-time Microsoft lieutenant Tod Nielsen, as chief operating officer in 2009. Nielsen, who ran developer relations for Microsoft in the late 1990s, now has the task of recruiting developers to build applications for VMware's platform.

The idea is to give developers tools they can use to build Web-based applications without having to deal with the mundane plumbing. And it launched Cloud Foundry as an open-source effort in order to appeal to developers.

To build up that muscle, Nielsen brought in another old Microsoft hand, Mark Lucovsky, who the Microsoft brass once thought so highly of that they named him one of the company's 16 Distinguished Engineers. He also gained some notoriety later, declaring in a sworn legal document that Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer threw a chair and cursed then-Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt when Lucovsky said he was leaving the company for a job at Google.

Microsoft is bleeding out. They are trying to remain competitive, but their bloat and arrogance may have made them wait too long. Many times, they gouged the consumer and thumbed their noses at the competition. They made mighty enemies, and in their time of need the support looks mighty thin.

That's why Microsoft has been playing hardball with VMware. Microsoft bundles its virtual machine inside its server software, a move that's helped cut into VMware's market lead. And it's spending money on marketing to lure customers away, launching a clever ad campaign this week that mocks VMware's pricing, featuring a 1970s era sales executive from VMlimited, complete with Fu Manchu mustache, selling virtualization technology from the back of his tricked out van.

Even now they don't get it. In the end, it isn't all about the buck, it's about the freedom. Microsoft is throwing their weight for one final huzzah, but in the end freedom and choice is going to win. For how long, it's hard to say, but growth and evolution demanded the longstanding monopoly fall. They will always be around, but in a much smaller capacity. Good riddance, says this particular geek.