XP might be the operating system
that will never die
, but most free support for it will on April 14.
Redmond
magazine found some readers who
weren't too impressed
with that little bit of news, and we're guessing they're not the only ones.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 09, 20092 comments
It might not be true that there's a solution for every problem. But in the technology industry, that's not really such a big deal. What matters in tech is that there's a problem for every solution.
You've probably noticed that while software vendors love to refer to their applications as "solutions," we jaded, ink- (or pixel-?) stained wretches use words like "applications," "offerings" or even "wares." (We don't say "programs" much anymore because "software program" just sounds like something that would run from a floppy disk -- the original kind -- on a computer with 64K of memory. But we digress.)
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 09, 20092 comments
If Rome is the Eternal City, then it must run on Windows XP. Even with considerable hype around Windows 7 continuing to swirl, Microsoft said this week that customers will be able to downgrade from Windows 7 not just to Vista (as if anybody would do that) but to XP.
Redmond
columnist Mary Jo Foley
has the dish
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 07, 20091 comments
For the next few weeks, we'll be featuring the
RCP
(the magazine) Platinum Partners, those companies whose partner programs are the best fits for the Microsoft partner according to the magazine's readers. Today's profile? Well, it's no surprise: It's the old pro,
Cisco
.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 07, 20090 comments
Monday just wasn't a day for sun. Or for Sun. Here in Greater (and wetter) Boston, dark skies and drenching rains
washed out the season opener
for the Red Sox. (For our non-U.S. readers, the Red Sox are the local baseball team.) And over on the other coast, Sun Microsystems saw talks of a possible acquisition by IBM fade like...well, like a sunset, we suppose.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 07, 20091 comments
This one
's for teeny tiny businesses that might otherwise be looking at (gasp!) open source.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 02, 20090 comments
In our continuing series of the
best "other" partner programs
for Microsoft partners to work with, we come to...wait, what? That can't be right. Dell?
Yes, the former titan of direct sales turned channel champion scores well in our survey, despite some of the comments we've received about the company at RCPU over the years. Read more about Dell's successful partner play
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 02, 20092 comments
We're going old school -- like, long-before-your-editor-was-born school -- to
set the mood
for this one. Microsoft's been talking open source again, which usually leads to anger in the open source community, double-talk from Redmond and confusion for the rest of us.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 02, 20092 comments
Think Microsoft's in a hurry to get this thing
out the door
? Yeah, so do we.
Posted by Lee Pender on April 01, 20093 comments
It's no surprise that HP scored well in the reader survey for the inaugural
RCP Platinum Partner Program
, an awards program for channel programs that are a good fit with Microsoft solutions. Microsoft and HP have been strategic partners for decades, and HP carries many of the product categories partners are looking to sell -- from PCs to servers to storage to printers to software. In addition, Microsoft and HP have a joint program called the HP/Microsoft Frontline Partnership specifically for their joint partners.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 01, 20090 comments
A couple of things before we start. First off, your editor isn't the biggest of April Fool's fans, so you won't be getting any fake news today. Second, we've promised this before, but this time, we mean it: Due to, well, lots of stuff, RCPU is going to get shorter...pretty much starting today. Try to keep the cheering to a minimum, please. Anyway.
A new -- or ostensibly new -- computing model is always a wonderful excuse for an old-fashioned slap-fest between mega-vendors. And so it is with cloud computing. When something called an Open Cloud Manifesto, which didn't even appear to be supported by the organization that sponsored it, appeared Monday, Microsoft immediately (and perhaps unnecessarily) slammed it.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on April 01, 20090 comments
We're always encouraged here at RCPU when vendors talk about cozying up to partners, so we welcomed Novell's recent revelation that the company is trying to
get partners more involved
in deals. But, clearly, there are still some details to be worked out, as reader David points out:
"Next time you meet with Novell, find out what they plan to do about companies that use SUSE for their solutions. I see a big push for existing partners; if you look at the channel, most of the partners are service-based and rely more on partner consulting services than on new product sales. We have the only FIPS 3 identity-based encryption appliance available that utilizes a Novell solution stack, and yet since we are new to the market we can't get any help from Novell. I would be very interested to hear Novell's take on assisting new companies that bring their product to market utilizing a Novell stack. Are they only committed to companies with a customer base, or are they willing to incubate and assist companies coming to market? What kind of incubation assistance from Novell is available? SUSE is still new to them, and if Novell doesn't step up and do like Oracle, which provides incubation assistance for companies, how will Novell entice companies to risk bringing new products to market on SUSE? I'm not knocking Novell; we are just struggling to gain customer acceptance all on our own and feel our investment has been all one-sided and haven't seen support that we had hoped for."
More
Posted by Lee Pender on March 26, 20091 comments