You can leave your reading glasses behind for today's RCPU, as it'll be a short one. The main thing we're seeing is that Windows 7, on which Microsoft released pricing details last week, is gaining momentum. A discounted version is already a big hit on Amazon in pre-order, and financial types like its potential so much that analysts are predicting a bump in Microsoft's stock price.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 30, 20091 comments
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down on Wednesday afternoon, but the NASDAQ finished slightly up, and positive earnings reports from Red Hat and Oracle sparked hopes that a tech-stock rally might be real. We can only hope.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 25, 20090 comments
Microsoft is more or less keeping part of PerformancePoint server alive for some customers...under certain conditions. It's complicated, actually. The details are here.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 25, 20090 comments
What does the Microsoft Partner Program have against suspense, anyway? The big Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference blowout will happen in New Orleans next month, and the partners of the year will be the guests of honor.
There's only one problem. We already know who they are! Microsoft this week revealed the winners and thereby ruined all the excitement for everybody except the partners who know that they've won.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 25, 20091 comments
The founding father who didn't stick around in Redmond has done a lot of stuff since leaving Microsoft more than 20 years ago, but one thing he hasn't done in any serious way is sell software. Until now.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 24, 20090 comments
Microsoft's popular SharePoint Server is now a bridge of sorts between the Zoho online applications suite and Microsoft Office.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 24, 20090 comments
It's no secret -- in fact, it's extremely well-known -- that the most powerful torpedo that struck the Good Ship Vista and started its descent to the depths of the operating-system ocean was a lack of preparedness. Third parties didn't have drivers ready for the OS; nothing worked with it particularly well when it came out.
Whether that was Microsoft's fault or the fault of other vendors, the fact is that it put Vista into a hole that it never quite managed to climb out of. (Then, of course, there was the famous "Vista Capable" lawsuit, which is only tangentially relevant here -- but we just love posting the link to the story.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 24, 20090 comments
We wrote about six months ago about a company called Interactive Intelligence and a forthcoming UC-meets-business-process-automation product that sounded pretty unique and useful. Well, the product is out now, and if you want to read what we said (and how we still feel) about it, you'll just have to click here.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 23, 20090 comments
Steve Ballmer is, apparently, a man obsessed with and possessed by search. In case you missed it, the Microsoft CEO said last week that his company could sink as much at $11 billion into search over the next five years -- which actually turns out to be a lot of money, even for Microsoft. Ballmer says that part of Microsoft's problem in search (and in general) is that it's getting fat and lazy.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 23, 20092 comments