If Microsoft wants to rule the web, it needs to master burst downloads
Last week the first public beta of Windows 7 was released with great fanfare, and equal amounts of frustration. Users complained of not being able to reach the download site, get the download to come down in a timely manner, and the ever important registration key not being forthcoming.
Yeah, not good. Yes, by this time the people who wanted Windows 7 have it, and the feedback I’ve read has been generally positive, but what does this mean in the greater scheme of things? Gina Trapani penned a good opinion piece on how MSFT generally doesn’t measure up when it comes to handling short-term download spikes:
But for a company that’s pushing cloud computing and web services and trying so hard to prove that they’re ready to move off the desktop and onto the web, today’s Win7 borkfest proves Microsoft is still too clueless about how to do stuff online to be taken seriously.
[From Opinion: In 2009, Microsoft Still Underestimates the Web]
This isn’t the first time of course. Remember the first Vista service pack? Yeah, same thing. If you wanted it when it came out, you were kind hooped. We know that MSFT has more money than God and could almost as easily buy an Akamai as pay for their services, so why don’t they?
Will we be able to trust a company with cloud computing that can’t plan ahead for massive downloads? Come on, even when I was at Qumana with only a half dozen people and a pretty small app we set up with Akamai to distribute our app and site around the world. We knew when we thought we’d have download spikes and instead of just shrugging it off we planned ahead.
Yes, all the big companies have this problem once and a while, but it seems that MSFT is the worst and most frequent offender of not planning for massive download requests.
Am I missing something here or does MSFT just still not “get” the web?
