Ken’sTechnology Blog

You might have read that the first public beta release of Windows 7 was supposed to happen yesterday. If you followed the news on that day you might know that the beta was first seen on the Chinese Technet site which immediately came to an halt after the news spread. Download links went up on other Microsoft sites afterwards but they all led to error messages like Server is to busy or This site is currently experiencing technical issues . While some early downloaders got their keys and ISO images most did not. Some spend most of the day on the Microsoft site trying to get a key.

Later that day Microsoft posted a new message on stating Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal %26#8212; we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand . The download has been postponed and Microsoft is tight-lipped about the new release date of the beta release.

This is not the first release that is going bad. And it is not always Microsoft that is not able to predict correctly. It seems that most multi-national corporations have prediction difficulties. Who would not have thought that users around the globe would access the Microsoft servers to get one of the 2.5 million Beta keys after the announcement that the keys would be limited?

A question that surely is coming up is whether this resource limitation was intentional. Is it good or bad news if many more users than expected wanted to download the Windows 7 Beta. It is bad news for the individuals who tried to download it but it is good news for Microsoft as all news sites will report that the demand is incredible high.

That means there are two lines of though here. One is that Microsoft got their predictions about user interest in the Windows 7 beta wrong while the other is that Microsoft did not make use of their full infrastructure in order to create a groundbreaking demand of the product.

Author: Martin Brinkmann
Microsoft Did Not Expect Such A High Windows 7 Beta Demand