So a group of pesky states (hello, California -- we know why you're here) wants
to keep the consent decree covering Microsoft's nasty little habit of being
a monopolist alive for five more years. Microsoft says, as you might imagine,
that it's time to put the whole consent decree business to bed.
Well, Redmond now has a pretty
powerful ally in trying to convince a U.S. District Court to do just that:
the U.S. Department of Justice itself, star of the Microsoft lawsuit that started
this whole thing.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 13, 20070 comments
So, this is kind of weird: A French Linux vendor named Mandriva thinks it has this contract all wrapped up with the Nigerian government. Then, all of a sudden, the government announces that it’s going to pay Mandriva for the computers and software it’s shipping -- but the government’s not going to install the Linux distro; it’s going to
run Windows instead.
This leads to rather a catty letter by Mandriva’s CEO, which accuses Steve Ballmer and Microsoft of ... well, dirty deeds, we suppose (possibly even done dirt cheap -- and that might have been at the heart of the issue), but not much else that’s concrete.
We’re wondering a few things here. Why is the Nigerian government going to pay for software it doesn’t intend to use? Why did the CEO of Madriva immediately attack Ballmer rather than ask his own customer what on earth is going on? And if Microsoft really did something so bad, why not come out and name the crime?
It looks as though Mandriva’s little missive is a particularly sour example of French whine. But, hey, we’ve all heard of Mandriva now, right?
Posted by Lee Pender on November 02, 20070 comments
Well, here we go again. Apple is out with a new version of OS X,
this
one called Leopard, and
everybody
(and we do mean
everybody)
is telling us how much better Leopard is than Vista. Everybody who's not complaining
about Leopard's
supposedly
questionable security, that is.
And so, we at RCPU give the usual response: Yeah, so? The Mac OS has long been
superior to Windows, and although we haven't seen Leopard yet, we're sure that,
security hassles aside (as if those don't exist in Vista), the new Mac OS probably
blows Microsoft's latest effort out of the desktop water. It's important to
note here that we actually like Apple stuff at RCPU. We're far from being Microsoft
zealots -- remember, we don't work for Redmond.
Your editor owned an iMac for years before leaving it behind in Europe and
would definitely consider buying another one at some point. And, of course,
we've been on board with the iPod for years, like the rest of the world (except
for one of the producers of this newsletter, who confessed to us earlier this
year that he has a Zune -- he will, of course, remain anonymous).
But every time Apple trots out a new version of the Mac OS, we hear the same
old lines about how much better it is than whatever Microsoft is offering (fair
enough, but that's like saying that Seattle is rainy) and how this is going
to be the release that finally provides a market-share breakthrough for Apple.
Whatever. Yes, the Mac OS is gaining in market share -- as we noted earlier
this week, it's encroaching on double digits -- and there's well-documented
discontent with Vista both among consumers and in the enterprise.
And still, Windows dominates, and it will continue to dominate. Apple gave
up on the enterprise a long time ago, so there's obviously no threat to Microsoft
there. But even on the consumer side, people just seem to stick with Microsoft.
There are probably a lot of reasons why -- familiarity, previous investment
in software, price -- but that's the way it is. (Hey, it's not as if Apple's
hurting, anyway. That whole iPod thing made some money after all. Steve Jobs
won't need another bailout from Redmond any time soon.)
So, we add to the list
we started after Microsoft's most recent (and staggeringly successful, even
by Redmond's standards) earnings report. Maybe you remember (and here, we quote
ourselves):
"Vista stinks? Microsoft makes more money. Google's on the rise?
Microsoft makes more money. SaaS is gaining a foothold? Microsoft makes more
money. Linux is getting established in the enterprise? Microsoft makes more
money. The EU wants to appropriate the campus in Redmond and turn it into
some sort of hippie compound for rogue socialist economists? Microsoft...you
get the idea."
So, this week: Apple comes out with another vastly superior operating system?
Yep, you guessed it -- Microsoft makes more money.
Have you used Leopard? What do you think of it? Tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20077 comments
Well, it only makes sense, right? Microsoft lights up the scoreboard with its
earnings report, and big channel partners fall in line. In case you missed it,
last week, great big distributor Ingram Micro
reported
its best third quarter ever.
Hopefully your own revenues are rising with this tide, as well.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20070 comments
The consent decree Microsoft made with the U.S. government as part of its 2002
antitrust settlement was supposed to expire this month, but it'll
run
until the end of January, thanks to a federal judge's decision. Some states
want to monitor Microsoft for antitrust-like behavior for another five years.
The judge will be mulling that over in the next few months.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20071 comments
Partners! In case you missed one of about a billion Microsoft e-mails you must
get every month, here's a tip for you: You can now participate in an
evaluation
of the latest release candidate of Windows Server 2008. Our first comment
in the evaluation? "Change the name back to Longhorn."
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20070 comments
Redmond magazine contributing editor Mary Jo Foley has a report on what
Microsoft is doing to get consumers to
buy
Vista for the holidays. So far, the answer is...not much of substance, actually.
But we are kind of looking forward to Steve Ballmer's appearance in
Vogue.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 25, 20070 comments
It's all butter cookies and, uh, Danish, we suppose (if Danish -- as in the
sweet, sweet pastry -- is actually Danish, unlike french fries, which aren't
French) this week at Euro Convergence in Copenhagen. (OK, so the only other
thing we can think of when we hear "Copenhagen" is chewing tobacco,
which just sounds so much less appealing than cookies and pastry -- or even
fries. But go with whatever you like. Just use the spittoon, please.) And just
as we've had from Microsoft at prior Convergence get-togethers, we've got messaging
about the four disparate Dynamics suites cozying up to each other in some way.
Since Microsoft kind of sort of officially dropped the notion that it would
eventually meld all four enterprise resource planning suites into
one mega-suite, we've had fits and starts of messaging about NAV, GP, SL
and AX and how
they're going to relate to each other. A common interface among the suites
seems in place, and this week Redmond took the unification message further by
saying that it's developing
a single code base for the for software siblings.
So...we've got, or will have, four suites (plus customer relationship management,
no small piece of the puzzle) that look the same and run on the same code base
-- which makes total sense, of course, because everything Dynamics is Microsoft
now, and Microsoft's value proposition has long centered around integration
and ease of customization and use. A single code base will let partners more
easily develop from one application to another and integrate ERP and CRM into
the rest of the Microsoft platform. It should also help considerably with intra-company
data and process sharing.
All of this must surely mean that the old mega-suite idea -- once known as
"Project Green" -- is back on, right? Same interface, same code base;
easy integration with all things Microsoft, including potential money pots like
unified communications -- we're nearing the end of Dynamics alphabet soup...aren't
we?
Nope. Check the PC World story linked above. It (indirectly) quotes
Kirill Tatarinov, vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, thusly:
"Users won't ever see a single Microsoft ERP product for all markets,
since Microsoft realizes that business have different needs, [Tatarinov] said."
Won't...ever? Really? Somehow, we doubt that. Check out the entirely reasonable
response to Tatarinov from an average user quoted in the same story:
"'I don't understand why they have so many different products,'"
said Lars Jalve, financial manager for Transas Ltd., a company that makes
navigation equipment for ships and managing harbors."
Well, Lars (and we do hope that you're enjoying the butter cookies), originally
it was because Microsoft didn't want to cannibalize its ambitious ERP effort
and wreck its Dynamics channel by announcing that there would someday be a mega-suite
but making partners and customers wait years for it, thereby delaying or possibly
just killing potential investment in it. (Actually, Microsoft did pretty much
just that a couple of years ago at Convergence in talking about Project Green
and then had to back off big time and change its message.) After all, why would
a company buy SL today if Dynamics Ultimate (or whatever) would be ready in
a few years? This isn't the operating system market; there are plenty of fully
baked alternatives to Dynamics out there. Microsoft is, after all, the newbie
here.
But now that Dynamics has, or will have, a common code base, a common interface
and deep integration with everything else Microsoft, why not start talking up
the mega-suite notion again? It's long been the elephant in the room at Convergence,
anyway. Maybe introduce some sort of upgrade or migration path, or reward customers
of current suites with an easier and/or cheaper route to Big Dynamics when it's
ready? Start now, build for tomorrow -- that sort of thing. Because we at RCPU
do think it'll be ready eventually, no matter how much Microsoft tries to say
otherwise. And as long as Dynamics is still more flexible, less expensive and
easier to integrate than its competition's products, there will be nothing wrong
-- and a lot of things right -- with simplifying both the marketing and the
message of Dynamics.
Oh, and while we're going on about Dynamics, here's
a somewhat dry but entirely useful look at Dynamics Entrepreneur, a small-business
product that, thus far, only our friends in the Netherlands (big shout-out to
our boys in Rotterdam here) have been able to buy and sell.
Which would you prefer, the Dynamics status quo or a single suite? What's your
strategy for selling Dynamics now? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on October 25, 20070 comments
Mr. Ellison usually gets what Mr. Ellison wants (right, Siebel and PeopleSoft?),
but the Napoleon of the software industry
hasn't
managed to pillage BEA yet. He's still on the warpath, though, and it wouldn't
surprise us to see BEA fall into Oracle's hands before this little drama is
finished.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 24, 20070 comments
Microsoft
introduced
Mobile Server this week, hoping to pick BlackBerry's position in the "smartphone"
market. And, by the way, we'd like to thank Research In Motion for naming its
product BlackBerry and giving us all these great fruit references to use in
RCPU. Now let's see whether Mobile Server turns out to be a lemon. (See? It
just never stops.)
Posted by Lee Pender on October 24, 20071 comments
Maybe you missed Microsoft's introduction of a
Web
site for medical records, which the company announced last week. If you
did, that's OK -- it wasn't in the newsletter, so it won't be on the test.
Health care, though, is a great big ol' booming business, chock with profits
for partners who know how to take the temperature of the market and prescribe
some implementations for customers. (Health care metaphors never fail!) Rich
Freeman has a diagnosis
of the health care vertical market (oh, really, stop it) in October's RCP
that's well worth a read.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 12, 20070 comments