Reliability Overview
Published: May 25, 2005
"The digital decade is not just about any particular aspect of computing, taking enterprises, knowledge workers, and homes, and building standards that connect all of those together. They key piece in the center is trustworthy systems, systems that do what you expect on an extremely reliable basis. So in each of these areas we have new scenarios, new ways that people will be using their computers that they never did before."
–Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect
Broadly adopted technologies such as telephony and electricity have become trusted parts of our daily lives. Even though they occasionally fail, the overwhelming perception is that these technologies are inherently trustworthy.
Achieving similar confidence in technology reliability is a fundamental objective of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative. The challenge: While the overall quality of technology has improved considerably, customer expectations for end-to-end reliability outpaced these improvements.
Compounding the challenge is the increasing complexity of software and the computing ecosystem, plus the lack of real standards for measuring reliability. Microsoft has a vision of seamless computing, in which all types of devices work easily together as if they were all a single device. We view reliability as a key enabler of that vision.
We are incorporating reliability best practices throughout the software development life cycle (from planning and design to deployment and support), educating our engineers to write more reliable code, creating innovative new development tools and technologies to improve software quality, and implementing process changes to improve accountability at all levels.
From there, we work to share these advances outwardly to support a wide variety of hardware and software partners in the larger technology ecosystem, ultimately enabling our customers worldwide to have the most reliable and trusted computing experience possible.
Microsoft is committed to a leadership role in the industry pursuit of increased levels of software reliability. Not only is this drive a critical part of our work internally, we also are working with our partners and industry leaders to improve the reliability of all software.
