Under the slogan “Ready for a New Day,” Microsoft has released Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 to its business customers. Retail versions will be out next year.

Windows Vista: It sure looks pretty, and some initial reports indicate that it fixes many of the appalling security flaws that plagued Windows XP. It is unclear whether the fixes are architectural, or if under the hood, Windows Vista is really Windows XP Service Pack 3 with a new graphical user interface.

What I don’t hear, from developers and enterprise IT professionals, is any pent-up demand for an upgrade. What I do hear is concern about increased complexity, an explosion of new APIs, restrictive licensing, the difficulty of doing regression testing and support for so many different versions, and of course, the well-known problems with Microsoft’s anti-piracy code. I predict a slow upgrade curve for existing customers — and that the forthcoming availability of the retail software will fail to deliver huge numbers of hardware sales. In other words, Windows XP is going to be around for a long, long time.

Office 2007: More bewildering complexity, and a lack of a compelling upgrade message. The software has a beautiful user interface, particularly with Excel and PowerPoint. (Those are the only two pieces of software from today’s roll-out that I want on my own desktop.)

The 2007 Office System (aka Office 2007 or Office 12) increases the tight coupling between the desktop and server software, particularly Exchange Server and SharePoint Server.

Companies that already use Exchange and SharePoint, and want to build custom desktop apps that leverage Word and Excel, will migrate sooner rather than later. (I don’t think that many corporations customize Office in that way, though Microsoft is evangelizing the heck of that capability with Visual Studio Tools for Office.)

Companies that don’t use Exchange and SharePoint will migrate much later. Given the pricing and complexity in Office 2007, OpenOffice looks better by the day for companies that don’t seek to build custom applications around their desktop apps.

Exchange Server 2007: I haven’t paid any attention to it whatsoever.

The latest edition of Eclipse Review is out: Subscribers should be receiving it in their physical or virtual mailbox this week. However, even if you’re not a subscriber, you can download the full issue as a PDF right now.

There’s lots of goodness in this issue:

27 Must-Have Eclipse Plug-Ins. Rick Wayne takes you on a scenic tour of his favorite add-ins, covering language support, modeling, UI design, integration, frameworks, and much more.

SOAP? XML? WSDL? Java? Eclipse!! You can leverage Web services using the Eclipse Web Tools Platform, as Christopher Judd demonstrates.

Improving Code With Static Analysis. Steve Gütz teaches you how to defeat code defects by leveraging Eclipse’s Test & Performance Tools Platform.

AJAX Meets JavaServer Faces. Max Katz shows how you can use component-based development for building “Web 2.0”-style rich Internet applications.

Plus, we have the latest tools and technologies for Eclipse users, a story about how the Wolfram Workbench IDE was created, a primer on the Data Tools Platform, news from the Eclipse Foundation about RCP adoption, and more…

Because the American Thanksgiving holiday is happening on November 23, we’re not publishing our SD Times News on Thursday this week. So, no “Zeichick’s Take” column.

In lieu of this, here are my thoughts on two stories in yesterday’s SD Times News on Monday:

In “Salesforce Raking in the Revenue,” Jeff Feinman (the newest member of our reporting team) cites the dot-com’s 57% year-on-year revenue increase, reaching US$130 million for the quarter. However, earning per share are flat. If you read the financials, you see over and over again phrases like “earnings likely be impacted by the effects of stock-based compensation.” In other words, the company appears to be enriching its managers and key employees, at the expense of its non-employee stockholders.

In “Borland Releases Rebuilt JBuilder,” Jennifer deJong talks about the company’s reimagining of its popular Java IDE. JBuilder 2007, of course, will soon be a part of CodeGear, which will spin off from Borland as a wholly owned subsidiary focused on IDEs and developers tools. JBuilder has an incredibly loyal audience, and I believe that CodeGear can successfully differentiate JBuilder from the other Eclipse-based Java IDEs.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ve had a few more days to think about Sun’s decision to release Java SE and Java ME as open source software. You can read my thoughts in today’s Zeichick’s Take column for SD Times News on Thursday.

“We get it, media buyers. You want leads. And who doesn’t? But have you forgotten the value of building a brand?”

That’s the question that David Karp, advertising sales manager for BZ Media’s Software Test & Performance business unit, asks in his thoughtful guest column in the November, 2006, edition of Folio Magazine.

Effective marketing means more than gathering leads for your sales force. David explains why. (And before you write this off as the carping of a print sales dinosaur, note that David is also responsible for ST&P’s fast-growing Web and e-newsletter ad programs, trade show booths, Web seminars and lead-generation initiatives. However, print is central to his marketing arsenal… just as it should be central to yours.)

For the second time, Borland has postponed an “all editors” briefing with SD Times, geared at helping us understand their technology, product and business strategy.

The two-hour call was initially set for Oct. 24, and was to have included Tod Neilsen (pictured), their new CEO; Rick Jackson, the SVP for strategy; and Marc Brown, the head of ALM product marketing. We gathered up the troops, but they notified us that morning that Tod couldn’t make the call. So, we rescheduled for today, Nov. 14.

This morning, they informed our editorial team that their executives again can’t make the meeting. No date has been set for the third attempt.

Borland has complained that SD Times’ coverage is overly critical, and said we haven’t given them the opportunity to explain their strategy. We’re ready whenever they are.

>> Update 11/15: Borland’s PR team explains that the meeting was canceled, in part, because of the pending CodeGear announcement. SEC requirements wouldn’t let Borland discuss it with us in advance. We expect to get together with Tod Neilsen (Borland CEO) and Ben Smith (CodeGear CEO) soon.

Dorothy has Toto, and Java has Duke. It seems that Sun is open-sourcing the mascot too.

My first impression of Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel, is “Wow, this guy’s really smart.” That impression stayed with me through his nearly two-hour presentation in Palo Alto yesterday (Nov. 12). His appearance was sponsored by Silicom Ventures, a venture capital investment group.

Netanyahu spoke eloquently on a number of topics, focusing on the amazing turnaround in the Israeli economy over the past four years. After the collapse of the U.S. stock market after the bubble, Israel went into a tail-spin: the economy was shrinking, in real terms, at the rate of 1 ¼ percent annually. As finance minister for Arial Sharon from 2003-2005, Netanyahu’s goal was to prevent an Argentina-style collapse… which he said was only months away.

In his well-prepared speech, Netanyahu used a vivid metaphor to describe the state of the economy back then: a race where a fat man was riding on the shoulders of a thin man. The thin man is the private sector, which drives the economy through industry, trade and investment. The fat man is the public sector, which redistributes resources and offers services for the common good.

In Israel, Netanyahu said, the thin man was very thin, crushed beneath high corporate taxes and crippling government regulation. Meanwhile, the fat man was obese, due to powerful unions, protectionist policies, and welfare rolls which supported people who are able to work, but who simply didn’t want to.

Public sector spending in Israel in 2002, he said, was 56 percent of GDP, compared to 41 percent as a world average. And it was getting worse.

The recipe for the turn-around, Netanyahu explained, was three-fold.

First, help the thin man gain strength by reducing marginal taxes rates, thereby encouraging investment and reducing the flight of capital to lower-tax countries. This, as the Laffer Curve shows, can increase total tax receipts (as long as you don’t reduce taxes too much).

Second, help the fat man lose weight by reducing public spending. A typical example, Netanyahu said, was outsourcing the management of facilities for the long-term disabled, which he claimed doubling service quality for half the price in some cases. He cited a period when Israel’s population grew by 40 percent, but the number of people on public assistance went up by 1500 percent.

Third, make the country more hospitable for business by getting rid of crushing regulations that made it difficult to start and grow business, gave too much power to unions and which inhibited competition. This was a short-term fix, he admitted; countries could get about a decade of fast growth by loosing regulations. However, Israel needed that fast growth to pull back from the abyss.

Netanyahu admitted that many of his reforms would be unpopular, particularly with Israel’s powerful unions. But speaking like an economist, he decided to “maximize the number of reforms per strike,” and crammed through 40 different rules changes. Yes, there was a four-month general strike – but the reforms survived, he said, and the Israeli economy is now very strong.

Netanyahu added that those reforms are a major reason why he’s no longer in the government.

Listening to Benjamin Netanyahu, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the quality of his intellect, and of his eloquence: If only THAT guy had been teaching my college economics classes…

The World

During the Q&A session, Netanyahu spoke briefly but passionately about world affairs. He was emphatic that the biggest global danger is that of Iran gaining nuclear weapons: “Militant Islam puts zealotry above survival,” he said, predicting that nukes from Iran might fall on Israel first, but would then be targeted at Western Europe and the United States, with a goal of destroying Western civilization and ushering an era of Islamic world domination.

The problems with Iraq and North Korea are much less urgent, he said, than stopping Iran. He called for preemptive action by the United States, but would not say explicitly what action he was recommending. But it was clear what he meant.

Reports from the Software Test & Performance Conference, going on right now in Cambridge, Mass., are that the three-day event is packed. Not just with technical classes, but also with attendees. STPCon sold out of its full event passes a couple of week ago and then all the remaining tutorials-only seats went too. (The exhibition hall also filled up. We had inquiries from more test/QA companies that wanted to demo their software at STPCon, but there was no more space to put them.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it out to STPCon this week. Between shipping the Fall 2006 issue of Eclipse Review to the printer, and finishing up a SOA supplement for the Dec. 1 issue of SD Times, it was too hard to get out of the office. Bummer. STPCon is our biggest event at BZ Media, and it’s always a great experience. Plus, Rex Black is a marvelous keynote speaker.

We’ll be announcing the dates and location for next year’s Software Test & Performance Conference shortly.

Qualcomm announced that it’s discontinuing development of Eudora, and will release the code as open source software in the first half of 2007.

While I like Eudora (it’s my favorite Windows e-mail client, and I’ve been a paid-up customer for many years), the synergies between Eudora and the rest of Qualcomm’s product line is zero. So, while the company has done a yeoman’s job keeping the software up to date, it was only a matter of time before someone said, “Enough, already.”

Will the open source community embrace Eudora? Frankly, I have my doubts. There are plenty of open source e-mail clients, with the best known being Mozilla’s Thunderbird, which is already as good as Eudora in most ways, and better in some ways. Thunderbird has clean source code, a dedicated community and no corporate baggage.

Another popular project is Evolution, which I’ve not used. It’s the e-mail software bundled with Ubuntu Linux.

I think this move is the death knell of Eudora. It’s a shame. But most platforms already come with decent POP3/IMAP4 e-mail clients (like Apple Mail or Outlook Express), there are other open source products around, and Eudora’s a bit dated, feature-wise.

Qualcomm gets praise for releasing the source code, instead of just letting the software die. But I don’t think that it’s going to live for long.

The strongest threat toward Microsoft’s revenue is Linux.

Any consumer who is running Linux on a desktop isn’t going to use Microsoft Office, can’t leverage the features of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. Beyond an Xbox, it’s unlikely that a Linux desktop user will pay for any Microsoft products or services.

Any IT department that’s running Linux on servers isn’t going to use SQL Server, Exchange Server, Sharepoint Server or BizTalk Server, and is unlikely to want to use Microsoft’s nascent SaaS offerings.

By contrast, a consumer that’s using Windows on the desktop is a potential revenue goldmine. So, too, is an IT shop that’s running Windows on the server. Even if that shop is using WebSphere, WebLogic, Oracle, Sybase or SAP, if it’s running on Windows there’s still revenue flowing to Microsoft, and the potential for migrating that user over to the Microsoft stack. But if they’re on Linux, Microsoft’s battle is much harder.

One of Microsoft’s strongest weapons against Linux (and against Mac OS X and Solaris, which are growing threats on the desktop and server, respectively) has been software compatibility. Windows stuff just isn’t compatible with non-Windows stuff. OpenOffice isn’t 100 percent transparently interoperable with Microsoft Office. Alternative email clients, like Thunderbird or Eudora, aren’t 100 percent interoperable with Exchange Server. (Neither is Microsoft Entourage for the Mac, for that matter.) Many of Microsoft’s SaaS services require Internet Explorer. Non-Windows enterprise desktops and servers don’t play well with Active Directory.

None of this is news, of course, to users of non-Microsoft operating systems, who have to spend a significant amount of time working on compatibility issues. And it seems as if it should always be Microsoft’s strategy to ensure that Linux solutions aren’t 100 percent interoperable with Windows.

In that light, how should one interpret Microsoft’s deal with Novell regarding interoperability collaboration with Novell? (There was a separate agreement regarding patent licensing, which is a topic for another day.) Simply put, it means nothing good for the Linux community.

The announcement says that the companies will work together on virtualization, Web services management and document format compatibility. The companies were both very short on specifics, beyond talking about a combined offering that will let SUSE Linux Enterprise Server run inside a VM on a Windows Server.

Are we going to see Microsoft release tools to make Windows Servers more interoperable with Linux servers in the data center, beyond some Web services work? No. Are we going to see any Microsoft applications running on Linux desktops or servers? No. Are we going to see features added to Windows Server that help non-Windows clients to work with them, such as on authentication, using SharePoint Portal Services, working with Exchange Servers or ASP.NET? No. Office Live? No.

Big picture: This announcement doesn’t mean that Microsoft likes Linux or supports Linux. It just means that Microsoft found a way to make some money off it, and maybe also fragment the community at the same time.