So, there were two very strange behaviours in regards to Microsoft's stance towards IBM's AIX. It's probably on Microsoft's agenda
for a long time after Microsoft stopped OS/2, and then IBM responded with Linux (which was a
huge blow to their server business since let's face it, Windows NT is extremely irrelevant in the server space and nonexistent in super computing), so now Microsoft is trying to cut into IBM's AIX margins and take it down.
And for those who aren't familiar, IBM deliberately funded Linux through Redhat for no other reason than to give Microsoft something back after they used a lot of dirty tactics to squish out OS/2 (such as death threats to team OS/2 and the like haha).
Attempt #1 Microsoft attempts to confuse the "AIX" trademark (2016)
One of Microsoft's "Embrace Extend Extinguish" techniques was to openwash or confuse a trademark. You hardly think of anything else when you hear "AIX" but the UNIX operating system, AIX. Well... Microsoft has their own thing called "Microsoft AIX" for Minecraft:
https://www.informationweek.com/software...id/1324684
After "Microsoft AIX" was announced it did catch the attention of a few others who noted that it's odd since "IBM AIX" already exists as a registered trademark:
http://techrights.org/2016/03/20/misuse-...aix-brand/
It's possible this either went nowhere or IBM did threaten Microsoft because "Microsoft AIX" is finally now known as "Malmo":
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/16909...ecraft.htm
Regardless, the bits and pieces of openwashing are still present because you get search hits for "Microsoft AIX" when such a thing is absolutley nonsensical. That would be like if IBM released a product called "IBM Windows", or "IBM Azure", it's a clear defiance of trademark.
Attempt #2 Microsoft attempts to bring over AIX clients into Azure (2020)
Now we get to the real interesting attempt, Microsoft has tasked employee "Steve Read" with cobbling together a crude article about migrating AIX workloads into Microsoft Azure with Linux VMs, no joke:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/a...-p/1085983
There are a few things to note here.
#1 Steve Read doesn't actually fully understand IBM's product range, he already made a mistake by assuming OSes are hard-coded (which is true for Win32, but *most things* are cross platform today).
#2 Steve Read says that AIX was released for IBM i, I quote:
Quote:"it (AIX) became one of the leading operating systems for IBM RS/6000, Power Systems, PowerPC, IBM System i" - Steve Read, Microsoft 01-02-2020 12:31 PM
Anyone who's
actually familiar with IBM products and not on Microsoft payroll will know that IBM i is actually technically the term for the software side of things (OS/400) and doesn't run AIX; but he doesn't understand that AIX and IBM i simply share the same processor architecture, or the history about how System p and System i were rolled into one. So AIX never ran on "IBM System i", that would be OS/400|IBM i.
#3 Steve Read goes out of his way to get into a rather detailed history lesson -- who cares about that if you're a sysadmin migrating stuff? Oh.... but Microsoft wants to pad up the search terms so that hopefully someone sees it and seriously considers migrating their big endian AIX workload to x86 Linux. Of course there are some serious flaws with that -- it would make more sense for the customer to migrate POWER9 AIX workloads to Linux running on POWER9, instead of x86. Therefore the IBM cloud would be more realistic than Azure if we're talking about AIX migrations.
Of course we're now deep into the "embrace" part as Microsoft is attempting to catch up with Linux since they've no other choice really. It's also similar to when Bill Gates recently was trying to say how Android is what "Windows mobile would have been", that's just absolute nonsense. Nobody ever uses Windows "because they want to", the only reason why Windows and Microsoft products stay around is due to vendor lock-in. Because the mobile realm was established without Microsoft, there's no vendor lock-in, and any Windows Mobile products were and are inferior to Android. Full stop.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/bill-gates...crewed-up/
Of course Bill isn't going to say Windows is architecturally an inferior product to virtually... everything.
To conclude I'd like to quote one more part of the article:
Quote:"Moving AIX workloads to the cloud can be a significant step toward datacenter modernization. Depending on the types of applications you have in your AIX estate, you can use a number of approaches for migration to Azure. The goal is to minimize effort and mitigate risks on the way to gaining the cloud benefits that Azure provides, such as flexibility and scalability." - Steve Read, Microsoft 01-02-2020 12:31 PM
So let's break down a few oddities of his statement:
#1 Again if a client wanted to migrate away from AIX, they'd simply use the IBM Cloud with POWER Linux rather than bother with a more complicated x86 little endian migration.
#2 "datacenter modernization" is a buzzword, you can consider the IBM Cloud and Azure to be the same, although Azure has a far more bloated interface with most of it requiring search terms since it's not possible to navigate to some things
#3 Notice how Steve Read says "you can use a NUMBER of approachs for migration to Azure" <-- what approaches would these be exactly? Again, depending on the application it would make more sense to go to the IBM Cloud on big endian POWER Linux
#4 The IBM cloud can also provide "flexibility and scalability" so that's entirely irrelevant as a selling point
Also, clients who are running AIX 7.2 enjoy the functionality of "live updates" -- that means you can live patch the AIX 7.2 kernel without having to reboot it, and those patches actually take effect while AIX is running! Windows and Linux on Azure do NOT provide this functionality (Windows Server has to be rebooted every time you glance at it), and Steve Read conveniently omits this huge point. Customers who rely on 24/7 uptime and AIX 7.2 live updates will not find Microsoft Azure as a suitable migration platform.
Cheers.
