Your editor will be out next week on vacation, eschewing cell phone, computer,
online news aggregators and quite possibly even television. Filling in will
be
RCP Editor in Chief Scott Bekker who, like David Letterman on the
old "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson, always does such a wonderful
and entertaining job of spelling the regular host. Fortunately, unlike the great
Johnny Carson, your editor is not currently dead and will return with a new
edition on Oct. 23. In the meantime, please welcome Scott into your inboxes.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 12, 20070 comments
Let's rip right into reader e-mails in this Friday edition. The big news this
week was SAP's planned buyout of Business Objects (say it as a subject and verb,
and suddenly it's a pretty funny name), which had us
pondering
whether Microsoft might make a big business intelligence purchase of its
own.
Peter, who would certainly have Gold E-Mailer status by now if we had such
a thing, says that BO makes a lot of sense for SAP...but that Microsoft has
bigger things to worry about:
"We are in the Microsoft BI space and have some idea of the competition.
BO as a front-end to SAP is a great idea. The SAP BI is complete, rigid rubbish.
We always regarded BO, as the name suggests, as a fairly mediocre product.
They got to sell so much because of their very aggressive sales folk who misled
the customers. Similarly, Cognos is full of bugs and not a particularly good
product either. Microsoft already has better products than both BO and Cognos.
"Microsoft, unfortunately, will shoot themselves in the foot with
their very heavy BI offering, PerformancePoint Server. Don't forget, Microsoft
is an SAP customer and already has all kinds of BI interfaces to SAP. The
far more serious competitor for Microsoft is Oracle. They acquired brilliant
BI when they bought Siebel. That is now called Oracle BI Enterprise and much
better than BO or Cognos."
Jeff's also talking about Oracle...and he's got a very expensive proposition
for Microsoft.
"I think SAP's acquisition now gives INFOR and Oracle's strategy
credibility. What I mean is in today's ERP marketplace, it's cheaper and much
less time-consuming to BUY customers than go out and get them the hard way.
"SAP has been acquiring companies for quite some time; however, it
has been doing so under the radar. Guess there was no point in trying to hide
this acquisition.
"Microsoft should put an end to all this misery and just acquire
SAP like previously planned. I think the combined value of Microsoft + SAP
is more than separate."
The combined value of Microsoft and SAP would be massive, even staggering --
as would the resulting problems with integration and cultural fit. Plus, we're
not sure that federal regulators would let that acquisition pass. Microsoft
and SAP as one company...we're going to have to lie down for a while. Just the
thought is exhausting and more than a little scary.
Thanks to Peter and Jeff for their thoughts. Even though I'll be away next
week, keep your comments coming to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on October 12, 20070 comments
Keith Ward brings you
Part
2 of his already popular list of the most overlooked features of Windows
Server 2008.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 11, 20070 comments
At this point, even we're tempted to say put up or shut up. Steve Ballmer is
back
in patent shakedown mode, this time throwing Red Hat up against the wall
and threatening to shove it in the trunk of the car and drive it into the woods
for a good working over. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway.
We're staring to wonder, though, whether Microsoft has any cattle to go with
its patent hat (that is, whether Microsoft is all hat and no cattle on this
issue, as we'd say in Texas -- all talk and nothing to back it up). And Mary
Jo Foley thinks there might be something
entirely more sinister behind Ballmer's latest eruption.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 10, 20070 comments
You don't have to believe this story if you don't want to, but it really is
true. Almost six years ago, your editor got a (short-lived) job as a documentation
writer with Business Objects, the big French maker of business intelligence
software. On a dreary January day in 2002, his second day with the company,
your editor went to a huge, companywide confab on the edge of Paris. While listening
to a standard state-of-the-company presentation, he turned to the (completely
disinterested) person sitting next to him and said, "This company sounds
like a perfect acquisition target for SAP!"
OK, so we weren't the only -- or probably even the first -- wannabe pundit
to predict an SAP buyout of the company known in France as BO. But, almost six
years later, here we are. SAP is snapping
up Business Objects for almost $7 billion in the largest acquisition in
the German enterprise resource planning vendor's history. The financial markets
haven't liked
the huge deal so far, but from a technology perspective, it just makes so
much sense.
SAP, after all, automates all sorts of back-end functions -- manufacturing,
human resources, accounting, supply chain, you name it -- for most of the world's
biggest companies. And the whole point of business intelligence is to give executives
at those big companies easy access to back-end data that they can use for all
sorts of forecasting and planning purposes. Business Objects provides that access
as well as any independent vendor out there, with Cognos also very much a major
player. SAP has never had an especially friendly front-end application, so Business
Objects will help the German giant's powerful software communicate better with
its users.
Oracle, SAP's main challenger in the ERP space, has spent wildly in recent
years, including dropping
more than $3 billion on Hyperion, a Business Objects competitor, this year.
So SAP is finally getting into the act on the acquisition side after seemingly
having failed to develop its own BI technology.
The question now is whether Microsoft, an emerging
player in the BI space (and in the ERP space, as well, with its Dynamics
line), will swallow a BI player of its own (hello, Cognos) or continue to build
technology from the small
acquisitions its has made in the space into its offering. At almost $7 billion,
the asking price for a big BI firm is high, but Microsoft has the money to spend.
And we know that Redmond will spend it if it's serious about jumping head-first
into a market; just look at the $6
billion acquisition of aQuantive that has launched Microsoft as an advertising
agency.
There are other questions that arise from SAP's deal, too, such as how the
buyout will affect SAP's
tenuous cooperation with Redmond
on the Duet product, which uses Microsoft technology to do some of what SAP
will now presumably want BO's wares to do.
Plus, there's a quandary for partners: How is an SAP festooned with a useful
BI tool going to affect the sales pitch for Dynamics, which revolves in part
around integration of tools, ease of use and the familiarity of the Microsoft
interface? Sure, Dynamics will still have some advantages over SAP in terms
of native integration with the Microsoft stack and a lower intimidation factor
(not to mention cost, in many cases) for SMBs, but SAP making a serious BI move
does complicate things a bit for Dynamics partners.
Will Microsoft respond to SAP's BI play with a big acquisition or with further
internal development? If we had to offer a prediction, we'd go for the latter
-- and, hey, we've been right before.
How does SAP's purchase of BO affect your Dynamics business? What do you make
of the acquisition? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on October 09, 20070 comments
It's old-ish news by now, but an
EU
court's ruling against Microsoft in the company's antitrust case generated
some comments we haven't yet run.
William is all for placating the EU...and then letting the free market take
hold:
"Why doesn't Microsoft just give in to the EU and provide them with
their requested stripped-down product? In the meantime, let our free enterprise
system do its job. If Microsoft gives the EU a choice between the full-blown
Microsoft product or a stripped-down version -- which, by the way, should
cost more in order to customize the software to meet [the EU's] needs -- we
all would see just how far the EU would really take this issue. Isn't that
what free enterprise is all about?"
It is, William. Too bad free enterprise isn't such a popular concept across
the pond.
Dan, on the other hand, takes issue, if briefly, with our contention that the
EU wants to knock an American company down a few pegs:
"No country is more guilty of screwing successful foreign companies
than the U.S."
Maybe, Dan...but do two wrongs make a right?
Posted by Lee Pender on October 05, 20070 comments
It's all you this Friday, literally. We're clearing out a backlog of our finest
reader e-mails and then heading off into an 85-degree afternoon. In October.
In New England. Hooray for global warming!
Anyway, regarding our post about XP
hanging on a little longer, we actually got a little Vista love in return...sort
of. Diane says:
"With minimal experience, I love Vista, but the market isn't ready
for a system that only works with all the bells and whistles on the latest
hardware. We do love nurturing every last bit of performance from our dinosaurs.
And it's not that the public or corporatations are not willing to adopt it
-- they just don't have enough time or incentive to upgrade all the hardware
or be 'bothered.'
"Am I bothered? Only one of my five PCs meets the standards for running
Vista Ultimate, and frankly I see no reason to upgrade them at this time.
As for Office 2007, until somebody actually knows how to design a SharePoint
Server, the big plus of Groove will become just as muddied. A few years ago,
I used SharePoint very effectively as an application information repository.
Since then, I have not seen or heard of an implementation that was time-saving
rather than another quagmire of useless searches.
"As for IE7, well, most of us are afraid -- very afraid! How many
e-mails from major companies have you had telling you their site would not
work with IE7? Beyond that, the interface is relatively unfamiliar. I do like
it, but still find it frustrating and don't understand all of the new 'features.'
And I am supposed to convince people of its technical benefits?"
Diane, we're with you on IE7. Well, actually, we're not -- we use Firefox at
home and IE6 at work. But we hear you.
For his part, Alistair, who writes from the U.K., joins the chorus of folks
saying that Vista's struggles have been more about third parties than about
the operating system itself.
"We've been running Vista in the IT deptartment from December '06,
and it has been fine after some initial tweaks (mainly badly written drivers).
We're running all our legacy apps on it, and it has been way more stable than
XP Pro. Uptime was 60 days with no problems -- updates forced reboots.
"I can't help feeling that one whole lot of the issue is caused by manufacturers
shipping shoddy drivers and IT not taking the time to really get to know the
OS. It is actually good -- it just needs a bit more work than XP.
"Incidentally, I also think that a lot of the supposed shortfalls that
are getting whinged [that's "whined" here in the States -- LP]
about by business are the result of security measures that the industry has
been asking Microsoft to address for years."
Very possibly true, Alistair, especially the bit about shoddy drivers. It's
amazing that this still seems to be a problem with Vista going on being a year
old.
Have any more thoughts about Vista? Send them my way at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on October 05, 20070 comments
Here's something to keep the wheel turning on the rumor mill: The Mini-Microsoft
blog, that anonymously written periodical that calls for a leaner, meaner Microsoft,
has disappeared from Facebook. Mary Jo Foley
has
the details.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 04, 20070 comments
Another week, another set of stories on Microsoft and Google. This week, Microsoft
threw another jab at its dominant search rival with the
purchase
of Jellyfish, an online shopping company of some sort. Really, we just like
this story because it contains the following direct quote:
"We purchased Jellyfish.com," Microsoft search and advertising
platform group vice president Alex Gounares said in a written reply to an
AFP inquiry.
Wow, AFP, thanks for keeping things in perspective for us! We might never have
understood what was happening if you hadn't quoted Gounares directly. Anyway,
the more interesting story about the industry's hottest rivalry concerns Microsoft
backing
off of its antitrust stance regarding the Google-DoubleClick deal. Again,
we quote from the story linked, this time from Reuters:
"The question is not for Microsoft to have specific views (on this
deal)...As in all markets, it is for the regulator to see if the competition
is right," Jean-Philippe Courtois, head of Microsoft International, told
journalists in Paris.
Last week, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said Google's deal
would make the Web search company "the overwhelmingly dominant pipeline
for all forms of advertising" and it would be "bad for consumers."
Well, never mind, then! Perhaps Microsoft has decided to keep its mouth shut
on antitrust issues given last month's unfavorable ruling from a European Court.
Or maybe Courtois was just being courteous -- which, if we remember correctly,
is what his name means in French.
On the Google side of the fight, the new princes of Silicon Valley are beefing
up their corporate e-mail offering. The fight goes on.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 04, 20070 comments