Windows 7 may become the test for Ballmer and crew as more users infer skipping an upgrade.  This maybe more of a rejection of Microsoft strategy than technology.  The recent survey quoted in eweek suggest 6 of 10 will not be upgrading.  This sounds similar to the numbers of those that have stayed on XP vs. Vista. It maybe the strategy to not have an upgrade path from XP to Windows 7 has created that doubt that Microsoft should continue to be in most computing futures.  Add the recent push to Cloud and Microsoft focus on Enterprise and Cloud, they may be creating their own prefect storm as IBM did in the 80s

Back on March 12, 2009 MSC.Software Corporation announced that its Board of Directors had named 47-year-old Ashfaq A. Munshi interim Chief Executive Officer and President of the Company. These actions followed the relatively sudden resignations of William J. Weyand, Chairman and CEO and Glenn Wienkoop, President and COO, after four years. According to The Sunday Indian, Chief Executive William Weyand and President Glenn Weinkoop resigned because the company moved its governance structure towards current best practices and sought to separate the roles of CEO and Chairman. The Board of Directors also named then-current board members Donald Glickman and Robert A. Schriesheim to serve as non-executive co-chairmen, effective March 12. The Board of Directors also retained a national firm to conduct a search for a permanent CEO. Munshi has been a Director of MSC since July 2005. Earlier, he was a corporate vice president at Applied Materials, responsible for software and automation. Previously he was VP/GM of...

That the bottom of the US recession that started in December 2007 has not yet been reached was argued in several previous blog entries in this space. See “Bottoming out?…” posted on May 25, 2009 and “Bottoming Out…Yet?...” posted on June 6, 2009, as the most recent examples. Well, the July 02, 2009 Labor Department report of jobs lost in June (minus 467,000) gave us a definitive answer, “No, the recession hasn’t reached bottom yet.” June’s minus 467,000 reversed the decline in lost jobs reported for the preceding month of May (minus 322,000), when hopes were beginning to be raised that the bottom was nigh. Still, June’s losses were far fewer than when the deepest job cuts of the recession came (January 2009, when 741,000 jobs vanished). And the financial situation in many states is adding to the recession. States are required to run balanced budgets, and many states are preparing draconian budget cuts. Here in California, the Republicans are blocking any tax increases, despite being in the minority....

 A look at MBSE and SysML in the context of COFES