Q&A Part 2: Microsoft's Bob Muglia on 'integrating the edge'

'There's a lot of components that need to change,' he says

By Carol Sliwa

June 9, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - ORLANDO -- Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Server division, this week offered an update on the company's long-term vision for its server operating system, as well as related software products. Muglia also discussed Microsoft's high-performance computing plans, as well as the company's vision for "integrating the edge."
This is Part 2 of that interview. Part 1 is already available online (see story).
Microsoft said it will ship a Compute Cluster Edition of Windows Server 2003 in the first half of next year. Why did you want to get into that market? It's about time. It's growing very rapidly. It's one of the faster-growing segments of the server business.
In which vertical industries do you see the most interest? Pharmaceutical, oil and gas, financial institutions, engineering organizations, etc. It's about 7% of the [overall] server business right now.
That's enough? Oh yeah. You're at [400,000] to 500,000 units, and that's a pretty big number. It's an area where we clearly have a lot of catching up to do. It's an area which is also changing in the sense that, historically, that set of capabilities was typically [centered around] academic [institutions] and very high in government.
We're going to see a lot of shift toward smaller clusters being built -- four, eight, 16, 32, etc. clustered systems. Remember, a dual-processor, four-cluster system is an amazing amount of computing power. Very literally, scientists will be able to put more computing power under their desks than a supercomputer had even a couple of years ago. And in that kind of a world, you can change the way people work. Instead of building some model and spending time making sure it's all right and then submitting it to the great computing center in the sky and waiting for two days or whatever for it to come back, you just run it. And it finishes in a couple of minutes, and you run it again, and you run it again, as you make tweaks. It's a huge opportunity for those industries.


Bob Muglia of Microsoft Corp.

Do you expect much unit volume with the Compute Cluster Edition? Oh yes. We have about 5% share right now of compute clusters. And if you think of it as being a 500,000-unit-a-year marketplace, there's just nothing but upside for us.
How different will this operating system be from other versions of Windows Server 2003? It's the same operating system with two differences. One, we basically turn off a bunch of workloads, so you can't do a

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