ON WINDOWS AFTER WINDOWS VISTA

KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING

Speaking of Windows (see previous post), Techworld has an interesting story on the possible direction of the venerable operating system, as envisioned by Gartner, the tech IT research firm:

Vista will be the last version of Windows that exists in its current, monolithic form, according to Gartner.

Instead, the research firm predicts, Microsoft will be forced to migrate Windows to a modular architecture tied together through hardware-supported virtualisation. "The current, integrated architecture of Microsoft Windows is unsustainable - for enterprises and for Microsoft," wrote Gartner analysts Brian Gammage, Michael Silver and David Mitchell Smith.

The article explains further:

The answer, according to Gartner, is virtualisation, which is built into newer chips from Intel and AMD, and has become mainstream for x86 servers through the efforts of VMware.

Virtualisation is best known as a way of running multiple server instances on a single hardware platform, but it can also be used to run individual operating system functions or applications. The technique isolates the various components from one another, making them easier to manage.

Gartner believes Microsoft will use virtualisation to divide the Windows client into a "service partition", controlling system functions such as management and security, and one or more application partitions.

It's an imaginative take on how Windows could evolve next, and worth a read.  Not clear at all from the piece thought is if Microsoft is actually thinking along these lines or not.

Will stay tuned for a response, if one is forthcoming.