"Martin Taylor, global general manager of platform strategy at Microsoft, talks to vnunet.com about how the company is handling the open source threat

What does the platform strategy group do?

We spend time trying to educate customers in the marketplace when we think we've got a pretty good story to tell.

Then I've got a technical team. I've hired quite a few people from the Linux open source world to run a research and development centre.

Then we bring consultants from the Linux open source space to help us build solutions. We've got every Linux distro running; about 120 servers all with varying degrees of open source stacks on them.

What we do there is help our product groups have line-of-sight when they need to know things about Linux.

Our developers have been heads down on Microsoft for years and they don't know some things that might be attractive or appealing in the Linux space. So we try to give our developers line-of-sight to help our product road maps.

We also add credibility to our externally-facing activities. For instance, when I say our file serving can outperform Samba, [it] is not a gut reaction but because I've had Linux and open source guys build the software environment [and] my Windows guys build the Windows environment.

We've realised that we need more direct interaction with customers and in our individual markets. Because, just as total cost of ownership is very unique based on customer scenarios, there are cultural and climate differences in EMEA versus other areas.

So we have a small team of people around the world charged with the same initiatives I have, but in a more localised way."

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