Infocomm Indonesia

The software giant ready to activate its new anti-piracy technology embedded in Windows Vista within months. But will it give significant impact to reduce Microsoft’s product piracy rate in Indonesia? The new technology initiative is more powerful than of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). In WGA, Microsoft only provides upgrades, downloads and security patches for licensed software. The new technology will go beyond that: it will reduce functionalities, lock down your PC and blank your monitor, leaving only Internet connection until you successfully validate the license.

Microsoft name the technology Software Protection Platform, embedded in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The platform is the engineering pillar of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiate (GSI) beside two other pillars: enforcement and education.

Developed for several years, Microsoft Software Protection Platform improves how Microsoft software activates, is validated online and behaves when tampering or hacking is detected. Through this platform, Microsoft can differentiate experience between genuine and non-genuine in Windows Vista.

Genuine or licensed copies of Vista will have access to Windows Aero and Windows ReadyBoost features, Windows Defender and extra optional updates from Windows Update. Windows Aero is a new graphical user interface that will boost user experience; while ReadyBoost enable users to use a USB flash memory to speed up system performance. If the copy is not genuine, it will display an embarrassing message “This copy of Windows is not genuine,” in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

Another protection is in the activation. If you fail to activate Vista with a genuine product key within 30 days, the system will be operating in reduced functionality mode.

Within months

Microsoft plans to activate the Software Protection Platform, “can be started next month or two months from now, including in Indonesia,” said Keith Breeman, Senior Director Worldwide Anti-piracy Microsoft Corporation, as reported by Bisnis Indonesia. He refused to reveal the activation date.

The new robust technology might help Microsoft to reduce software piracy, but will it give significant impact in Indonesia -one of the countries with highest software piracy rate at 85% last year? To answer the question we must look at Windows Vista penetration rate in Indonesia.

While Vista is an excellent operating system, it requires lot of computing resource, namely memory. Yes, Vista still can run in a system with a standard 512MB of memory, but for the best performance, you got to have 2GB of memory -meaning more money.

Another problem is compatibility with legacy systems. Once you decide to run Windows Vista, there is a good chance you have to upgrade other as well or at least take an effort to look for plug-ins, adapter or converter. Upgrading, again, means more money.

So there’s good reason why corporate in Indonesia today still order systems with Windows XP Professional in it for their PC replacements. The constraint of adopting Vista might be limited money –if you want to gain best performance, or just simply no resource in IT department to test the Vista compatibility.

As long as Vista adoption remains low, Software Protection Platform will not have much impact in reducing piracy in Microsoft’s product in Indonesia. And Microsoft challenge in increasing Vista adoption today might be tougher than before, particularly from Ubuntu which gains more popularity this year.

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