If Disneyworld is the Magic Kingdom, then Orlando is Faketown. Nothing here
is real. It's all plastic...with a theme.
That's not to say that Orlando can't be a pleasant place to hang out. The sun
has just broken through the clouds this afternoon after a day or two of cloudy
gloom, but the highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s have made for a nice break
from chilly Boston. And, after an excursion last night with an unidentified
fellow employee of 1105 Media and another gentleman who's an Orlando local,
your editor discovered that there are establishments in this town that don't
have anything to do with Disney characters, water slides or movie studio theme
parks.
In fact, after a fine dinner, we managed to find a trendy outdoor-indoor bar
with a selection of some of Scotland's more interesting adult beverages and
a cheesy but altogether decent cover band. Of course, the bar was located in
-- does it get any more Central Florida than this? -- a strip mall. (By the
way, pretty much every structure here is a strip mall, a theme park, a chain
restaurant or a hotel. Well, there's also the convention center, we suppose.)
But, whatever. The trendy strip mall bar was a pretty fun place. After that
(yes, there was more), we found ourselves in a clubbish establishment with more
beverages of interest and a goofy band that was holding dance contests and serenaded
some poor sap with rather a bawdy birthday tune.
If Orlando itself has turned out to be more interesting than we expected, Convergence
has perhaps been a bit less. Last year's show in San Diego was full of intrigue
about Project Green (as the previous two before it had been), and there seemed
to be a real buzz about Dynamics CRM Live and the whole Dynamics line in general.
This year, it's more of a nuts-and-bolts affair. Project Green is dead, and
nobody seems to be talking about it. An update of AX leads the way news-wise,
along with a solid announcement of a CRM
deal with EDS. There's still a strong SaaS flavor, but SaaS already seems
a bit old hat now, even if it's still emerging. Most of the talk has been about
Dynamics' ease-of-use, an important selling point for the suites but not exactly
a sexy topic of discussion.
Still, there are, we've heard, 9,500 or so people here from 65 countries, meaning
that, despite fears of a recession, attendance numbers this year are pretty
close to those of last year. And folks are still doing what people do at conferences
-- meeting, making deals, checking out new products and expensing staggering
bar tabs. Even in Faketown, there's some real business being done. Mostly over
a few drinks.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 12, 20080 comments
We
told
you last week that Microsoft is talking a lot about document format interoperability
these days and that part of what it's trying to do in order to be -- or at least
seem -- more open is have its document format, Office Open XML, accepted as
a standard by the ISO (and, perhaps not surprisingly, the U.S. delegation to
the ISO
seems
to be on board with the idea). Well, one paragraph in last week's entry
on this subject prompted an insightful e-mail from Bryan, who writes:
"One paragraph in today's newsletter caused me to chuckle, but not
in a 'ha ha, that's funny' way. More of a, 'He's kidding, right?' kind of
way.
"You said: 'Incidentally, Open XML is already a standard, having
been accepted as such in, of all places, Europe, by the ECMA International
standards body. That means that ECMA actually "owns" the format now and that
future evolution of it is in ECMA's hands, not in Microsoft's. If the ISO
accepts Open XML, it'll own the format.'
"I'm not going to get into the numerous conspiracy theories about
ECMA (though they sometimes make amusing reading). The 'funny' part is the
idea that either of the standards bodies could ever 'own' this particular
standard. Let's face it: The standard, as written by Microsoft, is so deeply
and fundamentally linked into the base design and operation of Microsoft Word
that it will always be at the mercy of the proprietary product. The idea that
ISO or ECMA could drive the future of Word is ludicrous.
"Once the standard is approved, it will have to follow the direction
Microsoft leads. That doesn't really sound like ownership to me. Well, maybe
ownership the other way around but certainly not ownership by the standards
bodies. Changes to the standard may require fundamental changes to the way
Word works, and that would be resisted vigorously by Microsoft. And if the
methods in the standard can't change, then Microsoft still owns it...
"I still think this standard, as currently written, is bad for IT. The
links and dependencies on the proprietary product are far too extensive."
First of all, we should have noted, and didn't, that the paragraph above from
last Thursday's RCPU should have been attributed to Tom Robertson, Microsoft's
general manager of interoperability and standards. It was Robertson who explained
at an event in Cambridge, Mass. last week how the whole standards thing is
supposed to work, and we got that paragraph from his explanation.
Beyond that, RCPU is playing off-position a little bit in writing about standards,
as we're not really experts on the subject. However, we're guessing that you're
probably fairly well on-target with what you're saying, Bryan, and, as we said
last week, we suspect that one of the reasons that Microsoft is so determined
to get ISO approval for Open XML is so that it can pull the rug out from under
open source. We can hear the pitch now: "Open source is standards-based?
Well, so are we! Look, we have ISO approval! So, there's no advantage in going
with open source as far as that goes..."
Of course, if that were to happen, it might not be the worst result for Microsoft
partners...even if it wouldn't be the best result for IT as a whole.
Have another comment on Microsoft's talk about standards and openness? Make
it at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on March 11, 20082 comments
Microsoft still has more than $40 billion burning a hole in its pocket for
the proposed Yahoo acquisition -- although Ray Ozzie told the
Financial Times
(why doesn't anybody every come to RCPU with news like this? Never mind -- we
know why) that even if Microsoft does swallow Yahoo, Redmond will
take
its time in digesting its prey.
But even with Yahoo still in play, and with Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. saying
that they won't
fight Redmond for control of the Web pioneer, Microsoft is on the lookout
for other smaller fish to swallow.
One relative guppy that doesn't seem likely to find itself in Microsoft's belly
anytime soon is Logitech, which, a couple of months back, was rumored to be
a takeover target for Redmond. Logitech's chairman -- sort of randomly, as far
as we can tell -- told an Italian newspaper recently that a Microsoft buyout
of his company would be "without
sense," meaning that he's either hoping his company will stay independent
or throwing out some tasty, reverse-psychology bait in an attempt to make Steve
Ballmer look his way again.
Digg, the news aggregation side, is much
more likely prey for Microsoft, but Redmond might find itself in a dogfight
with, you guessed it, Google over this tasty morsel. (Yes, we're sticking with
our loose zoological theme in this entry. Just try to enjoy it.)
In any case, what we're seeing now is a Microsoft that's hungrier than ever
and more than willing to splash out some cash for a fine dinner. The downside
from Redmond's perspective is that Microsoft could still come home from the
hunt hungry. Then what?
What's your take on Microsoft's acquisition strategy? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on March 11, 20080 comments
RCPU will be in Orlando, America's capital of culture and sophistication, this
week for Microsoft's Convergence conference. So, instead of breaking up our
newsletter coverage the way we've been doing it since January -- industry news
on Tuesday, product news on Wednesday and channel news on Thursday, with a general
rant leading off each day's edition -- we'll be bringing you all Convergence,
all the time on Wednesday and Thursday.
Check back for updates on everything that's going on in the Microsoft Dynamics
universe, along with snarky rants about the vapid atmosphere of central Florida
(although we won't likely complain about the weather). It'll be a fun time for
all!
Posted by Lee Pender on March 11, 20080 comments
The big distributor's results for its fourth fiscal quarter were strong, and
its stock price
jumped
accordingly this week.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 06, 20080 comments
If the European Union's
constant
brow-beating of Microsoft has had a positive effect, it's that Redmond has
opened itself up to letting its products work at least a little bit better with
those from other vendors.
Now, on the one hand, that's not all good news for Microsoft and its channel.
After all, the "better together" pitch that Microsoft has used for
years is a little bit weaker than it used to be. Prior to Microsoft's new era
of semi-openness, a decent pitch when selling one thing from Microsoft was that
a customer might as well buy everything else from Microsoft, too, because nothing
works with a Microsoft product quite as well another Microsoft product.
That was true, in part, because Microsoft sometimes (often?) made it difficult
and expensive -- which it had every right to do, RCPU says, although European
courts disagree -- for vendors to let their products work with Microsoft's wares.
In fact, the better together pitch is still valid, but Microsoft is in the process
of changing its meaning. Redmond isn't, and doesn't
want to be, quite as proprietary as it used to be. "Better together"
could now mean, at least to some extent, working "better together"
with other vendors.
And so, today, as part of its new message of openness, Microsoft unveiled the
Document Interoperability Initiative, a global effort aimed at bringing vendors
together to "promote interoperability between document format implementations,"
quoth the press
release, or, basically, to test how different document formats work with
each other on different platforms and try to develop templates that will allow
different formats to work -- that's right -- better together.
Microsoft calls the DII (our abbreviation, not Redmond's) the first effort
of its kind in the world -- and it will be global, with interoperability testing
and discussions starting in the U.S. and then moving to Asia (South Korea, specifically)
and Europe, Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and
standards, told RCPU at a little press get-together in Cambridge, Mass. this
morning.
"Our customers are telling us that some of them would like these templates
because they could be useful in certain contexts," Robertson said. "We
think vendors ought to come together to develop those. We want to be catalysts
for bringing people together."
And some vendors have answered the call. Novell, notably but not surprisingly,
was in attendance at today's event, as were a few smaller names -- specifically,
Mark Logic (which sounds like some sort of nerd superhero), Quickoffice, DataViz
and Nuance Communications. So what about, say, Adobe, Microsoft's rival and
the originator of the PDF?
"We work with Adobe in a lot of different ways," Robertson said.
"My sense is Adobe would find this to be attractive. I don't want to speak
on their behalf as to when they would participate."
So, there's work to be done yet...and, frankly, we wouldn't blame some of Redmond's
rivals for having a bit of trepidation about working with the software giant.
After all, Microsoft does have a reputation -- well-earned, really -- for being
a bit shifty
in its dealings with other vendors. But this initiative, and most of Microsoft's
new openness mantra, seems genuinely to be about opening Microsoft to the rest
of the industry -- at least more so than in the past.
Well, it's about a couple of other things, too, of course, such as complying
with EU competition regulations and court rulings. Robertson admits as much,
saying that the European Court of First Instance's ruling, which upheld Eurofines
against Microsoft last year, was a catalyst for Redmond's new Interoperability
Principles (a proper noun, apparently, as Microsoft capitalized the phrase in
its press materials).
"These principles absolutely are a step on our part to apply the concepts
in the Court of First Instance decision across all of our high-volume products,
but we have an eye on what the marketplace needs and what our customers have
been asking us to do," Robertson said.
Beyond that, there's Microsoft's ongoing fight to get Office Open XML, the
document format it created, adopted as a standard by the International
Standards Organization. Incidentally, Open XML is already a standard, having
been accepted as such in, of all places, Europe, by the ECMA International
standards body. That means that ECMA actually "owns" the format now
and that future evolution of it is in ECMA's hands, not in Microsoft's. If the
ISO accepts Open XML, it'll own the format.
Robertson said that's important because customers and partners want to work
with standardized formats rather than proprietary ones. (We would add here that
Microsoft would surely like to score some openness reputation points with open
source software actually making a move in some areas of the enterprise. Being
proprietary apparently isn't as cool as it used to be. Score one for the Commu...uh,
we mean "open source community" there.)
Of course, a standard document format -- the Open Document Format, or ODF --
already exists. We wonder how or why more than one standard should exist --
it hardly seems like a standard when that's the case -- although there are multiple
standards in many different areas of the technology industry.
Robertson says that it's all about choice. Different user case scenarios require
different formats, and users should be able to choose which "standard"
(as in, not proprietary) format they want to use and help evolve. That makes
sense, of course, and we're sure that it factors into Redmond's thinking.
But we also have to wonder whether Microsoft has the ulterior motive of wanting
to compete with open source on what's more or less open source's turf, the international
standards bodies. Getting Open XML accepted as a standard and then gradually
letting it -- through the ISO -- squeeze the life out of ODF...What better way
to hit open source right where it would hurt the most? Microsoft, more open
than open source and deemed credible by an independent organization. Give that
some thought. But don't hold your breath for it to happen; the whole ISO thing
has been nasty and could get nastier.
Still, if the net result of the EU bulldogging the Open XML battle is Microsoft
being a little easier to work with, fine. "You're going to see new entrants
to the market that are optimized for interoperability with these high-volume
Microsoft products the same way Microsoft products are," Robertson said
today. "Long-term...You're just going to see a healthier IT industry."
Maybe so. Right now, for whatever reason, it seems as though we're seeing a
more open Microsoft.
What's your take on Microsoft's new openness? Do you care about standard document
formats? Why? Drop a line to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on March 06, 20080 comments
A new CDW survey gives us the chance to use one of the great hackneyed phrases
in journalism: cautiously optimistic. Anyway, that's pretty much how IT decision
makers feel about 2008, the
survey
indicates.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 06, 20080 comments
So, now, it's Office Live Workspace that's open for
worldwide
public beta -- with the possibility of winning $100,000 hanging tantalizingly
in the air.
It's just another day and another SaaS-related announcement for Microsoft (remember
this
one from earlier this week), which has rapidly gone from lost on SaaS to
gung-ho on the hosted model -- although we'd still like to see Redmond clean
up the mess that is "Live" branding. With Microsoft now challenging
Google's supposed domination of all things Web, observers are starting to wonder
whether Redmond can really keep up with its Silicon Valley rival. One even posits
that Microsoft is chasing online dollars (in vain) out
of jealousy toward Google.
We all know how wealthy and powerful Google has become in a short amount of
time and, here at RCPU, we're pretty sure that Microsoft might as well give
up the fight in consumer search and maybe even in online advertising, one of
Steve Ballmer's pet categories. But we're skeptical of the warnings of impending
doom for Microsoft coming from the anti-Redmond crowd.
Instead of asking how Microsoft can "catch" Google in categories
such as hosted applications, we wonder why Microsoft wouldn't be able to build
a business in those areas. There's plenty there for the taking -- hosted applications,
enterprise search, unified communications and other collaborative categories
-- and it's not as though Google has booted Microsoft out of the enterprise.
Sure, Google Apps looks pretty cool, but Microsoft Office -- the old-school
desktop version -- is still top of the heap when it comes to productivity apps.
And while nobody "Live Searches" anything (we all "Google,"
of course), not many people go rushing to Google's word processor or spreadsheet
before opening Word or Excel, either. Will that change? Maybe, but if it does,
it'll take a while. And Microsoft isn't standing still.
We've been critical here in the past of Microsoft's SaaS strategy, but it finally
seems to be coming together. Is Redmond behind Google in terms of online technology?
Maybe, probably -- but Google is still way behind in market share in categories
such as productivity apps. (Besides, when hasn't Microsoft been behind at least
one big rival in terms of innovation?) Yes, the Yahoo overture reeks a bit of
desperation, but at least it's a sign that Microsoft
won't be content to be just a Windows and Office company in the enterprise evermore.
Google isn't going away. It's a powerful force in the industry, and it's only
going to get bigger and stronger. That's a good thing, as competition tends
to make everybody's slice of the pie larger. (Perhaps a lot of pundits just
aren't used to Microsoft not dominating everything, and they confuse genuine
competition with impending doom for Redmond.) But Microsoft isn't ready to give
up on enterprise Web services, either. Is Redmond overreaching with its myriad
of investments and initiatives? Probably, but that's been a problem there for
a while now. What we like to see, though, is Microsoft (and its partners) fighting
for the enterprise and deciding that the company can compete there not only
with packaged software but also with online services.
Mark Twain might have had a line about Microsoft's impending doom...something
about reports of it being greatly exaggerated.
What's your take on Microsoft's SaaS strategy? How powerful is Google in the
enterprise right now? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on March 05, 20081 comments
You can go ahead and
throw
it against a wall if you get a blue screen, we suppose.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 05, 20080 comments