Two notes before we start: First, your editor is on deadline for a magazine
story, so today's RCPU will be shorter (and possibly even sweeter) than usual.
Second, we promised you last week that we'd hear this week from a small business-intelligence
vendor trying to survive in the shark tank of BI acquisitions by larger companies.
We will bring you that vendor's story -- but not this week after all, as today's
newsletter will be the last one until after Thanksgiving.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on November 20, 20070 comments
Really,
it's
brief
. Somewhat interesting, but brief. We're not kidding.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 20, 20070 comments
Seriously. No kidding. One discounted model for at least one day, anyway,
on
Amazon.com
, but still.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 20, 20071 comments
Mary Jo Foley tells us that Microsoft's little pay-as-you-go scheme for Office
-- sort of like SaaS without the service or convenience -- is
seeping
into new markets
around the world.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 16, 20070 comments
When your editor was but a young lad, his family had a cat that was a particularly
adept mouser. The cat loved to roam the large field behind its house searching
for rodents of all sorts. When she caught one, she would keep it about half-alive
for a few hours and just toy with it, pretending at times to be indifferent
to its presence, then batting it around and chasing it when it tried meekly
to escape.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on November 16, 20071 comments
Comcast wants to be so much more than "the cable company." It's pushing
itself to be an ambitious entertainment and business enterprise, complete with
TV networks of its own and "business-class" technology services.
We digress here, so just skip the next two paragraphs if you want to get to
the relevant stuff: Comcast reminds us here at RCPU a bit of a miniature version
of Vivendi (formerly Vivendi Universal -- nothing ambitious about that name),
the French company that started as a water utility in the 19th century and eventually
grew to own a considerable chunk of the entertainment industry. When your editor
moved to Paris in 2001, Vivendi Universal and its then-CEO, Jean-Marie Messier,
were the stuff of legends and a huge source of pride in France.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on November 15, 20070 comments
Whew! Finally, the wait is over! You were waiting with bated breath for
an
update to OneCare
...weren't you?
Posted by Lee Pender on November 15, 20070 comments
Bill Gates attended this week his last Microsoft shareholders' meeting as a
card-punching Microsoft employee.
BusinessWeek
, always reliable, has
a solid take on
where
Microsoft is now
with Gates riding into the digital sunset. And be sure
to check out the Gates slideshow for an awkward stroll down memory lane.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 15, 20070 comments
The System Center portfolio has
three
new products
as of today: System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System
Center Data Protection Manager 2007 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager
2007.
Aside from doing all kinds cool management stuff, these products come with
one simple license that will allow a customer to buy and run them all at once.
Eric Berg, director of product management for the Windows and Enterprise Management
Division at Microsoft, told RCPU last week that "if you're buying any two of
these products, you're better off purchasing the server management suite."
By suite, he means all three products, of course.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on November 13, 20070 comments
Let's get right to the news because there's plenty of it this week. For starters,
Microsoft is planning on offering a lot of versions of Windows Server 2008 at
a lot of different price points. Think we're exaggerating when we say a lot?
Check out
Keith
Ward's story
on the lineup -- and bring a scorecard, or maybe a spreadsheet.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on November 13, 20070 comments