Microsoft acquire SysInternals

If you work in the IT field then chances are you know of Sysinternals. For those that don't, Sysinternals is a website dedicated to advanced utilities that can dig down deep into the bowels of the Windows operating system.

Mark Russinovich, Owner and founder of Sysinternals announced the he had sold the rights to Microsoft and will be heading off to work for them. Typically this announcement caused a 50/50 split between fans of Sysinternals concerned that the utilities and information found on the sysinternals web site would no longer be available or would be hidden in the bowels of Microsoft's web site.

Personally, I think the move could be a good one as it may help to revamp some of the tools in Microsoft's operating systems that have been around since day one - Task Manager for example could easily be replaced by Process Explorer.

Interesting enough, Marks first blog entry as a Microsoft employee does talk about several internal tools he was shown at Microsoft that do some very clever things with analyzing performance. If Microsoft is serious about this sort of thing it would be good to see them release free performance analysis tools suite.

Right now it seems that the move Mark has made to Microsoft could be a good one. I just hope that he is given the freedom necessary to keep developing his own products and to keep the sysinternals website working.

Either way, this weekend I will be downloading all the sysinternals tools just in case Microsoft either decide to remove them or relocate them behind all the validation checks they have started doing on Microsofts download page.