Microsoft Talks UC Deliverables

Redmond has been talking up its unified communications strategy for a while now, but the industry titan is finally starting to get specific about exactly what tools will comprise its UC offering. RCPU colleague Barbara Darrow has details here.

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20070 comments


Report: SMBs Not Sold on Open Source

A new report tells us what we already knew: It's a Microsoft world, at least as far as open source is concerned. This time, The 451 Group (Ray Bradbury fans, perhaps?) took a look at the viability of open source software in the small and midsize business (SMB, of course) space.

And guess what? SMBs aren't so hot on open source. Why? Well, the report says that SMBs don't have big enough IT budgets to make major changes to their Microsoft-dominated systems, and besides that, they can't find the type of expertise they need to run open source systems, anyway -- whereas MCSEs are all over the place. The report also noted that the earth revolves around the sun and that Bill Gates is rich.

Seriously, though, we know that Linux-based servers are making significant inroads into data centers and have been for a while, and we're not anti-open source as far as the concept of open source development goes. (We are not always as fond, however, of the open source "movement" and some of its primary characters.)

But the moral of the story remains the same: It's still a Microsoft world, and it's going to be for at least a while longer. And for Microsoft partners, that's good news.

How much interest in open source do you encounter among your customers? Let me know at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20071 comments


Microsoft Buys Former Exec's Company

Michael Toutonghi is headed back to the Redmond campus, presumably a wealthier -- although maybe not that much wealthier -- man after Microsoft's acquisition of his start-up, WebFives (which, incidentally, is a name that has "dot-com boom" written all over it, even though it's obviously not from that era. No wonder the company struggled.)

Posted by Lee Pender on December 04, 20070 comments


The Microsoft Robot Is At Your Command

So...normally on Friday, we run reader feedback. But since we haven't had any reader feedback since before Thanksgiving (Thursday of last week, for those of you outside the U.S.), we're going to keep this Friday issue of RCPU fairly short and hopefully somewhat sweet. Don't let us down during this festive season, though -- an e-mail to RCPU (at [email protected]) is the gift that we'll give right back to you in this space next week.

Anyway, we had to smile today at a story out of Japan, where a company called ZMP has developed a two-legged robot that runs on Microsoft robotics software. Now, there's an unfathomable number of jokes we could make about crashes, security flaws and maybe even how the Microsoft robot keeps accusing the Linux robot of stealing all its best tricks, but we'd rather turn the floor over to you.

We'd like to know what you would want your Microsoft robot to do. It can be anything, really -- well, anything fit to print in a family-friendly newsletter, we suppose. Would you want it to get you a cold beverage during the game? Actually figure out licensing terms for virtualization technologies? Develop a coherent SaaS strategy? Redesign the partner program Web site?

The Microsoft robot is at your command. Send your instructions to [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on November 30, 20070 comments


Microsoft Mixed Up Vista Marketing, Lawyers Say

Lawyers for a couple of people suing Microsoft over its use of the couplet "Vista capable" on PCs say that even folks in Redmond had no idea what the phrase meant.

Posted by Lee Pender on November 29, 20071 comments


Big Companies Back Microsoft in Antitrust Case

Visa and Weyerhaeuser are sick and tired of these pesky states that want the government to keep monitoring Microsoft for antitrust violations.

Everybody now, in your best English accent from Pink Floyd's "The Wall": "We don't need your supervision...We don't need government control...No extension of the antitrust deal...Hey, government, leave Microsoft alone!"

Posted by Lee Pender on November 29, 20074 comments


Microsoft and Google California Dreamin'

All the leaves really are brown, and the sky...well, it was blue today in Greater Boston, but not as blue as it's about to be in California for either Microsoft or Google. The Golden State, always on the cutting edge (seriously), is moving its e-mail, messaging and -- when, exactly, did this become a verb, or even a gerund? -- "calendaring" to a hosted model. And it looks as though either Microsoft or Google is going to get the bid.

Quoth the InformationWeek article: "It's a choice that could impact a quarter of a million state workers and create a multimillion dollar revenue windfall for one of two major technology vendors."

Sure, but it's a lot bigger than that. Thus far, Google has owned Microsoft in search, but Microsoft has owned just about everything else. This represents one of the first really big, head-to-head contests between the two rivals for a major hosting client. It's the grizzled veteran versus the up-and-coming star. It's Brett Favre vs. Tony Romo on Thursday Night Football. It's a battle not just for dollars and desktops (albeit with nothing installed on them) but also for momentum.

Whichever vendor wins California will have a bell-cow Software-as-a-Service account to trot out to other prospective clients, as well as a head-to-head victory over its chief rival. For Microsoft partners, a win for Redmond could be a huge boon and serve as a calling card for pitching hosted applications to clients -- but only if partners have developed a SaaS strategy themselves.

Maybe that's the real lesson here -- SaaS isn't coming; it's here. Now. If you haven't figured out how you're going to address it, you'd better calendar yourself some meetings and come up with something. California isn't just dreamin' about SaaS (on such a winter's day) -- it's doing it. You should be, too.

Who do you think will win the battle of California, and why? What are you expecting from your SaaS business in 2008? Let me know at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on November 29, 20070 comments


Tests Show XP Outperforming Vista

Apparently, XP with beta Service Pack 3 trumps Vista, even with the new operating system's first service pack in place. Please, don't even pretend to be surprised by this (not that you were pretending). Actually, it sort of makes sense -- XP is a much more mature platform, and it's already on SP3. Vista will come along...in time. We hope.

Posted by Lee Pender on November 28, 20070 comments


Smaller BI Vendors Still Alive and Kicking

Robert Lendvai was as confused as anybody when he read RCPU's declaration that IBM's planned buyout of Cognos meant the end of business intelligence as we know it. The chief marketing office of Blink Logic, an Ottawa-based BI firm, even had a bit of a career crisis: "I wondered whether maybe I should resign," Lendvai said.

Hey, folks, he's just kidding. Lendvai's not going anywhere, and neither is his company. Blink Logic, an independent vendor whose leaders cut their teeth at Cognos, actually has a pretty cool idea: BI for BI. Cognos, Business Objects (recently acquired by SAP), SAS and the gang came up with BI so that executives could more easily drill into and use SQL data that previously only IT types knew how to find. It was a great idea, and it sold -- a burst of innovation at the early part of this decade met genuine customer need and voilà! BI was big business.

Unfortunately, it was also...well, just big. And expensive. The applications that were supposed to (and did) ease a painful process actually became bloated and pretty difficult to use. They also ended up costing a lot of money, and they weren't easy to implement, either. "There's a good reason why two-thirds of the licenses of most BI platforms are sitting on the shelf," said Bill Stewart, a member of Blink Logic's product marketing team who bravely fought through a vicious cold to speak with RCPU.

In steps Blink Logic. It's a pure, Web-based, Software-as-a-Service play with nothing to install at the client site. It sits on top of a variety of platforms and provides a simple, front-end view of structured data (stuff residing in databases) as well as unstructured data (stuff roaming around in e-mails and the like). It can serve as a point of entry to BI for smaller companies or as a way for firms already invested in bigger BI systems to get more out of their implementations. It can sit on top of a Microsoft BI platform or work with Cognos applications.

What Blink Logic really does is deliver through a browser-based interface what BI was supposed to provide in the first place: a clear, manageable view of critical data. At some point, the bigger BI vendors largely lost their focus on simplicity of interface and user experience. Blink Logic intends to bring it back.

There are collaboration tools, user-customizable views and all sorts of other neat things in Blink Logic's offering -- and it's cheaper and easier to manage than a lot of heavier, software-intensive alternatives. That's one of the reasons why Fieldpoint Service Applications, a Gold Certified Partner also based in Ontario, sells Blink Logic to its clients, who mostly play in the technology services industry.

"BI has always been a cost-prohibitive thing for any of us who sell in the small-to-medium space," said Fieldpoint President Richard Smart (who goes by Rich -- meaning his name is Rich Smart, two adjectives most people would love to have associated with them). "If you want to partner with Cognos or the other big players, you've got to staff up for that. It becomes a whole part of your business. The fact that we've got a low-cost entry point for our customers is absolutely key."

Now, with the great BI consolidation of 2007, Blink Logic finds itself running into new competition: Oracle, SAP, IBM and, of course, Microsoft. But Lendvai doesn't look at those big vendors as competitors, only as data sources.

"We've never seen ourselves as competing directly with the BI platform vendors," he said. "We're not going to build OLAP servers. These guys are just a group of data sources for our product. As we grow the business, it could be any data source. We will sit on top of their stacks."

Blink Logic has put out the call to Microsoft partners -- it wants to work with them on development for the Microsoft BI and SharePoint services markets. And the upstart vendor sees in the consolidation around it nothing but opportunity.

"You cut the big trees down, that clears room for vigorous growth to come back in," Stewart said. "Those platforms are going to be tied up in how do they fit into the bigger story of their acquirer, but the rest of the industry is not going to be marking time while they make their minds up. It opens up a lot of opportunity."

So, it appears, Lendvai will keep his job after all.

Have a BI story of your own to tell? Tell it here: [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on November 28, 20070 comments


Microsoft and Autodesk Pay Up for Patent Poaching

The owner of z4 Technologies (what, you haven't heard of it?) will soon be a wealthier man.

Posted by Lee Pender on November 28, 20070 comments


Redmond Tinkering with Windows Genuine Advantage

Just like a petulant 10-year-old trying to talk his way out of trouble, Microsoft has really learned its lesson this time! No more problems with WGA! No more nasty outages! And this time, we mean it.

The funny thing, of course, is that WGA just might be working.

Posted by Lee Pender on November 28, 20070 comments


New Vulnerability Haunts Windows

The word "vulnerability" in reference to a software security issue always makes us giggle a little -- it sounds more like somebody's endless craving for sweets, or something someone would say on the first date after a particularly nasty end to a prior relationship. "I'm just feeling very vulnerable -- kind of like Windows when a hacker takes control of a workstation through QuickTime."

Posted by Lee Pender on November 27, 20070 comments