Microsoft, Divide Thyself

About a year ago, I proposed that IT departments move away from the Windows monoculture. My argument was simple. First, by using different vendors for different platforms you break up your patch cycles. If we continue down the path of "standardization" every second Tuesday of every month we will be doing QA on our desktops, laptops, PDAs, servers, PBXs, ATMs, and manufacturing equipment. Second, whenever a worm or virus hits, we expose the entire organization to downtime and outages.

The Windows monoculture reminds me of the dangers from arboreal monoculture. At one time the entire eastern half of the United States was blanketed in chestnut trees. If you visit a building built before 1900, you see the rich, warm color of chestnut wood everywhere. Thanks to the chestnut blight of 1904, practically the entire population of 4 billion trees was wiped out.

The middle of the last century was a golden age (or should I say green?) for Midwestern towns. Towering elm trees lined every street, arching over and creating arboreal tunnels.

Until Dutch elm disease wiped them out.

The latest scourge of the Midwest is the Asian Emerald Ash Borer, a stupid little bug that burrows under the bark of mature ash trees, completely girdling the tree and killing it within a single season. In the county where I live, there are reported to be over 4 million dead trees already.

I would like to argue that Microsoft should also abandon its strategy of Windows on everything. Imagine the benefits:

If security were really the prime motivator at Microsoft, it would abandon its strategy of world domination through Windows standardization and introduce variation and innovation.

— Richard Stiennon is founder of IT-Harvest Inc. Special to Dark Reading