> I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only.
Windows Server comes with IIS and other services that would normally have been provided in a Linux environment by the Linux ecosystem. Also, as the article notes, SQL Server and Visual Studio were supported on Itanium as well.
As Itanium only succeeded as a server product, there's no business reason for Microsoft to have ported their desktop applications to it.
Those are just a select few products out of thousands of tools, applications and services I might need to run. The server vs desktop distinction isn't very important. What matters is the utility and hence viability of the platform as a whole. By not having the platform be generally usable, it greatly reduced its desirability and reach.
Any considerations for such a server/desktop split certainly should not apply to arm, which can be used for either. Also, contrast with the experience of ia64 on Linux, where I had the full set of tools, services, applications available. That's the sort of experience Microsoft should have provided, but didn't. And should also be doing for arm, but aren't there either.
Windows Server comes with IIS and other services that would normally have been provided in a Linux environment by the Linux ecosystem. Also, as the article notes, SQL Server and Visual Studio were supported on Itanium as well.
As Itanium only succeeded as a server product, there's no business reason for Microsoft to have ported their desktop applications to it.