With the control of the operating system, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to dictate/influence the design of the ‘new’ storage-centric datacenter infrastructure. A lot of the existing ‘high end’ storage complexity should be moved to the operating systems, where it belongs, and where it can be simplified and substantially improved.

Steve & Ray may be locked-in … they need to play and don’t have the freedom to move in any other direction. Largely due to their monopolistic history with Intel, they are stuck with a highly mended operating system that needs to be backward compatible and run on whatever Intel delivers.

It may be too late to change, and open source is gaining ground. Longer-term, Microsoft may need to transition to a ‘vertically integrated’ infrastructure / SaaS model… eventually it may be better to run it all on Linux.

On the other hand, just ‘a billion dollars’ is a lot of money to fund a new ‘clean sheet design’ directed specifically at the datacenter infrastructure, open and transportable to any processor architecture, without legacy issues. They could provide another ‘billion’ as VC capital for the development of new open hardware platforms …plus another couple of ‘billion’ to AMD to execute a new os-centric silicon, etc.

However, it seems that there is no longer any respect for money. It is a repetition of the dot.com bomb, moved now to the corporate sector…. these guys have already made their money and should retire while the climate is good, as BillG did.