If accurate,
this news will come as a terrible shock to the 35 people who are anxiously awaiting Vista SP2. Just kidding; it's probably more like 50. No, no -- kidding again. Hey, with Windows 7 on the horizon, we've got to get our Vista jokes in while we can.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 22, 20092 comments
A ray of sunshine in this stormy economy, IBM is apparently
rolling in it these days.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 22, 20090 comments
Last week, in the spirit of the peaceful transition of leadership in this country (no small thing, actually), we
drew some parallels between Windows 7 and Barack Obama...and between Vista and George W. Bush.
We were only making those comparisons in terms of the relative popularity of the operating systems and presidents. We certainly weren't trying to make a political statement or any value judgments. (In other words, we weren't Bush-bashing...seriously.) We generally stay away from national and international politics here unless we're ripping on the EU. The EU is always fair game.
Anyway, most of you got what we were doing, and when we asked what you'd like to hear in Windows 7's inaugural speech, we got a couple of nice responses. But before we get to those, we'd like for you to sit through a long, rambling poem. Just kidding. Let's have Steve start us off:
"I want to hear that freedom is more valued than protection. I don't want an OS that protects me from my own software, or from software I've used on previous systems.
"I want to hear that it doesn't cough up on its own programs. Virus protection is great, but I'm angry about Vista constantly asking me for permission to run a program I've already said I want to run."
We're standing here hand on heart, Steve. That was downright inspiring. From what we've heard and read about Windows 7, you should be pleased with the new OS when it comes out. Apparently, Microsoft heard the chorus of complaints about user access control and warning messages and made some improvements. Maybe you've seen that if you've played with the beta -- which we haven't done.
Next we have Brad, a fellow native Texan and frequent contributor to RCPU. Brad's not quite ready for Windows 7 to take office yet. He's (certainly not alone in) sticking with XP for now -- an OS for which we don't have a presidential comparison, although it's been around so long that Franklin Roosevelt's multiple terms come to mind.
"Pretty funny comparing Obama/Bush with 7/Vista. I hope your humor doesn't draw unnecessary political banter. I went to the beta site for Windows 7; the warnings are enough to make me wait until I try any new OS. I'll stick with my XP until 7 is out of the beta diaper and taking its first steps."
Understandable, Brad. XP's likely to be the incumbent for a while to come, if you'll allow us one more flourish with the presidential theme. But Windows 7's time will come eventually...and we'll see whether it'll live up to expectations.
In other news, sans political humor, Carl wrote to us about Citrix's rockin' "bare metal" hypervisor announcement:
"Intel has engineered its latest chips and desktop/laptop motherboards to support V-Pro...allows for out-of-band management for patching OSes even if the whole machine is asleep or powered off (needs to be plugged in, though). It is not a stretch to figure out that Citrix is doing anything to salvage its hosted solution stranglehold on its loyal customer base. Intel has left open the option to store a chunk of code that is accessible at power-up to do things like out-of-band testing of a VM/HDD to search for A/V updates, etc...The machines can be redirected to boot from a remote location (this smells like hook to a master Xen server...) and then the centrally located/managed profiles can be coded for booting an appropriate VM on the local HDD.
"I see them trying to do anything to make a proprietary hook into the VDi initiative. I'd like to see DVD playback and streaming audio delivered to the endpoint...then we know they have something worthy of purchase."
Interesting. Frankly, you follow this stuff in more detail than we do. We're not sure what sinister motives Citrix or Intel might have, Carl, but we thank you for your perspective.
Anything to add? About anything? Add it at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 22, 20090 comments
It was kind of like finding out that a person who's been in the hospital for an extended period of time has finally expired. It wasn't unexpected -- it was inevitable, actually, and anticipated -- but when the news landed it still hit with the sudden jolt of a rock on a windshield. All that's left to do now is assess the damage.
Microsoft just spat the bad news out today, eschewing its usual post-market-close earnings announcement timing and instead deciding to drop a dead fly in the industry's morning coffee. The company announced layoffs and disappointing earnings, the pertinent details of which are recounted superbly by Redmond Developer News' Jeff Schwartz here. The bottom line? Layoffs, 5,000 of them in the next 18 months, with 1,400 of those coming today. Oh, and earnings that missed expectations.
Despite the unusual timing of the announcement and the therefore somewhat shocking effect of the news, Microsoft's revelation is hardly a surprise. As Microsoft guru and Redmond magazine columnist Mary Jo Foley notes, it could have been worse. Microsoft will still be a battle ship with more than 80,000 employees, even post-layoffs.
But another press release full of bad news isn't what the industry or the economy needed. On top of that, Microsoft is finished even trying to give guidance about future earnings, which doesn't seem like an especially positive sign.
As for partners, it's hard to say right off the bat what this will mean -- maybe not much. Microsoft's server and tools business, a big moneymaker for the channel, actually recorded a 15 percent increase in revenue year over year. In fact, Microsoft really took the biggest hit in its client revenue (read: Windows), which was off by 8 percent compared to last year.
Those numbers indicate that enterprise partners might actually get out of this situation relatively unscathed, given that most of them don't make much money from Windows or Office sales, anyway. Really, most don't make much money from selling software or hardware anymore -- it's all about services now. And there appears to still be plenty of Microsoft enterprise technology flowing from the channel into companies, ready to be implemented and customized.
The really interesting bit from the earnings report is probably of less interest to enterprise partners, but it's still interesting. Microsoft came out and said that while demand for PCs is dropping, sales of netbooks are starting to eat away at what would have otherwise been PC sales. Given that a lot of netbooks ship with Linux, that's a problem for Microsoft.
There are lots of reasons for Microsoft's troubles, the economy chief among them. But the PC-netbook thing is intriguing. On the one hand, it's easy to see why in a weak economy consumers are turning to lower-priced netbooks as opposed to PCs. But there's another factor in Microsoft's weak Windows numbers. Oh, yes. You know what it is.
This could be, at least in part, the wrath of Vista. Microsoft spun and spun and spun Vista -- and then finally gave up and started pumping Windows 7. The fact is that Vista hasn't penetrated the enterprise in any serious way, and we're guessing that a lot of consumers have avoided it as well. Just look at the downgrades to XP companies like Dell were offering long after the Vista launch.
The numbers don't lie. They seem, at least, to bear all this out. It hardly seems like a coincidence that Microsoft's Windows sales are sagging with Vista as the lead ship in the fleet. It bombed, and this appears to be the fallout -- not the main cause of Microsoft's woes, but a factor. Fair or not, problems resolved or not, Vista couldn't overcome the compatibility issues and massive hardware requirements that sunk it right as it left the harbor. Microsoft also created a fair amount of ill will by continuing to push an OS the public had pretty soundly rejected.
Early accounts suggest that Windows 7 is much better than Vista -- we've heard it described as everything Vista was supposed to be. No wonder Microsoft's in such a hurry to release it and confine Vista to the scrap heap of history. (However, maybe Microsoft should pay attention to this netbook thing and note how small, cheap and simple is starting to trump big, expensive and complex. Just a thought.)
The rock has hit the windshield. Will the glass shatter or just crack? Stick around.
How will Microsoft's financial problems affect you? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 22, 20093 comments
We'd like to thank Citrix and Intel for revealing this week that they've been working on what they're calling a "bare metal" hypervisor that'll be optimized for Intel technology.
Oh, we're sure it'll be a fine product, but the tag "bare metal," aside from sounding like name of a nudist hard rock band, gave us a great excuse to troll YouTube for old heavy metal videos and call it work. So, before we go on, let's set some background music.
Anyway, Citrix and Intel are working on a hypervisor -- part of what they call "Project Independence" -- that'll be available in the second half of 2009. In a chat with RCPU last week, Calvin Hsu, director of product marketing for the desktop delivery group at Citrix, explained why the "bare metal" hypervisor will rock harder than the other hypervisors out there:
"What's commonly available today is a type 2 hypervisor, or hosted virtualization. Boot up machine, and it brings up base OS, then you load virtualization on top of that. Then inside that container, you bring up another OS. The virtualized operating system is a few layers away from the hardware. It does raise some concerns because you have this exposure to the underlying operating system.
"This [new] hypervisor is the first thing that loads -- it sits directly on the hardware, and then above that, you have your operating systems. The hypervisor is talking directly to the hardware. The two desktop environments sit beside each other. They're not on top of each other."
Hsu and Citrix envision a day when companies will stop buying laptops for their employees. (No, seriously.) Workers will use their personal computers both at home and at work and switch back and forth between environments on one device. And they'll do it all with a single log-on for each user that'll provide access to everything that user needs.
"It's liberating for the users," Hsu said. "It's a way to enable this BYOC [bring your own computer] world. The CIO gets to get this amortization and all the other things that go along with that off their books."
Bring your own computer? It could happen, we suppose; your editor has written many an edition of RCPU on his personal laptop while working at home. In any case, we'll see whether the "bare metal" hypervisor turns out to be a rock star or a one-hit wonder.
What are you doing with desktop virtualization? And what heavy metal tune would you choose for the "bare metal" hypervisor? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 21, 20091 comments
Some analysts are predicting that this week's earnings report
won't be a positive one for Microsoft. We'll have more about Microsoft's earnings on RCPmag.com after Thursday's announcement and (probably) even more in next week's RCPU.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 21, 20090 comments
Live Mesh is going to, uh,
mesh with Live Services.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 21, 20092 comments
No pink slips yet, but Microsoft
won't be expanding at the rate it had planned. Lousy economy...
Posted by Lee Pender on January 21, 20091 comments
From the in-case-you-missed-it file, it's
MED-V! But not everybody's so impressed thus far.
Virtualization Review's Keith Ward
weighs in. (Chapeau to Doug Barney, who also
posted a link to Keith's comments in the Redmond Report Newsletter.)
Posted by Lee Pender on January 20, 20091 comments
We received an e-mail from Alejandro at Nortel last week:
"Nortel is not bankrupt, but we had to go through several internal sessions yesterday to understand Chapter 11. The goal is to protect you from creditors to restructure debt and the company structure.
"I understand your article. Most of the media captured bankruptcy. Only a few added bankruptcy 'protection' to the headline. We clarified this to several partners and customers and received their support to do business as usual."
Alejandro, that's a very good point. Nortel filed for Chapter 11, which means, as far as we can tell, that the company will likely continue to operate with some protection from creditors. "Bankrupt" is a very harsh word, and while it might technically kind of sort of describe a company that files for Chapter 11, it's really more appropriate for a firm that has suffered Chapter 7, Chapter 11's meaner cousin. Chapter 7 is liquidation bankruptcy, the Circuit City kind. And that's not where Nortel is, just to be clear. Nortel lives.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 20, 20092 comments
Microsoft owns the desktop (for now). Google owns the Web (also for now). But this Software-as-a-Service stuff is wide open, and a huge player kicked up its pace in the SaaS race this week.
IBM unveiled LotusLive this week in Orlando at -- where else? -- Lotusphere. LotusLive is a hosted collaboration suite that includes pretty much everything you would think it would include -- e-mail, file sharing and various online collaboration bits. It slots in competitively, more or less, with Windows Live and maybe a bit with Google Apps as well.
IBM isn't going it alone with LotusLive, either. Big Blue has integration partnerships with heavy-hitters Salesforce.com, LinkedIn and Skype in its portfolio. Of course, the Salesforce.com agreement isn't necessarily exclusive, as Salesforce.com also has a relationship with Google around Google Apps. But suffice it to say that IBM's messages with LotusLive are all about openness -- and, specifically, open standards -- and powerful partnerships.
So, what does all this mean for partners? Well, first, it means that partners that don't have a SaaS strategy of some sort had better get one -- because the big vendors all have them, and they're going after the market with gusto. Along those same lines, it might be time for partners to start figuring out how they can make money off of SaaS, which could necessitate a fairly significant shift in business model as well as a willingness to accept a monthly revenue stream rather than collect big licensing fees up front with every deal.
Aside from the monthly check -- which might very well come from a vendor in the form of a referral fee -- there should be plenty of opportunities to customize SaaS applications. In that sense, this SaaS business isn't all that much different from the regular ol' software business; it's all about customization and services and not so much about licensing (or renewal fees). The trick is that partners have to know how to work with SaaS applications, although it seems that the big vendors are doing their best to facilitate that.
Which mega-vendor, then, will win the SaaS race? We kind of suspect that all of them will. IBM's model looks more pure SaaS than Microsoft's, but Microsoft has a massive installed base and a lot of incumbent applications in the enterprise for integration purposes. And then there's Google, which is replicating Microsoft's model by going after customers through the channel, which seems to us like a wise strategy indeed.
In all likelihood, the race for SaaS superiority will be a marathon and not a sprint. And as long as partners can make a few bucks along the way, that'll be a good thing.
What's your take on the impact of SaaS? How do the vendors' plans look to you? Sound off at [email protected]. It has been a while since we've run reader feedback; we're going to try to do that later this week. Stay tuned.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 20, 20092 comments
Haven't we been through this before? Like, a long time ago? And didn't Microsoft lose...but not really lose? Well, that was all in the U.S., and the EU doesn't care about that. And now the EU competition folks, who have dogged Microsoft for years, are back on Redmond's case, claiming that Internet Explorer might just
infringe on antitrust laws.
It would seem to us that this argument had a lot more strength when Microsoft was busy dumping Netscape's lifeless body into Puget Sound almost a decade ago. But now? Well, all we're saying is that your editor is a user of both Firefox and XP, and Firefox seems to be nipping away at Microsoft's market share all the time. Does that mean that IE doesn't violate antitrust laws in Europe? Not necessarily. But the question we're asking is, who cares? And why this? Why now? Competitors -- Firefox, Chrome, Safari -- are eating away at IE's market share, anyway. This feels like some sort of EU witch hunt or vendetta or something...but surely our friends across the pond wouldn't take that attitude. Oh, surely not.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 20, 20092 comments