As any partner knows, Microsoft doesn't operate in a vacuum. So when Redmond
decides to cut costs, all sorts of organizations feel the pinch. Kelly wrote last week, the day Microsoft announced layoffs, to tell us that she was feeling it already:
"We were just informed today that our highly valued (and highly paid) MCS consultant was off our company project because as of today he is no longer employed with Microsoft. I don't have all the details, but it happened without any warning and right at the beginning of our Vista deployment."
Ouch. We don't know which is worse, Kelly, the fact that you lost your consultant suddenly or the fact that you're deploying Vista. Just kidding. Well, mostly. It certainly is awful timing for you, and we hope you can find a workaround.
We suggested this week that if Microsoft has to cut costs, it might be time for the company to get back to basics and scrap some of its more, shall we say, peripheral projects. We specifically mentioned the Zune as an effort that might be up for the chop. Well, that inspired Brian to deliver this impassioned defense of the uncool iPod:
"You made many good points. I have to tell you, though, ending the Zune is a really bad one. I know the market share is low, but they keep getting better and there is nowhere you can get so much for so little. Forget the cost and 'coolness' of a device -- it's the music that matters. Zune's Zune PASS feature is the way to go. I can't imagine paying for every song I want. With Zune, my $15/month gets me all the music I could ever hope for. If it's not available (which is fairly rare), then I can purchase it from them for less than iTunes charges. So, other than no options years ago, I can see no reason Apple has such a market share besides a whole bunch of Gen-Yers and Gen-Y wannabes trying to play the 'be cool in front of others' and 'me too' games. I have always been a cool guy, so I guess I don't see the need to supplant my true self and fall for the gimmicky gunk Apple is using to get 'be part of the crowd' somehow a cool thing to be. Nope -- Zune is way better!"
Gosh, Brian, we feel a little humbled here. Your editor is the owner of an old, original iPod that actually pre-dates the Zune. But we've always heard good things -- seriously -- about the Zune, and one of the guys who edits this newsletter simply loves his. It's not so much that we're anti-Zune, Brian, more that we're pro-enterprise technology and pro-stuff that makes partners money. But if Microsoft can continue to produce the Zune and still focus on the core stuff, we're all for that.
Thanks to Kelly and Brian for their contributions. To make a contribution of your own, fire off a message to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 29, 20090 comments
Just when Windows needs to be getting lighter, the pesky EU might force Microsoft to
include every browser under the sun in its operating system. Then again, it's Microsoft putting out this news, not the EU. So maybe there's some jockeying for position going on here. Once again, stay tuned...
Posted by Lee Pender on January 29, 20091 comments
If you've taken a spin around the blogs this week, you've probably read that Google's rumored GDrive, which supposedly will give users access to all of the files on the computer via the Internet, is going to
KILL THE PC AS WE KNOW IT RUN FOR YOUR LIVES AAAAHHHH!!!!
Or maybe not. Hey, we're big believers in cloud computing, but Google's cloud efforts are going to raise the same security and privacy questions that everybody else's cloud plans have raised so far. And while Windows and the PC will need to get slimmer and cheaper to compete with netbooks (a good thing as we see it), we're not sure that consumers or companies will be ready to go all-cloud, all the time any time soon. Besides, it's not as if stuff like the GDrive doesn't exist already. And with the reviews coming in for Windows 7, Microsoft might just be poised for a huge post-Vista revival.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 29, 20092 comments
This
isn't what we wanted to hear from Redmond about how cost-cutting would affect Microsoft's product offerings. Apparently PerformancePoint Server is
up for the chop -- more specifically, it'll be folded into SharePoint -- in the months to come.
OK, so maybe PerformancePoint isn't a massive moneymaker (we don't know) and folding its capabilities into SharePoint probably makes sense. But on a broader scale, Microsoft, we wish you'd leave the enterprise stuff alone and look for efficiencies elsewhere. After all, the server and tools business is the one that's still raking in the bucks for you and for the channel.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 28, 20090 comments
Champagne in the Valley for VMware, which beat analysts' expectations with its
Q4 and fiscal-year earnings. But not too much champagne -- and not too expensive -- as the company, like most other vendors, is signaling that 2009 might be a bit difficult. In fact, VMware is following the trend of not forecasting for 2009 at all. Not a particularly good sign, if not surprising.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 28, 20090 comments
For those of you still not using Firefox (oooh, snap), the first release candidate of Internet Explorer 8 is
available. And, bonus!
Here's one reviewer's first look at it.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 28, 20090 comments
We want to believe. We really do. We love the IBM commercials with the cartoon pixies dancing around executives, and we're ready to buy into the promise of green technology -- the cost savings, the benefits to the planet, the overall feel-good nature of the whole thing.
But last time we checked -- and that's not meant to be a cliché; we literally mean the last time we checked -- green technology, green IT or whatever you want to call it was still more hype than reality. Way more, actually.
Now, we'll admit that the last time we checked on green IT was last summer (the story linked was from August) and a few things have changed since then. Look at your 401K if you need any reminder of that. So it's possible that green IT projects have gathered steam in the last few months, but we're more inclined to say that with budgets and possibly IT teams shrinking, any sort of new or proposed green activity has probably been put on the shelf like a house plant.
So it's into this hype-reality dichotomy that a very big player, Cisco, wanders with a team of partners. The networking titan has created the EnergyWise program, which focuses on controlling network power usage. A few hearty souls have also signed up for the journey, including Schneider Electric, Veridem and SolarWinds. They'll integrate their applications into Cisco products, specifically the Catalyst line of switches.
While Cisco's program seems to have an ISV focus for the time being, it should serve as an invitation for channel partners of all stripes to grow their competencies in green IT and jump on the back of a vendor that's making a concrete commitment to environmentally friendly technologies. EnergyWise is a big step in converting green technology from hype to reality, especially given that the Cisco name is attached to it.
Microsoft's own green plans seem circumspect and somewhat non-specific at this point, so we'll have to wait and see how Redmond plans to turn talk into action on the green front. Of course, technologies such as virtualization, in which Microsoft is making a heavy commitment, have green elements in their very nature (so to speak). But Microsoft is mostly green around the edges right now and not so green at its heart.
Cisco, though, believes -- or is at least taking concrete steps to show that it's making a commitment to green IT. We still want to believe, too, and maybe this major vendor throwing its name behind a green-specific initiative and recruiting partners for it will help reality begin to approach hype. For partners, that could turn green IT into greenbacks -- and everybody could use more of those.
What's your green IT strategy? Are you making money by helping customers go green? Tell us at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 28, 20091 comments
It's all the rage online, but if you want to be a part of Windows 7 madness, you'd better hurry -- download availability of the beta is scheduled to
end on Feb. 10.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 27, 20090 comments
Last week's
announced layoffs made news, but there's more than just pink slips to Microsoft's cost-cutting measures.
This week, Microsoft announced that part of Iowa will remain prairie for longer than planned, as Redmond is delaying construction of a datacenter in West Des Moines. OK, we know -- West Des Moines (probably) isn't prairie land, but we like to think of Iowa as a verdant alternative to slushy suburban Boston.
It's a prudent move by Microsoft, of course, but we're wondering how much further Redmond will go to get the numbers back on track without hacking even more employees off the rolls. And as we've said before in this space, this downturn might be an opportunity for Microsoft to streamline operations a bit, to refocus on the technologies that made the company what it is as well as to concentrate on innovating for the future.
Of course, we at RCPU would love to see Microsoft pour money into nothing but Windows, Office, SaaS, enterprise servers and software, and the Partner Program, but we realize that Redmond might want to have a little more diverse a portfolio than that. Still, it could be time to pull back a bit on the quest to catch Google in consumer search or on some of the consumer stuff (we're looking at you, Zune) that really isn't part of the company's bread and butter.
Maybe it's also time to look at scaled-down versions of Windows and get a little more serious about Linux interoperability. As folks in Redmond know by now, just about everything in computing is getting simpler, smaller and cheaper, not the other way around. Vista was such a resource monster that it seemed to reflect a company out of touch with what both consumers and companies wanted and needed.
Hopefully cost-cutting in Redmond won't mean chunks being taken out of the Partner Program's budget or out of the money set aside for channel marketing and the like. There's no indication that anything like that is on the chopping block at this point, and the all-important server and tools business at Microsoft is one of the few areas that's still booming, relatively speaking.
So the channel doesn't seem likely to take much of a hit from Microsoft's budget pinch, which is a good thing. And if Microsoft itself can come out of this mini-crisis a more focused and in-touch company, the current financial cloud will have completed the old cliché by actually having a silver lining.
Where would you like to see Microsoft cut costs? How do you want the company to refocus? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 27, 20090 comments
Windows Live and Office Live, the somewhat amorphous concepts that (at this point, anyway) aren't hosted versions of either application, are now
under the same umbrella in Redmond. And if rumors prove to be true, they might end up with a new name: "Kumo," a Japanese word that apparently can mean "cloud" but also "sea spider." That should make for one heck of a mascot.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 27, 20090 comments
Remember the lawsuit that led to the release of so many
hilarious internal Microsoft e-mails? We know you do because it just keeps coming up. And last week, we found out that the suit could -- but, let's face it, probably won't --
cost Microsoft $8.5 billion. As unlikely as it is to come up in a judgment, that's still a big number at a scary time.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 27, 20090 comments