IBM is, not unreasonably, ditching Microsoft Office for hundreds of thousands of its employees and sticking them with IBM's open source Lotus Symphony. It's perfectly reasonable, of course, for IBM to want its employees to use its own products (or, at least, not to use competitive products), but we hope for IBM's sake that these folks don't have problems communicating with the rest of the world, which uses Office. (The Open Document Format should solve any of those problems, though...right?)
In other IBM news, Big Blue won U.S. Bank as a customer for the Lotus collaboration suite.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 16, 20090 comments
Microsoft Office poobah Stephen Elop sat down recently for a video interview with Redm...actually, with The Wall Street Journal -- but we'll get Elop again one of these days. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, the WSJ video is here.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 16, 20090 comments
Momentum is one of those intangibles that can end up being massively important. In business, in sports, in daily life in general, people who can create or capitalize on momentum can accomplish a lot. It's hard to say -- in a non-scientific way, since we do know that there are actual scientific formulas for momentum -- what the feeling of momentum really is or how it develops and flows, but we know it's there.
Sports fans know all about momentum -- especially football fans, who were able to breathe again last weekend with both college ball and the NFL in full swing. (As well as high school football. Here's a completely indulgent shout-out to the Midlothian High School Panthers from Midlothian, Texas. Proud to be a Panther...go blue!)
Ahem, anyway, football fans know about momentum because they can feel it. They know the sick feeling in the pit of the stomach that they get when their team loses it and the rush of exhilaration they feel when their squad gains it. It exists, momentum. And momentum matters. Take Saturday's Fresno State-Wisconsin game in Wisconsin, a game your editor happened to catch.
With about six minutes to go in the fourth quarter, Fresno, leading by 4 on the road, was driving -- fairly comfortably -- into Badger territory. On third and four (if memory serves) from just inside the Wisconsin 30, the Bulldogs, instead of just going for a first down they would likely have made, went for a home-run ball into the end zone to seal the game. The pass floated just out of the receiver's reach and fell incomplete.
Then -- and this was the key moment, when stomachs started turning in the San Joaquin Valley and tingles shot up spines in Madison -- Fresno missed a field goal. So, instead of having a 7-point lead (that could have been 11) with not quite six minutes left to play, Fresno gave Wisconsin the ball back and let the Badgers off the hook. Next play: John Clay, 72-yard run...touchdown, Wisconsin. 24-21, Badgers. Momentum shift complete. Game over.
Oh, Fresno did come back to tie the game (and rather dramatically, at that), but Wisconsin won it in overtime. And really, once Clay lumbered down the right sideline, only the most one-eyed of Bulldog optimists could have seen Fresno regaining control of a game that the 'Dogs had mostly dominated. Wisconsin had the momentum from that moment forward and wouldn't be denied a victory. (By the way, we're not Fresno or Wisconsin fans here; we just like college football.)
The main purpose of that longer-than-necessary story was really to entertain you (sorry if you're not a football fan), but the story also served (hopefully) to illustrate how important keeping a good thing going is. And that -- here comes the transition -- is what Microsoft is trying too hard to do with Windows 7. After the Vista mess, Microsoft has managed to garner near-universal acclaim for its forthcoming operating system, and the folks in Redmond don't want to lose the momentum they've built. But they're pushing things just a bit.
In fact, they're suggesting that enterprise customers move to Windows 7 now. Yes, now. As in today, more than a month before Windows 7 hits retail shelves. Redmond moved up the launch date for its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, which is a set of applications aimed at companies looking to deploy Windows 7 and will include an App-V service pack, from some time early next year to the end of October.
And check out these quotes from Mary Jo Foley's blog -- breathlessly spoken, we can imagine (or written, actually) -- by Microsoft Senior Director Gavriella Schuster:
"Windows 7 is ready to deploy now. Enterprise customers don't have to wait...We are trying to get the word out that Windows 7 is stable and the RC (Release Candidate test build) was really our gold image."
Schuster did acknowledge that lots of customers will wait for at least Service Pack 1 before looking at Windows 7. (Others, apparently, will wait 20 hours just to deploy it on one machine, although most won't have to wait anywhere near that long.)
The bottom line here is that Microsoft wants to get Windows 7 into the enterprise while people are still excited about it. And that'll be good for partners...if it happens. Our guess, though, is that it won't, for lots of reasons. First of all, there's the (generally wise) policy of waiting until at least SP1 to deploy a new Microsoft OS. Then there's (everybody now) the economy, which, for many companies, has led to smaller IT budgets and fewer big projects.
And then there's XP, the eternal operating system and Windows 7's biggest nemesis. Will the new OS have what it takes to unseat the champ? Or, going back to our previous metaphor, will Windows 7 be able to storm 72 yards down the sideline and take the momentum away from XP? We think it will -- just not right now. Adoption of Windows 7 is going to be a marathon, not a (72-yard) sprint.
So, maybe Microsoft and its partners should be focused at this point on talking to customers about when a Windows 7 upgrade might be appropriate and how to get it done, rather than trying to force a release candidate down everybody's throat. And hopefully nobody in Redmond or elsewhere is counting on Windows 7 for an immediate revenue boost. It should produce a return -- just maybe not by Oct. 23, the day after it officially comes out. Or even by Oct. 23, 2010. We'll see.
Momentum really is a funny thing, hard to catch and easy to lose. And while we admire Microsoft's boundless enthusiasm about an OS that seems to have the stuff to back its marketing, we're thinking that Redmond could tone down the do-it-now message on Windows 7 just a little bit -- or maybe considerably. Let the momentum build slowly for a while (and let XP start to look really old), Microsoft, and then go with it for 72 yards, or however far you have to go to make Windows 7 the next XP.
When do you plan on deploying Windows 7? What are you telling your customers about the new OS? What's your take on Microsoft's suggestion that companies deploy Windows 7 now? Did you catch any good games last weekend? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on September 15, 20095 comments
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are (or, we suppose, "is") back, and both personalities apparently work on open source messaging at Microsoft.
First, Microsoft slams Linux for breaking patents and shakes down Novell and lots of other Linux vendors for protection money; then, Microsoft gets all fuzzy with open source, issuing a sappy white paper about open source software (OSS) and now sponsoring a whole open source foundation aimed at bringing OSS folks and proprietary vendors together. (By the way, if you don't click on any other link in this edition of the newsletter, click on that last one. It's a fantastic story about the whole foundation thing.)
Redmond is expanding its CodePlex open source code site to become a whole "independent" CodePlex Foundation, led by soon-to-be-former Microsoft executive Sam Ramji, who was a big open source proponent inside the walls of Redmond, apparently. A bunch of vendors and personalities have signed on, but nobody yet whose presence would cause the casual observer to raise an eyebrow.
As far as we can tell, most of what Microsoft does -- most of how it makes money -- revolves around a few basic principles:
- Public-image management. Don't let the bitter bloggers and jaded industry wonks fool you. Partners know that in the real world, Microsoft has one of the strongest brand names on the planet. Survey after survey confirms this. Microsoft likes it that way, and throwing a little love in the direction of OSS -- while not likely to win a lot of fans among the hardcore free-software set -- makes Microsoft look suitably magnanimous to the casual observer. For a convicted monopolist, anyway.
- Pragmatism. Let's let this word roam free a bit here. We're using it to describe everything from clever marketing to some of Microsoft's seedier deeds. Everybody remembers Microsoft's "investment" in Apple from some years back -- the one that staved off federal regulators from being even more on Microsoft's case than they already were at the time. That's the sort of thing we're talking about here; Microsoft has always been a pragmatic company, one willing to make moves to keep it on top that it probably doesn't want to make. There's some of that at work in this CodePlex Foundation. OSS is a reality for Microsoft; Linux is a real competitor, especially in the datacenter, and Firefox is eating away at Internet Explorer's market share. So, what is Microsoft doing? "Reaching out" (again) to the open source community as part of a realization that OSS is here to stay and that Microsoft might as well have some hand in it. Which leads us to our next principle...
- Control. This is what Microsoft wants more than anything else -- control of markets, of intellectual property, of software development. Redmond does not play well in teams, for the most part. It's an emperor, not part of a ruling junta. And we don't think that Microsoft has any real desire to play well with the open source movement, either, despite some of the (mixed) messages that have come out of Redmond in recent years. So, while Microsoft is saying all the right things about this new, "independent" foundation -- and while we're sure there probably are some genuine proponents of open source in the Greater Seattle area -- we're thinking that Microsoft sees the CodePlex Foundation as just one more way to keep an eye on OSS and OSS developers and make sure that Redmond continues to squelch open source in any way it can.
Cynical? Sure, and maybe we're off base. Maybe Microsoft really is embracing open source, really is changing its attitude and really does want to be part of the community. But we wouldn't bet on it.
What's your take on the relationship between Microsoft and open source? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on September 15, 20091 comments
Finally, jurisprudence swings Microsoft's way, mostly. A court said last week that $358 million was just way too much money for Alcatel-Lucent to win in a patent-infringement case against Microsoft...and struck down the penalty. The case isn't over, though, as there will be a new trial now to determine just how much Microsoft should pay for having broken Alcatel-Lucent patents, something everybody outside of Redmond seems to agree that Microsoft did.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 15, 20090 comments
Well, some Patch Tuesday that was. Just as Microsoft unleashes a passel of critical patches, another huge -- and thus far un-patched -- bug pops up.
The main target of this one seems to be Vista, so not many users will have to worry about it (heh heh). But it also affects Windows Server 2008 (although not Windows Server 2008 R2, apparently) and the Windows 7 release candidate (although not Windows 7 itself...apparently), so it's serious enough to merit a mention.
Microsoft's struggle to secure its software (or its willingness to have third parties do it) is a tale almost as old as the company itself. It's tough living life as the primary target for troublemakers, and it's even tougher when third-party vendors -- quite possibly for their own gain in publicity, which we're now helping with -- start piling on and criticizing Redmond's security efforts.
Of course, not many people are going to cry over the monopolist and industry behemoth having to constantly scramble to fix critical vulnerabilities. (By the way, "critical vulnerabilities" always sounds to us like some sort of action-romance movie, probably starring somebody like Julia Roberts.) And, to their credit, some of the more enterprising third parties out there -- stand up, Juniper Networks -- are offering protection from the security risk.
But let's say this for Microsoft: At least the company does usually scramble to fix security holes. (Yes, we know about the vulnerabilities that exist for ages without a response from Redmond, but if something's serious, Microsoft generally jumps all over it.) And Microsoft provides automatic updates for users through its Patch Tuesday fixes.
There might be an argument as to how effective Microsoft is at securing its wares, or even about who should secure Microsoft's applications and how. But there's no question that the company, now more than ever, is serious about doing what it can to keep Windows safe. And that's a good thing for Microsoft and for most Microsoft partners. So, we're going to cut Redmond a little slack after a rough week. But probably just this once.
How satisfied are you with Microsoft's efforts to secure Windows and its other offerings? Do you think the company takes security seriously enough? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on September 10, 20090 comments
Scandal! Microsoft is sending out marketing materials to retailers that -- gasp! -- make Windows look better than its competitors. Will this bully's reign of terror ever end?
Seriously, this week, the trade press and the conblogeration (it's sort of a combination of conglomeration and blog -- we like it better than blogosphere) went nuts over materials Microsoft sent to Best Buy employees. These propaganda pieces touted Windows 7's advantages over Linux and the Mac.
As you already know if you clicked the links above, Ars Technica, a site we like, got a hold of Microsoft's Best Buy documents and took them apart bit by bit. Well, sort of. Ars went for the Microsoft-is-attacking-Apple-and-Linux line of reporting and tried to show where Microsoft was just making things up. This line even found its way into both stories in one way or another:
"While there are correct assertions in the slides, the majority of the statements are inaccurate, or are only accurate in the specific way they are worded."
From what we can tell, nothing Microsoft says in any of the slides is actually inaccurate. (And, from what we can tell, Ars didn't manage to pinpoint any absolute, black-or-white inaccuracies.) Are Microsoft's claims open to interpretation? Debatable? Sure. But that's marketing; something that's "only accurate in the specific way" it's worded is still accurate.
Every company sends this sort of thing out to retail and channel partners. Microsoft's version is probably pretty mild, actually. This is just one of those cases in which the trade press and the conblogeration have gone out of their way to try to make Microsoft look like a bully. Well, we're not (best) buying it.
Besides, your editor has shopped at Best Buy, and it's one of the few stores where staff members consistently have a pretty solid knowledge of their stock. So, we're quite sure that folks at Best Buy will be able to determine how much of Microsoft's marketing materials they want or need to use. We've wasted enough words on this already, so we'll just leave it at that.
Are you offended by Microsoft's marketing efforts with Best Buy? If so, why? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on September 10, 20095 comments
It's rare -- very rare -- that we do this sort of thing, but we're going to run a couple of atypical e-mails this week. First of all, there's one from David (more on him in a minute), whose thoughts we ran in a post about browsers not long ago. We had to cut David's post for length (no, we don't have completely unlimited space), and David took the time to complete his thoughts on the blog post itself. Thank you for that, David.
But, in an RCPU first, David also contacted us requesting that we run the rest of his e-mail and reveal his name and contact information. Now, as a rule, we only identify e-mailers by first name, and we'll continue to do that as standard practice. Anybody who wants full attribution, though, is welcome to it -- just drop a note about that in your e-mail to [email protected].
Now, as a reward for his persistence and faithful readership, here is the conclusion of the e-mail sent to us by David Doyle James, whose CV -- with a contact link included -- is available here. (To read the first part of his e-mail, you'll just have to click here. Yeah, we could use the hits.)
"So do you see the problem yet? It is financial. The folks in Redmond are forcing us to upgrade (across the board) before the thing is even amortized, and I say, why? This PC is happily taking care of business running on 12-year-old technology and using less than 32MB of memory. The client is happy because we saved them so much money through the years.
"Microsoft is losing favor because they are forcing change on the user that the market is not demanding and removing options that would allow the consumer to continue building upon their legacy. For example: When Office 2007 came out, they pulled Office 2003 off the shelf, and there was no way to keep the old interface in Office 2007. This has been a common practice with every release of Office -- to pull the old versions, thus forcing users to shop on eBay if they want to maintain a standard in their offices.
"If Microsoft lets developers control W3C and they monitored it rather than trying to own it, I believe there would be more support for their CLR. Then, perhaps, there would be true legacy support for ASP code in ASP.NET, which Microsoft has touted. If we had a VBC, the IT world would be a very different place.
"The fact is they have no watch dog, not even in the ranks of journalism. It is a pure dictatorship, wherein the emperor has no clothes."
Strongly stated, David. We walk a fine line here between being a watchdog for Microsoft and advocating for Microsoft partners (who quite like the company, mostly), so we tend to pick our battles in terms of criticism. But we're glad to have readers like you come out and speak your mind. Thanks for your persistence.
In another unusual move, we're going to run an e-mail about something that, to our memory, has never appeared in RCPU. From Clinton, we have what sounds like a pretty serious beef about Microsoft Expression Suite. Remember, this all comes from Clinton, not from RCPU:
"Why aren't you covering the fact that there is an inhumane and cruel rogue group inside of Microsoft that has imposed visual impairment into the Expression Suite product line with their all black/grey user interface, which is literally unreadable and has unemployed a number of people already because we cannot literally see and read the UI no matter what goofy configuration?
"This matter was settled long ago by those of us who cut our teeth on CAD, as we used a black background then. We continue to use black background now; HOWEVER, it's not for the user interface, which is used to access commands and operate the software. If this stupid arrogant [junk] that has put people like me out of business was a good idea and actually rational, Autodesk and all of the other CAD vendors would have adopted all black/grey user interfaces long ago.
"Where is your character? This has been going on for three releases now, and I can't presume you do not know about it."
Well, Clinton, to be honest, we didn't know about it (Expression Suite hasn't ever been a big topic here), but we do now. And so does Microsoft, hopefully. We'll see.
Have any other rants, raves or rational renderings? Send them to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on September 10, 20090 comments
OK, so it's much more likely that the economy is to blame than VMware is, but server revenues were down pretty sharply year-over-year in the second quarter of 2009.
While most of the 30 percent overall drop in revenues is likely down to companies having smaller IT budgets or putting off spending, some of it -- according to an analyst at IDC, the firm that prepared the revenue report -- is the result of server and software virtualization.
Now, the server market isn't going away, and we're sure that it'll bounce back to some extent when (if) the economy as a whole does. But it's clear that the market is changing and that virtualization is driving that change. The server business as a whole likely won't be the cash cow it has been for Microsoft and partners in the past. A nice little earner, sure. But a bonanza? Probably not.
As we mentioned last week, VMware is a real threat to Microsoft's enterprise business, which explains why Microsoft is working so hard to catch VMware in virtualization. This isn't a battle between two (or more) companies on the same playing field; it's a battle between two computing models and, for once, Microsoft isn't the market leader in one of them.
At least not for now. Redmond is catching up with VMware in terms of technology, and although the EMC offshoot remains the virtualization market leader by some distance, it can feel the behemoth breathing down its back.
Still, it's virtualization technology, not just VMware, that's taking a chunk out of server revenues. That means that (as we've said here before) Microsoft will have to balance its money-spinning server business with the virtualization business it desperately hopes to grow. That means that partners will have to do the same thing. Hopefully most channel players have adapted to the new model by now. If not, now's the time.
One interesting little note from the IDC numbers: The fall in year-over-year Linux server revenues (13.8 percent) was much smaller than that of Windows Server revenues (27.7 percent). Take that for what it's worth.
What's your take on how virtualization is affecting your server business? How have you coped with this changing computing model? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on September 09, 20092 comments
We're talking the feds here, who will be hiring a quarter-million people over the next three years, including more than 10,000 IT pros. Partners, beware: The gummint isn't just going after unemployed folks; it's also (allegedly) poaching from contractors.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 09, 20090 comments
In one of the more hilarious cases of government intervention in the software market, Russia has dropped an antitrust probe that was looking into Microsoft XP.
Really now, Russia. Is this the biggest problem you have on your plate? Is it even a problem compared to everything else going on there? And how can a government that is, shall we say, not the least corrupt in the world seriously carry out this type of "investigation"?
What's funny is that it came to nothing -- which might just tell us something about Russia, Microsoft or both. Discuss.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 09, 20091 comments
Don't mess with Redmond, Texas. (OK, it was a federal court, but we couldn't help but play on the old slogan.) Microsoft managed to get a stay of execution for Word sales to, we believe, no one's surprise.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 08, 20090 comments