Another brand survey? Yes -- but this one we've seen before. For the second
year (not the third, as the linked article suggests) in a row, Google has
topped
the list of the world's biggest brand according to Millward Brown Optimor.
Back in the summer of 2006, RCP the magazine brought you a feature
on Microsoft topping Millward Brown's brand list, and Redmond hasn't
been back on top since. Is there an RCP cover jinx?
Posted by Lee Pender on April 22, 20080 comments
Yesterday was
Patriots'
Day, a uniquely Boston holiday that's meant to honor the first battle of
the American Revolution but mainly serves as a mini-spring break and as the
weekend of the Boston Marathon. (No, it has nothing to do with Tom Brady.) Oh,
and there's an 11 a.m. Sox game every Patriots' Day, too -- yesterday, they
completed a sweep of the Texas Rangers.
Not that your editor was watching that game while "working from home,"
of course...ahem. Oh, and he didn't take a couple of hours to watch his friends
run in the marathon, either -- as far as you and his boss know. What he did
do, though, was drag his wife out of bed at 5 a.m. and head to the next town
over, Lexington, for the reenactment
of the first battle of the American Revolution. (There's that "true meaning"
of Patriots' Day again -- and, yes, your editor took the linked photo. Hey,
it was dark...and early.)
Anyway, what's striking about the battle reenactment, other than the fact that
it starts at 6 a.m., is that it's really short. It lasts not even 10 minutes.
That's because the battle itself was fairly short; the King's red-clad army
whipped the colonial farmers pretty quickly -- on that day, anyway. Of course,
we know that as what would become the American Revolution dragged on, those
colonists fared better and better and eventually took down one of the world's
great powers. (Well, they got King George III to give up, anyway -- but we digress.)
One of the reasons why the first citizens of the United States were able to
win was that they were fighting at home, on their own turf. Eventually, the
British got sick of sending men and money to the American colonies to fight
a grinding war. And so (finally, but you knew it was coming) we see some parallels
between the American Revolution and the battle between Microsoft and Google.
Late last week, Microsoft released details about Project
Albany, which had been a terribly kept secret for a while. It'll be a hosted
bundle of popular Microsoft Office applications -- you know the gang: Word,
Excel and PowerPoint -- plus some security and collaboration stuff. It'll be
a lot like Google Apps when it's available, except that it won't be free. On
the other hand, though, if the Office apps have all of their features, Albany
should offer a lot more functionality than Google Apps (maybe even too much).
Nobody has ever knocked Microsoft off of the productivity suite throne. Even
Google Apps is a drop in the bucket -- maybe the ocean -- in terms of market
share compared to Office. But, just like those Lobsterbacks (nobody actually
called them the Redcoats, from what we've read) fighting on another continent,
Microsoft is setting up to do battle on Google's Web turf now, and victory isn't
guaranteed.
As it has been with a lot of new technologies (remember Netscape?) Microsoft
is a little behind the curve with its SaaS offerings. Plus, Microsoft hasn't
exactly cleaned up against Google in search the way King George's men did in
Lexington yesterday morning. In fact, Google is still routing Redmond in a space
that Steve Ballmer and his cohorts would love to own.
So, on one hand, Microsoft starts in a position of weakness with Albany. However,
fundamentally, we're still talking about productivity suites here, and Microsoft
does those very well. (Say what you will about Office -- you can't argue with
success.) The question becomes whether old-school Office battling it out with
Google Apps in new, online territory will sweep to victory or eventually succumb
to a new power the way old Britain gave up the ghost and handed victory to the
young United States.
Of course, to some extent, it doesn't really matter -- right now -- who wins
the online app wars. The vast majority of users still installs applications
on the desktop and probably will for some time to come. Plus, software battles
don't have to be a zero-sum game, although they often seem to be; both Microsoft
and Google could carry on for quite a long time competing in the online apps
space.
In this battle, the empire is striking back. Maybe someday, some history nerds
will dress in costume as Google and Microsoft execs and developers and reenact
the "battle" of online apps. That's something that we would definitely
not get out of bed at 5 a.m. to see.
What's your take on Microsoft's hosted apps strategy? Have any experience with
Google Apps? Shoot us a line at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on April 22, 20080 comments
Everybody's favorite partnership (open source folks, we see the steam coming
out of your ears) is hitting the road in a much more serious way -- specifically,
the road to China. (Yes, we know it's across the Pacific and there's no "road"
that goes there, but we've got a theme going here).
Novell and Microsoft are ramping
up SuSE Linux sales in the Middle Kingdom. By the way, saying "Middle
Kingdom" when referring to China sounds really brainy. Try it at your next
cocktail party.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 22, 20080 comments
Want to know more about it? Of course you do...but you'll just have to
click
the link. (Hey, we have to pay the bills around here, too.)
Posted by Lee Pender on April 17, 20080 comments
A 20-year veteran of the company is the
new
head guy for channel operations.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 17, 20080 comments
Could this be the first sign -- or one of the first signs -- of a possible
recession hitting the channel? The financial news from Avnet
is
not good.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 17, 20080 comments
There's hype, and then there's movement. All of the articles -- some of them
here -- about SaaS being the next big thing, about how partners should prepare
for it, about whether Microsoft is ready for it...that's all, or at least mostly,
hype.
Ingram Micro's announcement this week that it will expand
its portfolio of hosted Microsoft applications and offer partners the opportunity
to resell private-label hosted applications...is movement.
It's movement toward something, anyway -- toward an easier path to offering
SaaS for lots of partners in different categories and of different sizes. Oh,
sure, we know. There are a lot of hosting providers out there, and they have
great opportunities for partners to resell hosted applications to customers.
We're not discounting them at all, and we'll keep telling you about them, too.
We're only saying that Ingram -- a distributor pretty much everybody in the
channel knows well -- kicking its offerings up to SharePoint, Exchange and (eventually)
Dynamics CRM Online represents a notable step in the progression of SaaS for
the "average" partner and customer. Ingram has breadth and reach that
a lot of other hosting providers don't necessarily have, and it has the kind
of name recognition that might make even the most SaaS-averse partner look at
setting up an operation for hosted apps.
What's nice about Ingram's program -- and, again, the distributor is hardly
alone here -- is that partners can brand their own hosted offerings even though
Ingram (along with its own partners) is handling things on the back end. That
means that partners can become "trusted advisers" to customers --
something everybody wants to be -- without having to compromise their own branding
or name recognition.
OK, so maybe calling Ingram's announcement a "seismic" shift is a
little much, but that's the name of the company's hosting platform, so we're
just playing off of it. Still, this week's news is a sign that SaaS isn't just
for those on the cutting-edge anymore, and, really, it hasn't been for a while.
It's mainstream and accessible...and, we're guessing, in demand.
What's your strategy for offering hosted applications? Drop a line to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on April 17, 20080 comments
It's made by a company in India; it'll run (ahem) XP, and it'll
cost
about $425. What's not to like, actually?
Posted by Lee Pender on April 16, 20080 comments
Another Windows executive and Vista co-conspirator has "
retired,"
meaning another shakeup of executives is in order in Redmond.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 16, 20080 comments
"Who is gonna make it?
We'll find out
In the long run"
-- "The Long Run" by The Eagles, from 1979
(And, yes, you'll be humming that song all day now. You're welcome.)
Let's go ahead and call it a movement, or at least a cause. What started as
an online
petition demanding that Microsoft offer XP indefinitely and not scrap it
with OEMs for Vista in June has become something greater, something that has
leaked out of the trade press and nerd circles and into
the real world.
It's not just about an online petition -- a concept we've always found a bit
silly, but that's an aside -- anymore. It's about users talking to Microsoft
and Microsoft looking away and whistling as if nobody's saying anything at all.
And it's about Redmond hitting a wall with how much it can push people around
with forced upgrades. (Speaking of XP, by the way, Service Pack 3 is apparently
finally on
the way.)
Most partners don't seem too concerned about the fate of Vista itself -- at
least not yet, anyway. There's not all that much money to be made in OS sales
or even hardware refreshes these days; most of the dough is in consulting and
services. VARs, consultants and integrators can build on pretty much any Microsoft
platform and might even prefer working with XP as an OS.
There are greater issues in play for Microsoft, though. We at RCPU have long
maintained that Vista would eventually become most people's default operating
system, that we'd come in time to embrace it the way we now seem to love XP.
But, with Microsoft already dropping hints about Windows 7 arriving as
early as 2009, we're not quite so sure anymore.
Beyond that, and much more importantly, the software world is changing. Let's
not pretend that Windows is about to lose massive market share to Apple or Linux;
that's not going to happen, especially on the enterprise side, where companies
have a lot of money sunk into Redmond's wares. But other operating systems --
especially some Linux flavors -- are much more serious competitors for Microsoft
than they were even five years ago. And on the consumer side, the Mac is rebounding
quite nicely, thank you very much. Then there's the wild card, Google, which
might just make the OS obsolete someday with its SaaS offerings...although that
day still seems very, very far away.
The issue here for Microsoft isn't short-term Vista sales (which, Redmond keeps
telling us, are great -- we'll see how long that lasts); it's long-term customer
and partner relationships. It's not just the signers of the online petition
who are shouting at Microsoft not to scrap XP, it's also enterprises, who have
mostly avoided Vista like a vegan avoiding filet mignon: without a second thought
and, in a few cases, with more than a little disgust.
Microsoft has to listen to its customers and partners in a way it hasn't for
a long time, if ever before. It can't offer XP indefinitely; that would throw
a wrench into Redmond's whole revenue model. But it could extend XP's life until
Vista becomes a little more manageable (with drivers, incumbent corporate applications
and the like) or a little more popular, whichever comes first.
It could even, if Windows 7 is really on schedule for 2010-ish, just bite the
bullet and keep XP alive until users are ready to move to what hopefully will
be a lighter, more user-friendly, more driver-ready OS. In other words, skip
Vista altogether and just make Windows 7 the next forced (but hopefully voluntary)
upgrade. That plan, of course, assumes that Microsoft has learned from its Vista
mistakes.
Then again, Microsoft will probably do pretty much what it has done so far:
almost nothing. Well, nothing much different from its usual course of action,
anyway. The company's making buckets of money, more than ever before, and most
users will probably begrudgingly switch to Vista once they have to, anyway.
Forced upgrades can be nice little revenue boosts for partners and Microsoft
both.
But what consequences will the same, old strong-arm strategy have for Microsoft
(and, in turn, its channel) in a software world that really is changing? Even
if the short- and mid-term are both pretty secure for Windows, what about the
long-term? It seems short-sighted, and, in the long run, dangerous for Microsoft
to pretend that everything's fine with Vista and that everybody loves it, which
is mostly what the company seems to be doing. An acknowledgement that Vista
missed the mark for many users would be a start -- after all, we don't think
it's so much the popularity of XP but rather the problems with Vista that are
keeping the new OS down -- but some extension of XP's life to placate those
who really don't want Vista would be even better.
Eventually, companies and consumers are going to start seriously looking at
other operating systems again. It's a trickle now, but it could someday be a
flood. And, eventually, folks are going to have to ask themselves whether Microsoft
(and its partners, by extension) have earned their trust and faith over the
years or whether they're confident in and maybe even excited about going with
an alternative. Microsoft had better think long and hard right now about what
it wants the answer to be.
What's your take on Microsoft potentially extending XP's life? Would you like
to see it? Do you ever get frustrated with the way Microsoft treats its customers?
Let it all out at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on April 16, 20085 comments