Actually, Microsoft taketh away (employees' jobs) and then giveth (severance packages). But after having given a bit too much severance to some workers, Microsoft wants to take away again by having ex-employees
refund some of their walking money. We're holding our breath...
On the plus side, though, Microsoft giveth, or will be giving, lots of free training and courses as part of its Elevate America program, which does sound entirely worthwhile.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20091 comments
In an industry so rife with overwhelming market share in so many areas -- operating systems, anyone? -- it's nice to see an old-fashioned battle shaping up in virtualization.
VMware still has the biggest plate at the virtual table, but this week Citrix and Microsoft announced an extension of their already close relationship that could help them take a chunk out of VMware's pie. Keith Ward, editor of Virtualization Review, offers up the news here and breaks it back down here.
Keith knows a lot more about virtualization than your editor does, so we're going to spare you our lame analysis and invite you to click on Keith's links. All we really have to say is this: We love a good battle. We love competition, especially when Microsoft is cast as an unlikely underdog. (Maybe that's why we continue to be so smitten with Dynamics.)
Microsoft and Citrix linking up has to be good news for Microsoft partners, as it broadens both companies' virtualization offerings and helps flesh out a product strategy that can finally let the duo start to compete on more equal footing, functionality-wise, with VMware.
As for the market leader, VMware is a savvy company that will no doubt offer some innovation of its own at the upcoming VMworld conference in the entirely sensible location of Cannes, France. (We'll be covering that one virtually from sunny Framingham, Mass., but we're not upset about that or anything. Really, it's fine.)
We're excited to see a fierce contest shaping up that should drive innovation, grow the market and hopefully benefit everybody in the long run. What a concept. Remember when the whole technology industry used to be like that?
Give us your take on Microsoft and Citrix and their virtualization plans at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20091 comments
And we're not talking about another version of IE here, either. Redmond is working on
popping a whole new kernel that could make browsing safer than ever before.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20090 comments
VMware now has its own
virtual campus for partners, operating in no fewer than nine languages. The malodorous-sounding abbreviation "PU" seems to be the only drawback here, but hey, it works for Princeton and Purdue and probably a bunch of other schools.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20090 comments
No, they didn't try to drive after four vodka martinis (which nobody should ever do -- seriously), but Ingram's fourth quarter earnings ended in a loss due in part to "goodwill impairment." (We didn't know what that was, either, but for the truly intrepid there's an explanation
here.)
Sales were weak, which didn't help, either.
The news comes as Ingram is warning about a slow Q1 and preparing to lay off 300 workers, or 8 percent of its U.S. workforce. Bad times ahead, in other words, but then that's not unusual these days.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20090 comments
Obama's pick to lead the antitrust division at the U.S. Department of Justice must have stirred some mixed emotions with her comment -- actually uttered last summer -- that
Microsoft is "so last century" in terms of antitrust concerns. Christine Varney actually seems more worried about Google.
Now, on one hand, this is good news for Redmond. A little less antitrust pressure would surely be welcome at Microsoft. But on the other hand, does not being public enemy No. 1 in the antitrust world mean that Microsoft isn't as relevant -- or as powerful -- as it used to be? This might be one area in which Google beats Microsoft without wanting to.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20090 comments
A vulnerability -- that word always makes us chuckle for some reason -- in IE that Microsoft tried to patch last week is
still getting hammered by hackers, apparently.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20090 comments
We're not totally sure what sparked this e-mail from Tom, but we like it:
"One of the problems with Live Search is the name. Multiple words make it harder to tell people the URL since you MUST use both words or else it is meaningless. Plus, if it cannot find what you are looking for, do you call it Dead Search? Google has become both a noun and a verb -- much to the chagrin of Google itself.
"Microsoft has NEVER designed a good name other than Windows for its products. Most of its names tend to be two to three words in length (or worse, that .NET moniker, which was and is horrible), and thus never flow when spoken or written. If Microsoft called its search engine or Web site DaVinci, that would have had cache -- and would be memorable -- but that is likely already taken.
"The best search engine name would be a single word of two syllables and evoke exploration, discovery or knowledge in English or a common European language (which we would easily adopt and recognize in English). But, alas, Microsoft marketing gets involved and ruins any good names that would be used."
Tom, we at RCPU are so with you on this. We find a lot of Microsoft product names really ponderous. Where do they come up with this stuff? In many cases, the product does what the name suggests (System Center Operations Manager comes to mind here, as does Windows Server). Other names, like SharePoint, actually seem pretty appropriate and aren't that bad, even though we're generally not fans of words getting SmashedTogether in product names. It feels a bit '90s to us.
But the spate of seemingly indiscriminate "Live" naming has led to a lot of confusion and has really muddled Microsoft's consumer Internet strategy, which has never seemed totally clear, anyway. Our favorite example is Office Live, which isn't actually a hosted version of Office but sounds as though it should be. And you're dead-on about Live Search; it has no flow and isn't even particularly memorable. Google has a nice bounce to it, but Live Search is slow and heavy rolling off the tongue and would be nearly impossible to pronounce while eating peanut butter.
What we want to know is what you, the faithful reader, would call Microsoft's search engine if you could rename it. Send your suggestions to [email protected], and have fun with it. And thanks to Tom for kicking all this off.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20091 comments
It's one of those statements that probably makes a lot of people say "duh," but when Steve Ballmer states the obvious -- that the economic slowdown will
affect Microsoft's sales -- it might just be a not-so-subtle little warning that Redmond's next earnings report might be as relatively unimpressive as the
last one. Partners, expect lots of communication and, um, encouragement from Microsoft on closing deals in the months to come.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 18, 20090 comments
Michael Phelps's recent and unfortunate reentry into the news got us to thinking about Windows Mobile. No, really.
Phelps has mastered one of those sports, swimming, that only really gets much attention every four years -- at least here in the U.S. It's the same for track and field or for downhill skiing in the Winter Olympics; most Americans only care about this stuff once every four years. Then it goes back being the domain of enthusiasts' and the participants' families. (Again, we're talking about the U.S. here; we're well aware that Australians love swimming and Austrians love skiing, for example. But we digress.)
We don't write much about Windows Mobile here at RCPU, mainly because it falls just outside the enterprise technology niche that (we hope) is most interesting to our channel audience. But recently, Windows Mobile -- which, in our defense, was kind of dormant on the news front for a long time -- just won't leave us alone. And with mobile technology already well-integrated into the enterprise, we figure more than a few partners are working with Microsoft's mobile OS, anyway.
So, there was even more news about Windows Mobile this week, albeit nothing earth-shattering, with the rollout of version 6.5 of the operating system, along with the expected announcements about Microsoft's My Phone service and the launch of a new developer site. Microsoft chose the entirely sensible occasion of a conference in Barcelona to roll out the news, and Steve Ballmer also spoke about openness and interoperability, two ideas we hope Microsoft pursues not just in the mobile space but across the board.
Of course, Windows Mobile isn't like desktop Windows in terms of market share. It's got some very stiff competition, and some observers note that the OS isn't yet where Microsoft needs it to be functionality-wise. Supposedly Windows Mobile 7, a much bigger forthcoming release, will be more of a blockbuster than the relatively pedestrian 6.5. We'll await Windows Mobile 7, then, with the same curiosity that leads us to watch stuff like bobsledding on TV every four years. Maybe by then Michael Phelps will be endorsing the product...but we doubt it.
Any thoughts on Windows Mobile to share? Share them at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on February 18, 20090 comments
This thing really is out of control. Now Microsoft, heretofore unable, apparently, to team with the rest of the industry to get to the source of the Conficker worm, is
offering $250,000 to anybody who can track down the origin of the nasty little virus.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 17, 20090 comments