Michael Desmond is editor in chief of
Redmond
Developer News
, our magazine for corporate development managers (we
also own
Visual
Studio Magazine
).
Last week, Mr. Desmond tackled
an issue we've been talking about here: whether Microsoft can move from
a maker of packaged software to a services company. And like this here Redmond
Report, the real insight came from readers.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 16, 20080 comments
Citrix this week announced "
Project
Kensho
" (which is a Zen term referring to one's initial enlightenment),
a set of tools that should make your choice of hypervisor, as Dr. Evil might
say, "inconsequential."
Kensho tools take advantage of Open Virtual Format (OVF), a standard that lets
IT and application makers build virtual machines that run independent of the
hypervisor. This way, a VM could be easily moved from VMware to Xen to Hyper-V.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 16, 20080 comments
\Alanis Morrissette made the word "ironic" famous in her song "Isn't
It Ironic?" Well, Microsoft may be the black fly in Google and Yahoo's
chardonnay as Redmond is trying to get the U.S. Congress to put the kibosh on
the Google/Yahoo ad deal. According to Microsoft, the deal would
create
a monopoly in Web ads
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 16, 20080 comments
SQL Server 2008 is nearly here, and it's still 2008! Microsoft says the software
will
be released to manufacturing
by the end of September, and then out to customers
a short time later.
I poke fun, but on the server side Microsoft has been hitting its dates pretty dang well. Hyper-V was even early.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 15, 20080 comments
This spring, Microsoft's Office Open XML file format was approved as an ISO standard. But not all were pleased. Several countries -- Venezuela, Brazil, India and South Africa -- all objected and filed appeals. Now an
ISO document has emerged
that points to those appeals falling on deaf (or at least disinterested) ears.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 15, 20080 comments
You would think that when billions of dollars are at stake, the stake holders would all have their stories straight. But Yahoo and Microsoft have
very different versions
of what led to the offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo's search business.
The offer was made on Friday and fairly promptly rejected by the Yahoo-ites. This surprised Microsoft, which claims that the chairman of the Yahoo board, Roy Bostock, solicited the offer. After receiving the offer that Bostock allegedly asked for, called Microsoft's behavior "erratic and unpredictable."
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 15, 20080 comments
A few months back when we wrote our cover story about
Microsoft possibly buying Yahoo
, we knew it would be a long slog and the deal may never happen. We wrote the story anyway, analyzing what
would
happen
if
Microsoft bought Yahoo.
The on-again, off-again deal is still on-or-off, but one thing we know for sure is that Microsoft is changing the terms. In an offer made this weekend -- which Yahoo rejected -- instead of paying $33 billion for the whole kit and kaboodle (that would be a good name for an Internet company, instead of Googling, you could Kaboodle), Ballmer now wants just the search part -- for $1 billion. You mean to tell me that Yahoo search is only 1/33 of the value of the entire company? Of course, Ballmer promised some future payments and would even loan Yahoo a billion or two at 5 percent interest.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 14, 20080 comments
ZoneAlarm users who thought they were doing a good thing by patching their Windows DNS servers got a bit of a surprise -- the DNS fix
locked ZoneAlarm out of the Internet
, making it impossible for the CheckPoint security software to properly do its job.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 14, 20080 comments
From our previous item, it's clear just how important it is to patch, regardless of occasional conflicts. But many using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) recently found that the server update service
can't update their servers
. Microsoft has already fixed the software that is itself designed to fix software.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 14, 20080 comments
Yesterday
,
we talked about Diane Greene's departure as the head of VMware. I suspected
intrigue and it seems I was correct.
Our
reporting
is now showing a rift between the independent-minded Greene and
EMC execs, who actually own the company.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 10, 20080 comments
Confused about
Microsoft
licensing
? You're not alone. Robert is, too -- and he thinks that's all
part of the plan:
I agree with your conclusion: Microsoft's volume licensing is complex
and made so intentionally. While I've attended several MS workshops on licensing,
in the end I find myself asking the Microsoft salesperson what I should purchase
after explaining my needs. The move to sell he software disks separate from
the license has always elicited a raised eyebrow from my clients and invariably
generates an ambience of distrust of the corporation's marketing division.
My target community has always been the non-profit sector. While discounts
are available to this market, that does not change the situation.
-Robert
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 10, 20080 comments
If you're a news junkie, you probably know all about the
memo
from Microsoft VP Bill Veghte. But news reports don't have the good, old Barney
attitude and analysis. The memo was a lesson in both candor and obfuscation.
Here's what I picked up:
Bill says Vista is basically awesome, and that we should all move to it as
quickly as possible. He also says that some customers may experience
compatibility problems. "Some" and "may"? This is the very
definition of understatement. The memo skips over Blue Screens and doggish performance.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 10, 20080 comments