With the growing momentum of the open-source movement, one could say that Martin Taylor doesn't have one of the most enviable jobs. As Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy, Taylor has to deal with anti-Microsoft sentiments while evangelizing his company's products. Despite the challenges, he maintains an unwavering conviction that his company can deliver better returns than those offered by open-source software. According to Taylor, businesses that tried out Linux or other open-source tools are now realizing that they are putting in more investment into the technology than they had initially thought. "The Linux phenomenon created this emotional hype or spike where, in some ways, people became less concerned about some of these practical issues around cost of ownership, reliability, security and so on," he said. "But I think now, two to three years into this, we're seeing these issues around cost and reliability coming up such that, we now know we need to go back to the basics on how we evaluate a platform and choose it." In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Taylor explains why he calls the open-source architecture "brittle" and reveals what he thinks causes "a level of pain" for Microsoft. Read the interview at News.com.
