What's that? Tech-Ed is going on this week? It would be easy enough to forget, given the decreased attendance (as far as we can tell; there are about 7,000 folks there now, and we seem to remember the show hitting five figures in Boston back in 2006, as well as in 2007) and overall low-key tone of the event.
Anyway, yes, Tech-Ed is in session in sunny Southern California, and Microsoft folks are talking Windows development timelines. More details here.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 13, 20090 comments
RCP Editor in Chief and all-around legend Scott Bekker tipped us off to the latest brand ranking from Millward Brown Optimor, which annually ranks the world's strongest brands. We wrote about the Microsoft brand in RCP the magazine well back in the mists of time (almost three years ago!), in the era when Microsoft was sitting atop Millward Brown's list.
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Posted by Lee Pender on May 13, 20090 comments
We told you yesterday that Microsoft is issuing its first bond offering, but what we didn't speculate on was how Redmond might spend the money it raises. Well, no surprise, somebody else did. The scuttlebutt was that Microsoft might look to buy SAP, the German software vendor and king of the enterprise resource planning mountain. Steve Ballmer moved quickly to...well, to not say much, really, except that the SAP thing is just a rumor.
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Posted by Lee Pender on May 13, 20094 comments
There's a new SDK for this touchy computing model, which users are still getting a feel for. (Insert your own line about hands-on experience.)
Posted by Lee Pender on May 12, 20090 comments
Well, here's a big surprise. The operating system that's going to make us forget about Vista should be out for the holiday shopping season. Of course, that doesn't mean much to enterprise partners, but it could be a boon for Microsoft. And a healthy Microsoft means a healthy Microsoft channel. And we like that.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 12, 20090 comments
OK, we're not here to argue the EU's contention that Intel and Microsoft are nasty monopolists that must be punished, although we're pretty sure we disagree with the vast majority of it. What we don't understand is why the "competition" folks in Europe have to choose right now to try to cripple a couple of companies that help drive the worldwide economy.
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Posted by Lee Pender on May 12, 20090 comments
Here's another first for Microsoft. Shortly after the company reported its first revenue shortfall, it's now issuing its first bond offering.
Microsoft people say that the company doesn't need the money. In other words, this isn't a desperation move. All Redmond is doing, the folks there say, is taking advantage of the company's good credit rating to offer a bond at a time that makes sense given market conditions.
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Posted by Lee Pender on May 12, 20090 comments
First of all, friends, bravo to you. It's fairly rare that your editor actually takes the time to read his own blog posts online (there is just so much to do here -- seriously), so it was a very pleasant surprise to notice this week that the comments sections after a bunch of
these posts
have been getting a pretty good workout. Your thoughts e-mailed to
[email protected] are always appreciated, and we promise to get better about running them here, but we also love it when you get some conversations of your own started in the blog entries themselves. So, thanks, and keep up the good work.
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Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20090 comments
Next on the list of Microsoft partners' favorite third-party programs is one from Redmond's still sort of new rival,
VMware
.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20090 comments
So, it's going to be possible to run virtual XP inside Windows 7. Neat, huh? Yeah, but only if your system specs allow it -- and
a lot won't
, apparently.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20092 comments
Ingram unveiled new
Seismic services
at its conference in your editor's hometown of Dallas this week. It's a bit of a rough time for Ingram, as it is for everybody, but the company's most recent financial numbers did manage to beat Wall Street's expectations despite showing a big (but obviously not unexpected)
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Posted by Lee Pender on May 07, 20090 comments
Microsoft partners like some third-party partner programs more than others. One of them is the program at
Lenovo
.
Posted by Lee Pender on May 05, 20090 comments