Lately, I've been harping on about our new site
RedmondReport.com,
a portal for news about Microsoft. I've been bragging so much I figured I'd
take a look this morning and see if it's as good as I said it was -- and it
is!
My favorite story is one we picked up from Wired. It turns out that
one of worst high-tech companies for the environment is that touchy-feely
outfit from Cupertino with Al Gore on its board.
Yup. Good, old Apple evidently makes iPhones with toxic materials, doesn't
even know how much CO2 it emits and has no real plan to reduce its greenhouse
gases.
Maybe the next time Steve Jobs flies across the country on the Gulfstream V
Apple bought him, he can think up a plan. By the way, Jobs' plane holds some
41,300 pounds of fuel and uses about 64 pounds per nautical mile. That's even
worse than my '96 Cadillac.
Posted by Doug Barney on May 12, 20080 comments
I just wrapped up a 2,500-word feature story about Dell's virtualization strategy
for our new magazine
Virtualization
Review. I also spent weeks deciphering Sun, IBM and HP plans. These
last three vendors have multiple hardware environments, their own management
tools and, in two cases, homemade hypervisors. This was all as intricate as
a Dennis Miller commentary (though far more interesting and less pretentious).
Dell
was far different. What Dell does is sell standard servers that run standard
third-party virtualization software. The strategy took all of two seconds to
comprehend -- even for me. Dell has extended this to shipping servers with the
embedded version of VMware, as well as the option to buy servers with Xen pre-installed.
Dell also has a new
Web site where you can easily buy virtual wares.
Dell may not have the broadest range of tools, but at least you won't get a
headache trying to figure it all out.
Posted by Doug Barney on May 12, 20080 comments
Server and PC virtualization aren't exactly old hat, but they are established
markets -- and established technologies that are proven to work.
A lesser-known area that's ripe for take-off, I believe, is I/O virtualization,
where connections to networks and storage lose their physical constraints and
gain the flexibility of virtual connectivity. Setting up a new server, for instance,
doesn't have to involve the manual installation and configuration of NICs, HBAs
and all the rest.
One company I came across in this space is Xsigo
Systems. Unlike earlier forms of I/O virtualization where a regular I/O
device is shared by multiple apps, systems or VMs, Xsigo does away with the
adapters all together. In their place is a new device that acts like the physical
devices, but can be dynamically assigned and allocated. Pretty slick.
Tom Valovic, executive editor of Virtualization Review (that's our new
magazine/Web site which can be found at VirtualizationReview.com),
found
another player, 3 Leaf Systems, that also virtualizes I/O. From what I can
tell, the 3 Leaf V-8000 Virtual I/O Server is very similar in concept.
How much have you virtualized? Servers, desktops, apps, storage? Tell me your
story by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on May 05, 20080 comments
Software-as-a-Service isn't yet the dominant way that applications are delivered,
but it's the
No.
1 thing on the minds of enterprise software customers -- at least, according
to a survey by venture firm Sand Hill Group and consultancy McKinsey & Company.
The No. 2 trend is actually similar: Web services and SOA.
For large apps, the services model makes a lot of sense. It can take years
to properly install and configure ERP, CRM, BI or a management framework --
and there's no guarantee it will work right when it's done. Pre-configured services
allow corporations to try out functions bit by bit, and let the service provider
do the heavy lifting.
What's your experience? Are you using SaaS? And if so, what do you love (and
hate)? Let us all know with a quick e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on May 05, 20080 comments
Late last week, Microsoft made it clear that Yahoo
wasn't
worth the money it would take to buy it. This was after Microsoft raised
its offer from $44 billion to nearly $48 billion.
I couldn't agree more. Yahoo isn't as large as you might think, and its growth
isn't as impressive as, say, Google. In the last quarter, Yahoo brought in a
bit less than $2 billion in revenue and only $112 million in operating income.
The only way a company this size would be worth almost $50 billion is if its
growth were truly staggering, which it's clearly not.
My bigger concern is that Yahoo
has nothing that Microsoft hasn't already built or bought. Microsoft would
be far better off using its billions to invent the future, not to buy the past.
Tell me where I'm wrong at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on May 05, 20080 comments
Sometimes an idea is so brilliant that my weak mind can't grasp it. Other times,
I'm confused because the idea is too complex or the explanation unclear. Microsoft's
new Live
Mesh initiative clearly falls into one of these categories.
The basic concept is fairly simple. The mesh refers to the fact that most of
us have multiple computing devices which will be able to communicate and synchronize
by turning into our own private mesh. This mesh, which lets my laptop and phone
have the same files as my desktop, also ties into to the "cloud" so
our storage and services can be Web-based.
Here's where it gets a mite confusing: Live Mesh isn't really a thing we can
plug into, but a set
of developer services and technologies that allows meshes to be built. And
developers can use nearly any language to build meshes.
I have many questions. First, shouldn't data synchronization between devices
have been solved long ago? Didn't Windows 95 have Briefcase for just this purpose?
Second, this sounds way too abstract and futuristic. Any time I see something
this broad, without a lot of detail, I figure it will take years to emerge --
if it ever happens at all.
And, as I read into the details, it appears that Live Mesh will include a host
of software services, which sounds great 'til you realize these have to be paid
for somehow. One option is to clutter our screens with ads, which makes it hard
to concentrate. (How can you write a memo to employees when you're staring at
a bikini ad?) The other is to pay for them through subscriptions -- just one
more item to add to the list that already includes our Symantec subscriptions,
cell phones, cable TV and broadband Internet.
How much do you spend a month on TV, phone and Internet? Let us know by writing
me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on April 28, 20080 comments
Microsoft Research is at it again -- doing good, that is!
The group's latest noble cause is green
computing, and to that end Microsoft Research is working with Harvard, Stanford
and a couple of big state universities to dramatically reduce datacenter and
x86 processor power consumption. The University of Tennessee, for instance,
is working on reducing the power demands of virtualized datacenters. Sounds
pretty slick.
Share your thoughts on the topics in today's issue! Go here
Or contact Doug Barney directly at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on April 28, 20080 comments
If you want a new PC with XP, you best get to steppin' before the end of June.
After that, machines
will
come only with Vista.
Now, here's the weird catch: For the next year, you can buy a Vista PC and
then have XP installed in its stead -- so-called downgrading. This sounds more
convoluted than a Britney Spears press conference.
Posted by Doug Barney on April 28, 20080 comments
One of our sister publications is
Visual Studio Magazine (if you care
about development, check it out
here),
and its editor in chief, Patrick Meader, recently told me about a couple of
"Vista software" sites that have little to do with Microsoft.
Vista Software Inc.
sells a database engine that works with Clipper, FoxPro and other DBMSs. Meanwhile,
another Vista Software Inc., this
one from Tucson, Ariz., sells a souped-up automation system for Microsoft applications,
kinda like macros on steroids.
Got that? Now, who's going to sue whom over all this?
Posted by Doug Barney on April 21, 20080 comments
Microsoft security gurus are
hunting
down and trying to kill off a bug in Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003 that
lets already-authenticated users gain more privileges.
While this bug mainly supports inside hacking jobs, smart social engineers
could also gain a foothold (like your password) and then wreak havoc. As for
the insiders, the mostly likely attackers are admins who script and programmers
who host their code on your machines.
Posted by Doug Barney on April 21, 20080 comments
Keith Ward, the editor of
Virtualization
Review (our new mag/Web site/newsletter about all things virtual) recently
visited an elementary school in Baltimore. No, Keith wasn't there to bone up
on his grammar skills, but to find out how this school is using virtualization
to literally multiply the access kids have to computers.
With a cool device from NComputing, one low-end computer (we're talking 512MB
of RAM) is turned into three. All you need is a little black box from NComputing
and some extra keyboards, monitors and mice, which are almost free these days.
Good work, Keith-o!
Check out Keith's blog, Mental Ward, here.
Posted by Doug Barney on April 21, 20080 comments
There's an area where Microsoft gets far too little credit: helping to save
the world. Sure, Redmond didn't jump on the One Laptop Per Child initiative
soon enough. But Microsoft Research is doing amazing work on the world's biggest
problems, hooking up with top scientists to tackle disease, global warming,
pollution, and more.
How do I know? I spent months researching Microsoft and wrote a couple of stories
about what
it's doing and how.
Microsoft isn't doing pure scientific research. Instead, it's providing the
computational infrastructure, data mining, visualization techniques, new languages,
etc. to help the scientists who are doing all the heavy lifting.
Last week, Microsoft announced a series
of cash awards for those trying to understand the human genome and apply
that understanding to improving our health and the survival of our species.
Like with most things concerning Microsoft Research, there's a lot I actually
understand and much more that flies right over my inadequate head, such as the
award for work at Columbia University on "Phenotypic Pipeline for Genome-wide
Association Studies." What's a pipeline?
Then there's this from Johns Hopkins: "Genome Wide Association Study of
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in Finland." Uh, what's a Finland?
Posted by Doug Barney on April 21, 20080 comments