In a recent post on his blog, Microsoft’s CBO Richard Scoble contends that the delay of Windows Vista is in part due to the extreme complexity of the software. He points out that networking, security, video, imaging, UI, etc. must all be in place before the new operating system ships and if one link in the chain isn’t ready, everything is delayed.

News.com recently ran an interesting analysis of the problem in an article titled Windows is so slow, but why? Along with Scoble’s point about complexity, News.com mentions Microsoft’s bundling strategy and backward compatibility as part of the problem/challenge.

The bundling strategy is an interesting element of this. Integrating software into the most popular operating system on earth has served Microsoft well from a commercial perspective but it might be slowing them down technically.

It must also be a bit of a pain for any MS development team to learn that a commercial decision has been made to integrate their product into Windows. It’s like landing your fighter jet on an aircraft carrier, only to learn that your aircraft will be integrated into the ship and your elite crew of two will become a crew of thousands.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 8:36 am and is filed under Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.