The company that's based in New England and misspells the name of a Massachusetts
town in its name has a new version of its network-management software. An almost
overwhelming feature list is
here.
And, yes, English readers, we know that you had a
town
called Ipswich first.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20081 comments
Another short RCPU today, as duty calls at the mothership. It doesn't really
matter, though, because we're in a news trough. About all there is to talk about
is Microsoft flailing around looking to buy a Web company like a nerdy guy trying
to find a dance partner at a junior high cotillion.
Now that Microsoft has backed
off of Yahoo, Redmond is whispering
in AOL's ear. Yes, that's right -- AOL. Please try to contain your laughter.
This is a professional environment, mostly.
It's surely all a bid to make
Yahoo jealous, though -- and it
might be working. Whatever. We figure that Microsoft and Yahoo will end
up together at some point, just as the nerdy guy and the pretty girl usually
do in the movies. Of course, those movies never show what happens next, and
that could be the ugly part for Microsoft and Yahoo if they do hook up.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20081 comments
It'll let you run your Intel-based Mac run Windows (and Linux), although why
you'd want your
Mac
to run Windows, we really don't know.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20080 comments
FYI: You're in for some exceptionally short RCPUs this week because your editor
is still on (or, perhaps, over) deadline for
RCP the magazine. We'll
resume normal service next week (hopefully) with plenty of verbosity.
In the meantime, thank goodness we can put this Microsoft-Yahoo thing to bed...at
least, for now. With Microsoft having dropped
its bid for Yahoo (over the weekend -- nice one, Redmond), it's all over
but the shouting and the endless speculation
and analysis.
Fine with us. We stopped following the gritty details of this non-deal weeks
-- uh, oh dear, months -- ago, when it became obvious to us that partners didn't
care much about it and that all the "insider" dribble spilled in print
and posted on the Web was pretty
much meaningless.
So Microsoft is still way behind Google in search and all of its various revenue
streams. OK, fine. Nothing has changed there, and it probably wasn't going to,
anyway. We're more concerned about issues such as Microsoft's SaaS efforts,
which seem to be progressing, and the big server rollout that could put lots
of dough in partner pockets.
In fact, the only reason this entry is leading off RCPU is because it's dominating
tech news today to the extent that there's almost nothing else to write about.
So, consider this the Seinfeld of RCPU entries -- it's an entry about nothing.
And nothing is exactly what all the Microsoft-Yahoo talk led to.
Have a thought on Microsoft's Web future? Send it to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on May 06, 20080 comments
Oracle's Larry Ellison
scored
the big bucks in 2007 among tech CEOs,
Forbes tells us. Oh, and don't
be surprised if you see Steve Jobs on the streets of Cupertino with a tin cup
and a sleepy dog. The poor man's
practically
broke.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 06, 20080 comments
"SA," in this case, meaning Software Assurance, not South American,
South African or Stunningly Awesome. Microsoft has acquired some IP from partner
Covast as part of this deal. Check out the details
here.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 01, 20080 comments
There's a whole Q&A about it that's more interesting and informative than
anything we could say. Check it out
here.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 01, 20080 comments
It'll be a short-ish RCPU today, as we're kind of swamped with pesky magazine
stuff. Darn print model! Won't it die already? (Just kidding...especially you
print advertisers. It was only a joke, really. We
love print.)
Anyway, SAP got
a bit of a spanking after its quarterly earnings announcement this week.
Among other factors, part of what dragged SAP down was weakness in its Business
ByDesign product, the German vendor's enterprise SaaS offering. Quoth the article
linked above:
""It is expected to take around 12 months to 18 months longer
than the original 2010 target to reach the SAP Business ByDesign $1 billion
(640 million euros) revenue and 10,000 customer potential,' the company said
in a statement."
Oops. Maybe that SaaS revolution isn't quite here yet, or isn't quite happening
as quickly as SAP expected. Or maybe the problem is with Business ByDesign itself
(although we don't know what that problem would be) or with how SAP is marketing
and selling it.
We kind of suspect the former -- SaaS gets lots of ink and bandwidth (including
here), but outside of the Salesforce.com and maybe NetSuite customer bases,
there doesn't seem to be a super-rapid uptake of it right now, especially in
enterprise software. RCP the magazine (hooray, print!) actually wrote
about this not long ago.
Still, as Warren Wilson, research director at analyst firm Ovum Summit, said
in a recent newsletter, it's not time for SAP to panic. Here, we quote directly:
"Business ByDesign's early results are disappointing, but perhaps
not surprising given the scale of the undertaking in both technical and business-model
terms...But Business ByDesign is a long-term, strategic bet, and SAP can afford
to take some time to get it right...The slow launch isn't good news, but it's
way too soon to worry."
We could hardly have said it better ourselves...so we're not going to try.
We'll only add that SaaS investments for vendors, partners and even customers
are in the early stages, and while we (and everybody else) expect them to grow,
the SaaS revolution might be more like an evolution. Or, we could have just
said this: Print's not dead, and neither is on-premises software. Not by a long
shot.
What's your take on SaaS uptake? Send it to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on May 01, 20080 comments