We have been walking our legs flat the last four days at Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, meeting valued customers and partners from all over the world. Perhaps the biggest benefit one can get from a huge event like this — in addition to catching market trends — is to have face-to-face time with all those one has communicated with over email and phone during the year.
We decided CES is the right time to go public with our Windows CE work. The most common use case must be Windows CE powered set-top boxes and other consumer electronic devices with a USB plug. If I want to upload my videos and music from a portable NTFS-formatted hard drive into the box, it must read NTFS.
Another relevant market are cars, where Windows CE is gaining momentum. At CES, Microsoft had driven Fiats, Fords and Kias on their booth. Window CE is running the “infotainment” or entertainment systems in these cars. But what if I want plug in the car stereo my portable NTFS-formatted hard drive, which is full of MP3s? Yes, the system should read NTFS.
It has been an interesting week. Our Microsoft PR went through the media pretty much as expected. Some coverage:
Brief answers to frequently asked questions so far:
- The agreements do not allow us to distribute end-user or open source exFAT drivers for Linux. We are communicating with Microsoft and hope to do that in the near future. A solution is needed before exFAT becomes a de facto standard.
- The agreements do not change anything regarding NTFS drivers. We will continue to distribute and support NTFS-3G both under GPL and commercial licenses.
Spent this morning at Microsoft’s BizSpark event in Espoo.
It was a three hour session with a number of short talks and enthusiasm to get Microsoft partners to work and cooperate together. Keynote speaker was Petri I Salonen who runs IAMCP and TELLUS International in the US. A well motivated talk from a seasoned software entrepreneur.
I also explained Tuxera to Artur Surov from Technolopolis Ventures and I am going to pitch Tuxera again 10.9.2009 in their MoneyTalks event.
Overall it was a surprisingly lively morning event and also productive for us. It was nice to get direct feedback on who we are and what we do at Tuxera. I am confident we can find opportunities with other partners in the Microsoft ecosystem in the near future.
At Microsoft. From left: Anton Altaparmakov, Mikko Välimäki, and Szabolcs Szakacsits.
“I can’t believe we are here!”, Szabolcs remarked as soon as we had driven from the Seattle airport to Redmond and signed in to our mighty American-size hotel rooms. It was indeed a trip with a lot of preparation. Our talks with Microsoft had started almost a year ago when the company was founded. I had changed my role from an outside counsel to a company man sometime in March. First and foremost to get this deal done.
We came to Redmond to have an agreement, and in the end that is what we got. Three days of intensive meetings and talking — it was very impressive to see a big company work very effectively when they finally wanted to go for it while we were there.
After we had signed, someone from Microsoft asked: “Have we ever done a deal so quickly?” “I don’t think so,” was the answer.
A quick signature for a man, but a giant leap for the company.