Microsoft has about 80,000 employees, but the company supports far more people
than that -- 1,800 times more, according to
research
house IDC. Microsoft-related jobs account for over 40 percent of all IT
positions.
I tend to believe these numbers as they were nailed down by John Gantz, an
analyst I've respected since I got into this business 23 years ago.
Of course, the fact that it's Microsoft is almost irrelevant; almost any software
infrastructure vendor would have a flourishing ecosystem.
Posted by Doug Barney on October 22, 20070 comments
Sun has been pretty sassy as of late. Even though Scott McNealy is no longer
running things day-to-day, the company is still trying new things, pushing utility
computing, Java, open source, supercomputing and virtualization.
On the last front, Sun is fully supporting Xen, now owned by Citrix. Sun is
building its own hypervisor, which is really an extension of the Xen tool. Sun's
goal is to create a hypervisor that works great in heterogenous environments.
Xen is also getting support from Linux vendors and IBM (especially through
its System p servers). If you thought VMware totally owned virtualization, Xen
may have another thing coming!
Here's
what research firm Nemertes has to say about the Sun move (at least a brief
excerpt).
Posted by Doug Barney on October 15, 20070 comments
Hewlett-Packard is an interesting and often underrated software player. And
with so much software and so many server platforms, the company has long been
helping IT organizations look at their infrastructures from top to bottom and
devise a plan to make them more efficient (similar to Microsoft's three-year-old
Infrastructure Optimization model).
Now, HP is moving
parts of its Business Technology Optimization products to a services model.
This way, if you want to optimize through new HP products -- but don't want
to buy and manage a bunch of new services -- you can simply order up some services.
What about you? Is SaaS in your current or future plans? Why or why not? Tell
us all by writing me at [email protected].
Here's
HP's take on optimization.
Posted by Doug Barney on October 15, 20070 comments
Steve Ballmer, a clear expert in the field of computing, is now officially a
media guru. At a recent speech, Ballmer claimed that in 10 years,
all
media will be digital, including all things print.
From the narrow world of technology, this is not an entirely ridiculous notion,
though a recent survey by Visual Studio Magazine shows that for many
subjects, readers prefer print to Web by a ratio of 2 to 1. Maybe in 10 years,
that ratio will become even.
Outside of technology, Ballmer's prediction really starts to sound like that
of an amateur. The No. 1 consumers of magazines in America are middle-aged mothers
and grandmothers from the Midwest. Are all these women going to read their cooking
and scrapbooking magazines online? Has Steve ever seen their collections of
magazines? Has Steve seen how fat Martha Stewart Living (the magazine,
not the woman) has been lately?
I see the future by looking at my own habits. For music, I have cassettes,
albums, CDs, an iPod and, yes, about a hundred 8-tracks. I read incessantly
-- on the Web, books I usually buy used, and enough magazines to clear a small
rain forest. I love the Web and, in case you forgot, this little missive is
entirely digital. And we're passionate about our Web sites.
But before you start believing that print is dead, think about how often you
print PDFs and Web content. In fact, what we really need are Internet-specific
printers so we don't have to ruin our eyes reading all day in 1024x768 pixels.
Posted by Doug Barney on October 15, 20070 comments
Patches are great for those who use them -- and install them quickly. But for
those who ignore patches, gosh help ya. The old hacker trick of dissecting patches
and exploiting the holes continues, and often it takes only a day for jerks
to build and release an exploit.
That's just what happened last
month and again last week, when exploits came out on the second Wednesday
of the month (and the patches on Tuesday). The advice here is to take patches
seriously and install them quickly.
What do you think? Is there something wrong with the patch process? And how
would you hunt down and punish the hackers? Let us know by e-mailing me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 15, 20070 comments
Tomorrow is another Patch Tuesday, and Microsoft is getting set to
ship
seven patches, four of which are deemed critical. The patches run the gamut,
repairing everything from Windows Server to IE (it wouldn't be Patch Tuesday
if this puppy didn't get a fix or two), to Outlook and XP. The bulletins also
address SharePoint and spoofing.
Is Patch Tuesday working for you? Is there a better way? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 08, 20070 comments
Microsoft is releasing a whole heap of .NET 3.5 source code. Does this mean
you can create your own .NET distribution? Not bloody likely. In this clear
step in the right direction, Microsoft is
allowing
developers to look at .NET source code to help understand how it works and
where problems may lie. But changing the code is still very much a no-no.
I can possibly see Microsoft's point here. In open source, when you modify
code, you're either on your own or the community supports you. In the case of
.NET, should it be Microsoft's responsibility to help when you've completely
trashed .NET with your spaghetti code?
What would you do about open source if you ran Microsoft? Tell us all at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 08, 20070 comments
Microsoft's licensing may among the most complex the software world has ever
seen, but that doesn't give you the right to violate any of its many terms.
The most recent example is an extension to Windows Genuine Advantage with the
catchy name "Get
Genuine Windows Agreement." And since everything at Microsoft turns
into an acronym (even BG), let's call this new plan GGWA.
Microsoft's concern is that customers that have a right to upgrade are instead
doing full new installs. And Microsoft worries that enterprises aren't doing
enough to protect their license keys, allowing for counterfeiters.
While this may well be a pain for law-abiding customers, Microsoft does have
a right to protect its intellectual property. Agree, disagree? Tell me where
I'm right or wrong at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 08, 20070 comments
A new exploit is aimed at
tricking
the world's highest-ranking executives into giving away precious corporate
secrets. The spam/phishing scheme is based on e-mails with the names and titles
of these bosses, and come with a Word doc promising a better job. Once opened,
the hackers can gain access to the computers of the rich and powerful, and thus
get at confidential files.
Tell your bosses they should be happy with their jobs and ignore these e-mails.
Opening one could be embarrassing in a couple of ways!
Posted by Doug Barney on October 08, 20070 comments
Advocates for "green" IT focus on efficient hardware, using virtualization
to put more apps on fewer servers (the old power-supply-per-app equation) and
making sure PCs and laptops have proper power management.
Now the Green Data Project is
suggesting you look at the data itself. The idea is that we store a lot of data
we don't really need, and then back up and archive all this junk. Disks, arrays,
NAS boxes and SANs all take power, and the more we can reduce the growth of
these devices (scaling back may be an impossible task), the more we can contain
greenhouse gases.
How do we green our data? First, we have to take control of what we store,
setting policies and training users so they aren't just saving junk they'll
never need. Then, IT has to intelligently archive data that's rarely used, but
important to keep.
What should we do about storage needs that are spiraling out of control? Share
your thoughts at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 01, 20070 comments
Consumers haven't had much to say about Vista. They just head on down to Wal-Mart,
buy a new machine with Vista and go home to compute.
IT is a tougher lot. You guys are waiting for Vista to prove its compatibility,
performance and ease of learning.
IT (even in my own company) is sticking to XP. Microsoft is getting this message
and -- like it has done so many times with so many products -- is extending
the life of XP. (Anybody remember how many lifelines Microsoft threw NT's
way?)
In this case, XP will be sold for an extra five months, or until the middle
of next year. My guess? XP will get several more extensions while Vista gets
a service pack or two.
While critics may say soft Vista sales are bad news for Microsoft, keep in
mind what's being sold instead -- not Linux or Mac OS, but XP!
How long should Microsoft keep selling XP, and what are your Vista plans? Let
us all know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 01, 20070 comments
Microsoft is serious about keeping up with Google. It's not just a matter of
money (in this case, billions), but more an issue of pride. If Google beats
Microsoft in search, it legitimizes all of Google's other efforts.
Microsoft -- which, I understand, does much better in search in places like
Europe -- is revamping
Live Search. Instead of tricky new techniques, Microsoft is improving the
basics, increasing the amount of sites it searches for matches. It also features
new fuzzy approaches that better understand how badly we spell and gives us
what we want anyway.
To his great credit, Bill Gates has been thinking and talking about fuzzy search
and natural languages interfaces longer than some of us have been alive.
(So how old are you? I'm looking for the oldest and youngest Redmond Report
readers. Here's a hint: My dad, mom and youngest son all read this newsletter.
Send your age and thoughts to [email protected]
-- relatives are welcome to write in, as well!)
Posted by Doug Barney on October 01, 20070 comments