Comment Re:This is a good thing (Score 1) 712
As far as I can tell, the primary motivation for Windows 8 was to try and regain some traction in the mobile device market along with Microsoft's new best friend Nokia. This announcement reinforces my belief that Microsoft doesn't see the desktop as a profitable investment, nor thay they care as much about the enterprise as they did either. Then there is the Surface which could compete quite effectively in the tablet market and, with the detachable keyboard, in the netbook/laptop segment. In these markets direct sales to consumers are the driving force.
That leaves the question of where the enterprise will be heading over the next decade. Cloud services do not have much appeal; corporate data needs to be on internal servers. Most companies will stick with Windows, of course, but the opportunity for new entrants is opening up. I wouldn't be surprised to see Oracle start competing for desktops with an end-to-end solution based on its Sun servers, the Oracle database, and Oracle Linux on the desktop. Canonical is also focused on consumers, RedHat doesn't have the clout that Oracle does, and Novell is so 90's.