All of the sudden, Microsoft is pretty into this cloud thing. Steve Ballmer said last week that Microsoft is “all in” with regard to the cloud. That’s a fairly big turnaround from a couple of years ago, when Microsoft was playing down the pure cloud and hyping its “Software Plus Services” hybrid strategy. S+S still lives, we’re sure, but we did notice that the phrase didn’t appear anywhere in the RCPmag.com article about Ballmer’s cloud declaration. Is Redmond playing catch-up again? It sure seems that way, but fortunately for the Microsoft channel, nobody has anything close to an insurmountable lead in this cloud race.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 08, 20101 comments
March comes in like a lamb for Patch Tuesday, with only a couple of important fixes on the slate.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 08, 20100 comments
This doesn't seem like the least obvious point someone could make (or has made) about cloud computing, but it's probably a good one to keep in mind, anyway.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 04, 20100 comments
Novell, a company now based in your editor's city of current residence (Waltham, Mass.) has a suitor. A hedge fund based in New York (Boo! Just kidding) wants to buy the one-time Microsoft rival and current Microsoft patent partner for $2 billion.
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 04, 20100 comments
We've mentioned this before, but it's been a while, so bear with us. When public companies report quarterly earnings, they love to trumpet "record revenues" as if it's some sort of accomplishment. It isn't, really.
Every company should have record revenues every quarter (measured year-over-year, anyway) because anything short of a record represents a revenue shortfall. And a shortfall could be a signal that the company is in major trouble -- or at least going through perilously tough times. So, chirping about "record revenues" can be a classically corporate, totally overblown, fairly arrogant way of saying, "We still have our heads above water." It's good news, but it's rarely as good as the press release headline makes it sound.
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 04, 20103 comments
Microsoft's browser ballot screen is under fire for not having enough side dishes or something. Actually, this time, Web developers are claiming that there aren't enough rendering engines offered. Good night. See what happens when government starts messing with private enterprise when it shouldn't?
Posted by Lee Pender on March 04, 20100 comments
Hoping to lure some business from the West Coast, the capital of the great state of Kansas, Topeka, has kind of sort of renamed itself Google. (Your editor was actually in Topeka last summer and had a nice meal there.) Apparently, Google might look to Topeka -- uh, we mean Google, Kansas, of course -- as a test site for an ultrafast Internet connection. It would be the first ultrafast thing in Kansas.
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 03, 20101 comments
Windows 7 release candidate fans, the free ride is over. (In fact, it was over two days ago.) If you want to keep rolling with the 7, you're going to have to pay up. It's probably worth it, though.
Posted by Lee Pender on March 03, 20100 comments
Your editor is working on a story for Redmond magazine about Microsoft and privacy -- specifically, about what Microsoft knows about its users and does with the information it collects. Do you have an inside take on how Microsoft is siphoning information back to Redmond? Are you concerned about privacy issues with technology companies in general and with Microsoft in particular? Or do you think all of this privacy stuff is overblown? Which do you think is scarier when it comes to collecting information on users, Microsoft or Google?
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 03, 201010 comments
Microsoft has a lot of partners. Really, a lot. The latest number, if we're remembering this correctly, is upwards of 600,000. That's a crowd.
And it's not easy for partners to separate themselves from that crowd. But Microsoft does offer one outlet for channel players to get their names called on a big stage: the Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 Awards. Microsoft is accepting submissions now for the WPC 2010 gongs, which it'll dole out at this year's conference in Washington, D.C.
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Posted by Lee Pender on March 02, 20100 comments