Google: World's Biggest Brand

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


Another Microsoft Bug Surfaces

In case you missed the news last Friday, there's a LocalSystem access bug out there.

Posted by Lee Pender on April 22, 20080 comments


Microsoft and Google: Another Patriots' Day?

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


Microsoft, Novell Focus on China Linux Sales

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


N-able Has Free Offering for Partners

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


New Channel Head at HP

A 20-year veteran of the company is the new head guy for channel operations.

Posted by Lee Pender on April 17, 20080 comments


Avnet Issues Earnings Warning

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


Ingram's Seismic Shift for SaaS

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


Redmond Touts 'World's Cheapest Laptop'

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


Execs Exit

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


XP, Vista and the Long Run for Microsoft

"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


Microsoft Lays out Plan for Embedded Windows

OK, confession: We mainly stuck this news here because we thought that some of the comments at the end of this related blog entry were funny.

Posted by Lee Pender on April 16, 20080 comments