The strategy Microsoft must pursue to recover from Windows 8

If my InfoWorld colleagues and I haven’t made it clear, we believe Windows 8 is a failed operating system, a muddled mess that combines awkwardly the mobile/touch context with the desktop/peripheral-input context. Windows RT is little better; though users can install only Metro apps on it, RT comes with Windows 7-based Office, File Explorer, and IE10, all of which fare poorly in the mobile/touch context. As a result of Microsoft’s Windows 8/RT muddle, the iPad is the only sensible tablet option for businesses.

But put aside these major flaws and think ahead. Weston Morris at the Unisys consultancy has. Morris, who focuses on the consumerization phenomenon and how to serve enterprise clients on mobile and consumer-class deployments, expects Microsoft to learn quickly from the Windows 8 and RT failures (long pointed out by analysts and pundits like me, giving Microsoft plenty of time to think about them). He expects the platforms to be improved fairly quickly, and a year or so from now, Windows RT Pro or whatever you want to call it will be what Windows 8 and RT should have been in the first place.

[ Woody Leonhard on why Windows 8 is so bad and why we need a new version of Windows 7 instead. ]

A PC isn’t a PC any more — and Microsoft knows it
Morris also believes, despite the negative feedback from reviewers and broad skepticism from IT clients, that Microsoft has done something pivotal with Windows 8 and RT, with huge consequences for the future: Even if Apple introduced the concept in the iPad, Microsoft’s Windows 8 and RT efforts have changed the paradigm among vendors, users, and IT.

The conversation has moved from trying to shoehorn mobile devices into the PC paradigm (seen in the control-freak management tools proposed by vendors and desired by shortsighted IT pros) to thinking of PCs as simply another type of mobile device. That has huge implications, starting from the management paradigm. Rethought as mobile devices, PCs are no longer “inside the perimeter” machines but in-the-wild devices forcing a new, necessary analysis of how to protect data. Shifting from the device to the data is critical in the more open, interconnected, and digital world we and our businesses now all live in. (I profiled Intel’s approach to the same issue recently, and it’s a good example of the fundamental rethink in action.)

What Morris sees in the field is that most IT organizations expect to avoid Windows 8 completely on their desktop and laptops — it’s too much of a mess to use the dual operating systems, for no real benefit. (Pretty much every survey comes to the same conclusion.) But he sees a small number — the more visionary companies — consider Windows 8 tablets not as Windows PCs but as a new option for the mobile and tablet strategies they’re developing anyhow.

If it weren’t for its huge management and security shortcomings, Windows RT would be a better fit for such a strategy than Windows 8, as it jettisons the Windows 7 platform that’s well suited to a traditional PC but not to a tablet. The very fact of Metro-style tablets changes the IT paradigm from “How do we take advantage of iPads in business workflows?” to “How can we use tablets in our business workflows, and which tablets should we use?”

Microsoft hopes the support for traditional PC management in Windows 8 will get IT to favor PC tablets, which many IT folks were quick to do. However, I believe the poor user experience of those devices will lead to users rejecting them and insisting on iPads instead, which IT has already opened the door to.

The sensible horizon: Metro-only Windows RT Pro for x86, legacy-less Windows 9
But forget the current issues with Windows 8 and RT tablets. Fast-forward a year or two and imagine that Windows RT gains the necessary management and security capabilities. That’s not a stretch, given Microsoft’s plan to convert its Intune cloud-based management tool into a full-fledged, multidevice management platform. It essentially combines today’s separate systems management silo for Windows PCs and mobile device management (MDM) silo for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 8 devices.

Intune isn’t there yet technologically, nor is its licensing appropriate for such enterprise usage. But Microsoft has laid out a road map that gets us there in a few years; the first step is a revision of both Intunes and System Center 2012 slated for early 2013 that will support Windows RT and Windows 8 to an unspecified extent.

A multiyear road map is probably too long, and Microsoft likely knows it. In the meantime, a few MDM vendors such as AirWatch and MobileIron have been broadening their MDM tools to include Macs and are thinking about Windows PCs; Meraki’s MDM tool has Mac and Windows clients. Windows system management vendors such as Centrify, Dell, and Symantec are also looking to broaden into MDM. In other words, if Microsoft doesn’t reinvent Intune as needed, someone else will do it with their own product.

Either way, it reinforces that major conceptual shift Morris says has arrived: PCs are just another device.

My guess is that Microsoft will at some point drop the legacy Windows from Windows 8. Maybe that’s Windows 9 in a few years, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Windows RT move into that role on the tablet side well before Windows 9 sees the light of day. How? Through updates both in Windows RT itself and in Microsoft’s back-end management tools.

Furthermore, it would make sense for Microsoft to deliver an x86 version of Windows RT that includes the key hardware security features (vPro) in the x86 chip platform upon which security-sensitive businesses rely. Morris points out that a software-only security approach used in iOS, Android, and Windows RT devices can’t meet the needs of some industry segments. Unless someone comes up with an equivalent technology in an ARM chip, tablets used in those segments will need Intel processors.

If I were Intel, I would consider getting an ARM license and adding vPro-like technology to them, delivering its own chips for the Windows tablet world — much as Apple has done for its iOS devices. That way, Intel could offer both chip platforms to all customers. Both Apple and Microsoft have ARM licenses, so both companies could develop their own ARM chips with VPro-like technology. Microsoft hasn’t developed its own ARM chip, as Apple has, but Apple’s conflicted attitude about enterprise use — consistent in building the core capabilities, then almost embarassed about having done so — means developing VPro-like capabilities probably won’t happen.

Whether Microsoft were to make ARM chips in the future that met those hardware-based security needs, it still has Intel chips to do so today.

Windows 8 tablets — hardware-secured or not — don’t need the Windows 7 portion that hurts the overall Windows 8 tablet experience. They just need enough of the x86-based legacy Windows core to handle the file system and the security features — Windows RT acknowledges that through its inclusion of some legacy Windows aspects in its essentially ROM-based compatibility environment for File Explorer, Office RT, and IE10 RT. Windows RT thus points the way for Windows 8’s tablet evolution.

I suspect that in a year or two, after people realize they don’t want legacy Windows on their tablets, Microsoft will offer Windows RT Pro on the x86 platform to satisfy that customer demand. By then, we may see more and better Metro apps that make it easier to let go of the Windows legacy, at least on tablets. (iOS users have already done so, using those devices as companions to Macs and PCs, not complete replacements. I suspect Windows 8 and RT tablet users will do the same, contrary to Microsoft’s dual-environment designs.)

Which Microsoft will prevail?
Microsoft is not one company. You can see that fact in how different Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 8 handle management and security. Windows 8 uses existing Microsoft tools, Windows RT offers almost nothing, and Windows Phone 8 offers a set comparable to Android (but fewer than iOS has) for use by third-party MDM tools. If Microsoft as a whole were one company with a unified vision and strategy — that is, if it were an Apple — all thee platforms would have a common, Metro-based management and security architecture and tool set, with the Windows 8 platform continuing to support the traditional Microsoft back end as it too was evolved.

Still, the facts on the ground will shape how all three of these quasi-independent units (plus the equally independent server group) will evolve. I believe they’ll converge because they have to. It could be done intentionally, in a coordinated fashion (not likely), or it could be done in lurch mode (most likely, and what we saw with Windows Phone and Windows 7) once the market rejects the current offerings as insufficient.

Microsoft may be fragmented and internally quarrelsome, but it has a history of pulling together under crisis. The very fact that the smartphone-derived Metro UI is now common across Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 8 is a current example of that; critics can’t say Microsoft’s similar Internet turnabout a decade ago is no longer possible today.

Windows is in crisis — people want it less and less, so it’s simply not growing any longer, while OS X, Android, and iOS are. Microsoft’s Metro shift and decision to make its own tablets both show the company knows it. Windows 8 and RT don’t deliver on what Microsoft should do, but they lay the groundwork for what must come next. Think of them as training wheels not only for users but also for Microsoft. If we’re all lucky, the training wheels will come off well before 2015.