Before we get to Ballmer's mafia handle, let's look at a few reader e-mails
on other topics.
Colin quite rightly called your editor out for having been too lazy to look
up the old magazine cover with Apple's logo and the word "Pray" on
it that we
referenced last week. Turns out it was Wired, not Upside,
that ran the cover -- and it turns out that the cover's quite famous, as you'll
see from Colin's note:
"I have to say, you were almost asking for this...I put 'apple pray'
(without the quotation marks) into Google, and return No. 5 was: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2006/03/70538.
"Which led me to http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/Top_40_Covers/
[#33] and http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/40-40-covers/33b.jpg."
Well done, Colin, and thanks.
On Vista activation, suddenly an important
topic in Redmond, apparently, Mark says that he's had just about enough
-- and he thinks that others might have, too:
"Having been a mostly loyal Windows shop since Windows 3.11, before
that DOS going back to version 3.2, I am happy that each version of Windows
subsequently released gets better and more stable (with the exception of Millennium
Edition; that was a complete disaster!).
"Starting with Windows XP the activation issues have been forcing
me to look into the viability of Linux as opposed to Windows. The latest changes
in Vista, both OS features/enhancements and increased WGA requirements are
actively accelerating my movement away from Microsoft and to the alternatives,
which are becoming more viable with each passing day.
"I believe that as soon as Linux can be installed and used as 'easily'
as Windows, that will mark the first serious landmark in the downfall of MS
Windows. Techies deal with 'stuff' every day; for us, install problems are
not insurmountable. Windows has fewer and fewer install issues as time progresses,
but Linux is catching up. That day is coming, and I believe sooner rather
than later. Driver issues, lack of compatibility with existing software, annoying
pop-ups asking to confirm everything one does -- these are all factors that
will quietly cause the trickle of defectors to become a roaring tsunami."
We wonder, Mark, whether Redmond hears the waves starting to pound on the shore.
OK, enough of the serious stuff. We told you this week that Microsoft's Wiseguys
are about to face a RICO
charge (well, lawsuit) and wondered what you thought Steve Ballmer's mafia
name might be -- if the mafia actually existed the way it does in "The
Sopranos."
We got some great suggestions, the first from Tom: "La Cosa Visto,
and his name is 'Balls.' Or shall we just call him 'Big Cahones'?"
Jon, who's in serious danger of becoming a serial e-mailer, chimed in with:
"How about 'The emBallmer'?"
Pretty good, both of them. William went with something that makes Ballmer sound
a bit more like a '50s rock star than a mafioso, but it certainly fits: "How
about 'Screamin' Stevie Ballmer,' for his onstage antics?"
And Chris went with a more violent theme: "Steve 'The Crusher' Ballmer
or Steve 'IronFist' or 'The Fist' Ballmer."
Good entries all. But our winner this week comes from Joel, who plays Ballmer's
job title off nicely with a Bobby
Knight-esque rampage for which the Microsoft chief has become dubiously
famous: "Doesn't it have to be 'The Chair-Man'?"
You know, Joel, it really does.
Thanks to everybody for your e-mails on all sorts of topics. Keep them coming
to [email protected],
and don't forget to get in arguments and call each other names (hey, I know
how this Internet stuff works) in the comments section of each
entry on the blog site at RCPmag.com. I
might even join in from time to time.
Spring is here...have a great weekend!
Posted by Lee Pender on May 11, 20070 comments
As we do sometimes here at RCPU, we're going to throw a topic completely open
to you, the faithful reader. In other words, we'll give you a bit of news and
just let you run with it in e-mail form or as commentary on the blog. (Yes,
this means that we're going to mainly keep our mouths shut on this issue --
for now.)
We did this last summer with Windows
Genuine Advantage and got tremendous
feedback. So here we go again. This week, it's time to Get
Smart, as the topic is business intelligence (clever, huh?).
Here are your bits of news: Microsoft and SAP both made small BI acquisitions
this week, with Redmond buying
a Java reporting tool called OfficeWriter and SAP snapping
up OutlookSoft, which makes applications for budgeting and financial forecasts.
Incidentally, we're pleased to see that both giants bought companies that use
SmashedTogether words with a capital letter in the middle as their names. We
ReallyLike CompanyNames like that. WellDone, Microsoft and SAP.
And lest we forget, last month, BI player Business Objects (two separate words)
announced that it would buy OutlookSoft competitor Cartesis (and its somewhat
disappointing one-word name).
These smaller acquisitions come in the wake of a really big one, Oracle's
multibillion buyout of Hyperion. Obviously the big guys in BI -- Cognos
also comes to mind in that category along with the aforementioned players --
are snapping up smaller vendors in a pretty textbook case of market consolidation.
And, obviously, somebody thinks that there's money and opportunity in bringing
corporate information to the desktops of nontechnical people, especially executives,
in a clean and simple way -- which is what BI is supposed to do.
Microsoft is, not surprisingly, becoming a very
serious BI player, although reviews of Redmond's effort in the area are
a bit mixed thus far. Check out RCP magazine columnist Joshua
Greenbaum's comprehensive take here.
What I want to know, though, is what BI is doing for you. If you're selling
it (especially from Microsoft), how's it going? How's demand? Do customers understand
the benefits of BI, and are you profiting from selling and deploying it? If
you're using it (as we have a lot of nonpartner IT folks who read the newsletter),
is it delivering everything you expected? Do you consider it a critical part
of your enterprise technology strategy?
Send me your thoughts at [email protected].
We'll take the best of your e-mails this week and the next and run them a week
from Friday (on May 18). And thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 10, 20071 comments
Here come those third parties Microsoft has been waiting for on Vista. Virtualization
kingpin
VMware
has released Workstation 6, the first of its virtualization products to
support Vista.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 10, 20070 comments
OK, so we already snuck a few in on you with the last entry. Well, here are
some more. RCPU got an absolute bumper crop this week, so we'll run a few now
and save the rest for next week. To those who took time to write, we offer our
thanks, as always.
On Microsoft's offer of $3
Windows to students in developing nations, Mackey says it's a great idea:
"I host foreign exchange students, and they tell me that most of
the OSes are pirated and cost very little (the cost that malware brings with
it does not matter to them). If they have a chance to get a legitimate copy,
they would pay the $3 even though they can get Linux free. Hopefully, this
will put some of the pirates out of business and slow the malware."
And Nafees writes to us from Pakistan, where he says folks will be thrilled
to get their hands on legitimate software almost for free:
"I am a student and also working in a textile firm. Most of the people
in Pakistan use pirated copies of Windows and every other software like Microsoft
Office because, as you know, it's a poor country, so people can't afford $150
Windows or more costly office software. It will be a great step for Microsoft
to help and motivate people to use legal and genuine software for just $3.
It will help to create awareness and give confidence to a lot of young future
IT professionals. You ask how people can buy $300 computers for $3 Windows.
Let me inform you that most of the people in our country use old branded computers,
which are imported to most of the European countries in containers. You can
buy these computers for only $50, and most of the students use these computers.
So I am glad that Microsoft is giving us an opportunity to use legal software
and we'll not have to bear the shame of piracy and illegal software anymore."
And we're glad that you took the time to write, Nafees. This is the first e-mail
we can remember getting from Asia, so it's good to see that our global influence
is growing. As is Microsoft's, we suppose.
We got a couple of rapid-fire e-mails (seriously, minutes after the newsletter
went out and not more than a couple of hours after the blog post went up) about
Apple's juicy little
stock scandal.
Brad suspects that former CFO Fred Anderson might have turned state's evidence
on Steve Jobs:
"Suppose Fred Anderson was looking to make a deal, and offered to
implicate Steve Jobs."
Brad, anything is possible, and nothing would surprise us. Of course, just
as they were on "Dragnet,"
all suspects are innocent until proven guilty. (And, in this case, Jobs isn't
even a "suspect," and Anderson slipped quietly into that fold between
guilt and innocence by "settling" with the SEC. Ah, corporate justice.)
Colin, though, says that Apple might have much bigger problems than just looming
scandals:
"More important than issues of fiscal oversight, you raise (once
again, for Apple fans) the question of succession planning. Who can replace
Jobs, and sustain Apple's mastery of the consumer IT market and, maybe more
importantly, the public markets?
"Ever since U.S. v. Microsoft from '98-2000, the mother ship has
had Ballmer as successor. Jack Welch made succession planning a very public
process at GE, well before it was necessary. Most major corporations, and
even some sovereign nations (in place of democratic elections, mind you) exercise
succession planning well before the need hits them in the face.
"Except Apple (and Oracle, of course). Maybe this options mini-crisis
is no more a threat to Jobs' tenure than his cancer. But as time ticks on,
you have to wonder if Apple will weather a leadership storm -- and it will
come -- with the same dexterity and class they have wielded in consumer tech
and electronics market over the last 10 years."
We do wonder, Colin, and we thank you for your thoughts. Thanks again to all
who took time to write. Keep those e-mails on just about any topic pouring in
to [email protected]. And enjoy your
weekend!
Posted by Lee Pender on April 27, 20070 comments
We kick off this week's Friday reader feedback with a message from frequent
contributor Robin about Microsoft's
pending
legal problems in Japan and, more specifically, about how companies should
protect their intellectual property from the hungry beast that Redmond can be.
Robin has some tips for partners
on
his Web site, and here's a taste of what he has to say:
"General policy: Focus on the 'what' your product does, rather than
the 'how' it does it. Don't be flattered or bullied into over-broad disclosure,
even if they say they are talking to the competition. Stick to the business
value of your product and how the features support that business value.
"Don't let your engineers talk to their engineers by themselves --
engineers love to brag about how smart they are while encouraging brainstorming
on creative ways the larger company could monetize an investment in the product.
You may still get screwed, but at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing
you made them work."
Mike, another friend of RCPU, weighed in this week on Microsoft's
misguided search efforts. It appears as though Mike really has been reading
RCPU:
"A simple question (perhaps) on MS's bid for DoubleClick: If they
truly wanted it, why would they merely match Google's offer? If I'm selling
anything, a product or a service, I will go with the first of equal bids or
to the highest bid. Matching Google's offer basically ensured they wouldn't
win the offer. So, now the complicated question: What was their true motivation?
If it was to be used as support for their antitrust suit, give them a box
of tissues and be done with it. Google kicked their tail on search -- accept
it and move on.
"Maybe Microsoft ought to give up the pursuit of world domination
-- it didn't work for Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Hitler or Caesar -- and focus
on their core business. They should make sure any new operating systems have
value to the consumer as well as businesses (big and small), integrate well
with third-party software – including, and perhaps especially, security
-- and are genuinely needed. The more Microsoft tries to be all things to
all people, the more people will resist. Not to impugn Vista, but most people
simply don't need it. I don't want it at home and I work for a company with
more than 20,000 employees nationally; Vista isn't a blip on the radar screen.
And they've already announced its alleged successor. One sure way to open
the door for customers to start considering other alternatives is to keep
trying to give them something they don't need or that lacks inherent value.
If that's not a red light in Redmond, it sure ought to be."
Speaking of Vista, which we always
seem to be doing here, we got a few more e-mails this week that tipped the
scale even further toward the negative side of things regarding the new operating
system. Theresa writes:
"I cannot recommend Vista to my clients as their third-party line
of business applications have not certified their apps to run on Vista. The
only hard date I have gotten from any of these vendors is first quarter 2008.
I am still dealing with software vendors that are preventing me from upgrading
my clients to IE7. Microsoft would do better to spend some effort on seeing
why the software vendors are having so much difficulty making their applications
work on Vista."
William is becoming fed-up with Microsoft altogether:
"As a former mainframe software specialist and now just a retired
end user, my attitude is moving toward giving up on Windows. If I have to
buy new hardware, now may be the time to try Apple. The learning curve from
XP to Apple can't be that different than from XP to Vista. Microsoft may drive
the end user community into Apple's camp."
And Bryan minces no words:
"I had Window 95, 98, 2000 and now XP. Each was a great improvement
and I knew that going from what I had to what I was getting made the upgrades
well worthwhile. I don't see that now. My copy of XP runs great. The only
times I get blue screens (actually my PC just reboots, then explains the error
once booted) is when I have a bad piece of hardware. When a piece of software
crashes, I can use 'ctrl-alt-del' and get that app closed, then continue with
my work.
"I can run for days under heavy load without rebooting. An example
of what I'll have as a heavy load might be like this: doing Web design, I'll
have Photoshop, FrontPage, Adobe Audition, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera
Browser, SnagIt, Windows Media Player, MS Word, Adobe Acrobat and maybe a
couple others, sometimes while downloading with Newsbin Pro at a rate of 4.5MBPS.
Then, about once a day, I'll close all of them to burn what I've downloaded
to a DVD; then open everything back up and continue to work. I reboot maybe
twice a week.
"What I'm saying is that I have no reason to upgrade to Vista. I'll
hold off until I can't get any support for XP. Even then, I'll look for an
alternative to Vista, maybe Linux."
Bryan, you're obviously not alone.
My thanks, as always, goes to everybody who wrote this week. Please keep sending
any thoughts you have about anything in the newsletter to [email protected],
and enjoy your weekend.
Oh, and Boston-area readers, please don't forget about our upcoming
reader breakfast. This is your chance to see your editor with hair (as the
picture on the RCPmag.com Web site is more
than a year old -- and possibly the worst ever taken of me). We'll get back
to you on a location, but the date is set for June 19. We hope to see you there!
As for everybody else, please keep an eye out -- we might just be coming to
your town in the future.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 20, 20070 comments
Somebody -- this time,
Fortune magazine -- has trotted out the old
Microsoft-is-becoming-IBM
line again, suggesting that Google is rapidly making Redmond look like a
dinosaur (or a chicken,
depending
on your views on evolution).
While it's true that Google
is running rings around its more elderly competitor in the search business,
and that Steve Ballmer and friends don't always seem entirely sure of what to
do with this new-fangled
Software as a Service thing, at least the aging heavyweight in Redmond isn't
standing still in the face of its younger challengers. (Microsoft did recently
offer
to help ISVs with their SaaS apps, though).
Witness this week's opening of the company's
largest server farm yet, a massive complex spanning the size of seven soccer
fields that will hold the geek gear that will provide the back-end for all sorts
of Web-based services, from (according to the article linked) Xbox Live to Dynamics
CRM Live. (One would hope that there would be little chance of mixing those
two applications up, thereby sending the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles game
to befuddled sales reps and throwing order-tracking capabilities to frustrated
gamers. But we digress.)
There's another massive center in the works near San Antonio that will cost
Redmond a half-a-billion dollars. Actually, that's approximately the same amount
of money that Microsoft
spent to advertise Vista. Let's hope the data center turns out to be a better
investment.
Whatever Microsoft's ultimate SaaS strategy is, it's clear that the company
is spending some serious money to implement it. Whether it can execute on successfully
providing "live," non-packaged applications is another question --
one we won't be able to answer until we see the crops these new server farms
yield.
We're still happily taking your thoughts on Microsoft's SaaS strategy. Keep
sending 'em our way at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on April 18, 20070 comments
If your
weekend
was a washout, just keep in mind that it could have been worse. You could
work for the search team at Microsoft.
Redmond's flailing search ambitions took a major hit late last week when Google
announced that it intended to spend $3.1
billion to buy DoubleClick, the provider of online advertising-management
technology that Microsoft also coveted. (The worst part about the whole deal
for Microsoft seems to be that, according to the Times of London, old
bean, Microsoft matched Google's offer -- but DoubleClick
turned Redmond down. Ouch.)
So Microsoft, having lost what many observers considered to be its final opportunity
to make up ground on Google in search -- unless you believe, as Mary Jo Foley
suggests, that this whole thing is playing
right into Microsoft's hands -- is turning to the last refuge of the desperate
company: the antitrust complaint.
Oh, yes. Drink in the irony. Microsoft and friends -- including AT&T, AOL
and Yahoo! -- want antitrust regulators to look
into the Google-DoubleClick deal. (Microsoft's own official statement is
here.)
Check out what oft-quoted Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith had to say about
the whole thing in this
Seattle Times article:
"By putting together a single company that will control virtually
the entire market...Google will control the economic fuel of the Internet."
Uh, Brad, are you sure you want to be the one to bring this up? Do we even
have to point out the attendant irony here, especially in
light of current events? Probably not. But we will say this: We spend a
lot of time here at RCPU defending Microsoft from Europe's
voracious antitrust regulators, and we're very disappointed to see Microsoft
taking the same sad tack that so many of its competitors have taken: running
to the government when it gets beaten in a market. To paraphrase Anthony Michael
Hall's line in Pirates
of Silicon Valley, Google got the loot, Steve. (In this case, of course,
the "Steve" is Ballmer, not Jobs...but we digress.) You bid for DoubleClick,
and you lost. Heck, if the Times of London has its story straight, old
chap, DoubleClick turned you down.
It's time to reevaluate Microsoft search -- and, actually, it has been for
a while. Redmond needs to scale
back on the search effort, develop technology internally or find some other
way to compete. But please, Microsoft, don't go running to the government for
protection. You, of all companies, should know better.
What do you think of Microsoft's search business now that Google has bought
DoubleClick? Are you worried about the resources Redmond is sinking into search?
Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on April 17, 20070 comments
Maybe it's a little funny to see both messages at the same time. On one hand,
there've been numerous news stories the past two weeks about Microsoft
patching
several critical security flaws in Windows and now looking into
potential
vulnerabilities in Office. At the same time, the company just announced
a
new
enterprise marketing campaign for Forefront. (In this case, Redmond is
using
the "geek" factor to try to sell businesses on its new Forefront
suite.)
We've talked
about this before in RCP magazine, and the issue lives on: It has
to be hard for Microsoft partners to sell Redmond's security applications when
the company's reputation for securing its own products is so...well, let's say
"mixed." And beyond that, Forefront actually takes the mound a few
runs down in this situation: Already, on the anti-virus side, Windows Live OneCare
has made a less-than-stellar debut, even
by Redmond's own admission. We're not questioning Forefront's capabilities
on the enterprise side, just Microsoft's credibility in launching itself as
a security vendor.
After all, the best way for Microsoft to build credibility as a provider of
security applications would be for it to better secure (primarily) Windows and
Office. That's something it has, in general, not really done that bad a job
of doing lately, especially considering the large number of attacks that focus
on those products -- both of which are easy targets with their 90-plus percent
market share. But, of course, the better Microsoft secures its own stuff, the
more businesses (and consumers, for that matter) will wonder why Redmond is
charging them extra for security applications rather than just making security
more of a built-in part of the deal with the Microsoft stack than it already
is. It's a nasty little Catch-22 that partners are going to have to face when
selling Forefront. But you probably know that by now.
So, on the other hand, think about this: Security makes a lot more sense as
a business for Microsoft to get into than, say, search. It's directly tied to
Microsoft's bread and butter, Windows and Office, and despite the presence of
fierce competition in the form of (former partners, and now "coopetitors")
Symantec, Trend Micro, McAfee and others, there is no "security Google"
that has a mortal lock on mindshare in the market. There's revenue there for
the taking -- if Microsoft can find a way to not trip over its own reputation
and leave customers feeling as though they're paying protection money. We suppose
that's why marketing folks get paid the big bucks.
What has been your experience with selling or using Forefront so far? What
do you think of Microsoft's position in the security market? Tell me at [email protected].
P.S.: Keep those e-mails rolling in. Friday is reader feedback day here at
RCPU. And thanks to those who have already written about a variety of topics.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 12, 20070 comments