
Trusted computing
Some time ago, and its hard looking in from outside because you end up thinking up soppositions and ideas rather than really knowing - but some time ago, MS cut and gutted the OS groups, and previously they took a fire axe to the trusted compute group.
I think these kinds of breakages are a reflection of what happens when you break up teams and people who know what they were doing, because you know better.
Windows at present is a mess. Windows 7 *really needs a SP2 roll up. And I mean really - cos patching the bit now is turning your hair grey. Windows 8 isn't far behind in needing work. Both have heaving massive patch cycles now. They dwarf previous gen OS's size in single patch cycles. Tesing that lot must be a very drawn out task.
While Windows 8 runs ok on lower end gear, and Microsoft do love to make that point - the patch cycles on older/slower gear are agonising, painful, slow affairs.
Behind the scenes, in the OS groups, and in the support/trust worthy computing teams - I think its chaos. They not only changed the management, but the teams, the methods, the plans. Threshold is going to be the 4th major change. (Vista, 7, 8, 9/Threshhold ) and they have been talking for a while that they thing they'll move to a yearly release cycle.
They are thrashing around like a dying beast trying to fix their end client so it can win/dominate again, and nothing they do has worked, apart from devasting in house teams, structures, and planning. The cloud and server side may be bouncing along, but client side is rocky as hell.
If you are an IT manager, put your tin hat on, because the world of XP, 7,8,9, IOS, Android and ChromeOS isn't getting any easier.
If I were at the top in MS, I'd be laying down the law of getting a settled end client thats stable, and that develops sanely off a good core. Maybe they just thing its fun to keep changing all the structures, exams, support, UI, tooling, utility bases every release. Aside from giving the finger every week to their audience IT pro's and telling everyone to learn powershell and go compete for the 1 in 50 chance of joining an azure level megacorp with guru level mitigation skills - what have they done lately.